Thursday 26 January 2012

Pottering about, or about pottering



As mentioned in my profile, I have a very short attention span when it comes to hobbies.  As a consequence, I get through hobbies like some people get through underwear. I change them often.  Then again, there are things I do that other people seem to classify as hobbies, but to me they’re part of life.  Reading, for example.  To me, that’s not a hobby. In fact, if you’re going to classify reading as a hobby, then I might as well list breathing as one of mine. And when does cooking become a hobby? And, if cooking, why not ironing?

Anyway, I digress.  I like hobbies where you can make stuff.  However, I guess I’m blessed with a gift that means I can make most things quite easily, so as a consequence I make stuff I don’t really need or have a use for, and then wonder why I did it. Our house is adorned with bits of useless papercraft which, whilst they look very decorative, ONLY look very decorative. They have no real purpose other than decoration, and there’s only so much useless tat you can display without making your house look as though you’ve turned it into a primary school art display.

 About three years ago, however, I met my nemesis. I signed up for Adult Education classes in Ceramics. I was going to make pots! My expectations were initially low, and I managed not to meet them with amazing success. OK, I didn’t make any of those wonky ashtrays that schoolchildren always seemed to bring home when given the opportunity to be creative with clay, but my first efforts were only a little better. And, for a long time, “ a little better” was about as good as it got.  Being honest, I haven’t ever really grown out of the belief that if I turn my hand to something, I will produce professional quality things within seconds, and now I’m twentyteen I should really know better, but my inability to produce my first masterpiece after half a term was a disappointment. Nevertheless, I stuck with it. I began with a lot of hand-built pots, which looked…well, they looked hand built. In fact, most of them looked as though they had been hand built by someone with impaired vision and one hand tied behind their back. So then, after a year of hand-building, I thought I’d try throwing.
 
You may be familiar with the film “Ghost”. I’m not, especially, but I’ve still seen the bit where  Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze make a phallic symbol out of clay on a pottery wheel whilst  listening to “Unchained Melody”. If you haven’t seen it, you should. Not so much for the slightly risqué imagery, more so that you can marvel in wonder that, apart from getting their hands covered in clay, they stay relatively clean. This, in spite of the fact that Mr Swayze has had the foresight to remove his shirt.  Now if I were remaking this scene, I would have them both dressed in wellies, a pac-a-mac and sou’wester, and have all the scenery draped in plastic sheeting.  I came back from most of my throwing experiences covered in clay up to my armpits. My trousers (in spite of the judicious use of an apron and an old towel) generally ended up so covered in clay that, had it set before I got home, I would have looked like I was half-woman, half-statue. Blowing my nose, even several days after a class, I could find that one or both of my nostrils contained enough clay to make a small dish.


Somehow, I’ve not only continued with this hobby, but (after abandoning the wheel for the rather cleaner and more controllable hand building) I’ve finally begun to make some half-decent pots.The main problem I’m starting to have is what to do with them. I have classmates who occasionally join in with local craft sales and manage to sell some of their work, but I’m still a long way off being confident enough in the quality of my output to risk it. I’ve shipped a fair quantity over to our second home in France, in the spirit of “out of sight, out of mind”, but I’m now wondering if we’ll ever have enough guests, either here in N-o-T, or in France, for me to call my increasing number of serving dishes and bowls  into service. I can’t see it myself. 

I leave you with a little example of my vast body of work…



Sunday 22 January 2012

If you wanna get ahead..

..get a hat! Or so the old slogan goes. Frankly, I have yet to find a hat that doesn't make me look like a demented bag-lady or a female Michael Crawford, so I tend to avoid them like the plague, even when, as today, there appears to be a wind blowing round Nowhere-on-Thames which has come directly from Siberia without passing go or collecting £200. I look marginally less like an escapee from a home for the bewildered with my hair being whipped into coconut matting around my head, so I set off for an afternoon stroll into the local metropolis, accompanied by TH, with my head exposed to the elements.

Once we'd arrived in the local metropolis itself, there were, as usual, hordes of tourists taking photos of just about everything and milling about the castle and the shops doing the normal tourist things. Given the prevailing weather conditions, I began to notice the extraordinary range of headgear they were sporting.

Now, I guess that, unless you come from somewhere colder than the UK, you're probably not going to think about packing lots of headgear for a few days' break, so if you decide to buy something once you're here, you may not have the luxury of a wide choice. Even so...

The first person to walk past us was a man, sporting a Sherlock-Holmes-style deerstalker. It sounded as though he was Italian. If, indeed, he WAS Italian, he clearly didn't get the memo about being stylish and casually elegant at all times, for he had actually managed to find a deerstalker lined with grey faux-fur fabric, and had decided to wear it with the ear-flaps down over his ears and tied under his chin. The overall effect was sort of Sherlock-Holmes-with-learning-difficulties.

Putting the "tit" in "titfer"?
                                                   
Then there seemed to have been a massive outbreak of those Peruvian bonnets which look OK-ish on trustafarians with dreadlocks, handknitted jumpers and Doc Martens, but which make Japanese tourists of a certain age look like they're wearing a tea-cosy for a bet. And I'm not convinced that any man over 30 can really pull off a hat with multicoloured faux-plaits. There's something of the transvestite about it.

Would you?


And then there are the Princess-Leia headphone-ear-muff-headbands which make the wearer look like they've got some terrible ear infection, but even worse, make them almost completely deaf. I worry that, when sported by a tourist who tends to forget which side of the road we drive on, this could become a lethal combo.


No, really.....why?????


All I can assume is that these people will get home with their inappropriate headgear and consign it to a dark corner of their wardrobe, never to be seen or worn again. I mean....when Brits used to go on holiday to Spain and come back with those sombreros the size of a manned spacecraft...they KNEW how stupid they looked wearing them, didn't they?





Saturday 21 January 2012

Lost in Translation


I feel I should, after my last blog entry, redress the balance a little bit, and ‘fess up to my own linguistic howlers. I’m sure there have been many, but one, in particular, still haunts me. It took place over 20 years ago, but to this day I get all clammy and embarrassed just thinking about it.
Here’s what happened…..


I was home on maternity leave after the birth of son#2, and enjoying a bit of a respite from work. At the time, I was working as an export sales manager for a company which made food additives.  One of my most important markets was Algeria, and whilst I was on leave, the State Monopoly with whom I had most of my dealings asked our company to send some representatives to speak at a conference. As this was going to be conducted in French and many of my technical colleagues didn’t speak the language, I was drafted back in from maternity leave to do the simultaneous translation at the conference.


On the day, it all went rather well. After the presentations there was a Q&A session, and I was busy translating back and forth, with a steady stream of questions from the very attentive audience of about 200 Algerian food scientists and manufacturers. 


In the evening, we all went off to a local restaurant for a meal, happy and relaxed that it had all gone off so well.  Or so I thought.


Our local agent, a Frenchman, was sitting next to me at dinner, and suddenly said to me as we were chatting about the day: “By the way, you DO realise what you said this morning, don’t you?”. There was a look in his eye that said that he knew I didn’t and that he was going to enjoy telling me.  Which, indeed, he did. Far too much, if you ask me. Sparing no detail, this is what I’d done..


The products we were selling in Algeria were mainly dyes for foodstuffs. When sold, these are in powder form and highly concentrated; so much so that they have to be diluted before being added to the product. Normally, in order the achieve the right dilution and to ensure that the colour of the finished product can be controlled, the dyes are made up into a solution, and it is this solution which is added to the product. During the Q&A, someone had said that they were experiencing problems with the solutions “going off” if they were kept for any length of time, and asked for advice. Our chief chemist, who was among the presenters, offered to answer, and I translated her reply for the audience. So far, so good. The answer was reasonably simple. There are lots of available preservatives on the market which, when added to the solutions, will keep them stable. Which is what I passed on in my translation. Or so I thought.


Some six hours after the event, and with great pleasure at my discomfort, the local agent explained to me that I’d obviously got a bit tangled in translating, and told a roomful of Algerians to stick a “préservatif” in their dye solutions.



Unfortunately, dear readers, for those of you not familiar with the French language, “préservatif” happens to be the French word for “condom” and "conservateur" was the word I was looking for. I knew that. I did. Honest......


Friday 20 January 2012

"My head is full of porridge"


This is my new favourite expression, courtesy of a lovely Russian lady I’m teaching at the moment. She had been doing some homework to practise using “Needn’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t and don’t have to” and found it all a bit confusing.   

My students’ efforts with the English language are often a source of great entertainment, and I thought I’d share one or two of their better efforts with you. I'm laughing with them, not at them, and I'm not telling you anything behind their backs that we haven't already giggled over together in class or outside.




One of the first examples came several years ago when I was doing a lesson with a class about letters to agony aunts. They first had to understand the concept, so I asked them what an agony aunt was.
Silence
Me: “OK...you all know what “aunt” means, don’t you?”
Class: “Yes”
Me:” So does anyone know the meaning of ‘agony?’”
Chinese student:  “Yes....it’s when you are a teenager and you get spots all over your face”
Me: (Trying not to be too discouraging) “Well, not quite....you’re thinking of acne”


More recently, there have been a couple of really brilliant mistakes. The first of these comes courtesy of Maria.

Maria is Sicilian. She’s lived in the UK for many years. Her accent remains almost impenetrable, probably not helped by the fact that her husband is Ukranian, but she arrived in my class determined to improve her English and with it her job prospects. At the time, I had another Italian girl in my class, who confided to me after a couple of lessons that even she couldn’t understand Maria. Of greater concern was that not only couldn’t she understand Maria when she spoke English, she couldn’t understand Maria’s Italian either!  It transpired that Maria’s contributions to the class were largely only intelligible to her and me.

I’ve been teaching advanced-level students for a while now, and one of the things I feel is important  to cover is swearing and profanity. By this stage, they’ve all come into contact with bad language, but the subtleties of this vocabulary, whether and when it’s appropriate, and just what some of it means, can remain a mystery unless tackled and explained in a safe environment. So I have a lesson dedicated to swearwords.

All went well with the class. As usual, there was a bit of embarrassment at the start when I asked them to come to the board and write all the swearwords they could think of, but once they got over that, they set to with gusto and surprised me with the breadth of their knowledge. Maria wasn’t contributing a lot, but, as she explained, being a good Catholic lady, she hardly ever swears, either in Italian or English, so she didn’t know many swearwords. No problem so far. So we moved on to swearwords featuring body parts. I gave the students a handout with various examples of swearwords and the corresponding body parts and bodily functions to which they referred, and stepped back to let them match up the two. When everyone was working away, I walked around the room to check how they were doing. Maria was stuck, so I asked if she needed any help.

“What’s this?” She said “I don’t know this word. What does it mean?”
The word was “prick”. So I explained: “It’s a penis, Maria”
“Oh, right, I see. Like the flower”
“No, Maria. We don’t have a flower called a ‘penis’”
“Yes, you do. My neighbour had some in her garden, and I asked her what they were, and she said it’s a penis. So I went to the garden centre and asked if they had penis and I bought some”
“Maria, really, we don’t have................do you mean PEONIES???”
“Yes, that’s it! Penis”


And finally...this one’s courtesy of a friend, but reader, I was there...
In a previous job, I was responsible for organising language classes in my company. We had loads of French interns who came for a year or so and were mostly already proficient in English, albeit with rather splendid French accents that they couldn’t quite shake. We had to stop the MD from making speeches where he (speaking on behalf of the Board of Directors) would announce “We would like you all to FOCUS” because his accent gave the word a whole new meaning that he certainly didn’t intend.

And so it was that I was approached by one of the interns who asked, on behalf of the group, whether it might be possible for them to have some English lessons to help them with their pronunciation. We organised some classes in the lunch break, and all went well. Until the day that my language training supplier, who was running the classes, came into my office giggling like a schoolboy and shut the door behind him.
“You’ll never believe this” he snorted “but I have to tell you”

Anyone reading this who listens to a French person speaking English will be familiar with the problem of pronouncing words with the long vowel sounds. A French person has real difficulty making the difference between words like “this” and “these” or “heat” and “hit”. If you haven’t come across it, then just remember that a French person will say “it” when they mean “eat”. Which was the problem that the students wanted to address. Using your French pronunciation skills, read on:

Student 1 :“I have a problem in my department. Every time I ask for a piece of paper, everyone laughs at me”
Tutor: “Ah yes, well that’s because......”
Student 2 (interrupting): “I think I have solved the problem”
Tutor: “OK, tell us how?”
Student 2: “I no longer ask for a piece of paper..I ask for a sheet of paper!”




Images courtesy of engrish.com. If you've never visited, check it out!

Epilogue blogue

OK, not many people are following me at all, but if you have stayed with me through my personal computer hell, here's THE END.

Yesterday, Steven promised me that my new laptop would be delivered on the 24th. He was quite specific. They couldn't do it any earlier, but if the 24th wasn't convenient, he could change it to a later date. I agreed that it would be fine, and that if I had to go out, I would arrange with a neighbour to sign for the parcel. Today, I arranged my workload so that I could be at home for most of the day next Tuesday.

Steven also assured me that the carrier would send me an e-mail with tracking details for my parcel, so that I could see roughly when the delivery would take place.

10 minutes ago, there was a knock at the door...............

Lucky I was at home, because so far I haven't had any e-mails.


Thursday 19 January 2012

The end is nigh.....Maybe


There is a light at the end of the tunnel in the ongoing saga of my dead laptop. I just thought you’d like to know.




For the last few days, I have been in regular telephone contact with Steven (or Stephen, I don’t know). He’s my “dedicated” contact in the complaints department. I’m sure he’s a lovely bloke, but he’s very hard work. VERY hard work. Steven, you see, has one of the most impenetrable accents I’ve heard for a long time. This is all the more remarkable considering I spend my every working moment with people who have accents from every corner of the globe, and Steven is a fellow countryman. He’s a Geordie, I think. Although I could be completely wrong, but if I am, then my next best guess is “Martian”. He left a message on our phone two days ago, and TH and I spent a good few minutes trying to decipher it, so it’s not just me.  It’s not every day you find yourself wishing that someone’s customer service call centre was in Mumbai, but this time I’m wondering if it mightn’t have been easier. He’s tried his best to help, and if it wasn’t for his accent, I’m sure we could have got on a lot better. Maybe he’s their secret weapon..it’s harder to be angry when your brain is still decoding the message!


As for the laptop itself, things have almost reached a satisfactory conclusion, although not quite.  The offer of a replacement for my dead machine was finally forthcoming after I’d sent off e-mails to the MD and the customer service robot.  The caveat was that all the data in my old laptop will be lost, as there’s (seemingly) no option or chance to have it transferred. So, new laptop on the way, but I’ll lose all my i-tunes library AND a brand new one-time-one user version of Office 2010 that I’d had use of for five weeks only. The computer people say I should sort that out with Microsoft, Microsoft say I should sort that out with the computer people....


And then, this morning, Steven called again. To be honest, he’d called yesterday and left a message but I couldn’t really tell what he was saying, and besides, every time I phone him back I have to use a 5p-a-minute premium rate number.  And every time I do, I have to press 3 to be transferred to the technical department, then 1 so they don’t use my 5p a minute to recite their terms of service, then tell a technical representative my reference number, then wait for them to enter it into their system, then get put on hold, then wait to be transferred, and THEN, when I get through, someone answers and says “I believe you want to speak to Steven? I’ll just put you on hold while I transfer you”. My Personal Best for getting through to him is eight minutes, which is rarely the end of the saga as we then have to have a conversation twice as long as necessary due to me saying “Pardon?” and him repeating himself so I can get a handle on what he’s saying.  So, I decided yesterday that I’d leave him to get back to me.


The reason for this morning’s call was a tad baffling. He was ringing to get my address so they can deliver my replacement laptop. Luckily, I was at home, so it was his call, but I am left wondering why he needed this information. After all, they came here to pick up the dead laptop, and I filled in their online form with all my personal details...and at some point, had they been able to fix the previous machine, they would have had to deliver it back!  

It appears he’s almost as baffled by my accent as I am with his. Of course, it doesn’t help that most customer service people are well-versed in the “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie” thingy (I could be flash at this point and bandy about words like “acrophonic”, but nobody loves a smart-arse), but I’m not. As a result of our linguistic impasse, I had to spell out my address and then painstakingly correct his mis-hearing of what I’d said for a couple of minutes. As it was his call, I took consolation from the fact that I’d saved myself a good 10p there.

He’s due to call again later with a delivery date for my new machine.  I’m fervently hoping that this will be our last conversation, and that my next blog entry will be written on a machine with a screen that I can see! WIsh me luck!

Monday 16 January 2012

Nowhere-on Thames: Gateway to the Olympics


Here in Nowhere-on-Thames there’s a spot of local bother pertaining to the forthcoming  Games of the 30th Olympiad, or London 2012 to you and me.  It’s all to do with the rowing.....that’s sitting in boats with oars, not having a verbal dispute, although I can see a lot of the latter breaking out over our local Diplomatic Incident if the Village Society get their twinsets in any more of a twist.

So, to what am I referring? Well, dear reader, it’s like this:
Nowhere-on-Thames is a small village of little distinction. Its claims to fame are few. Among them is that Jerome.K.Jerome and the other Men–in-a-Boat (not forgetting the dog) spent a night here whilst JKJ was doing the journey of the book. When I say “among them”, I really mean “and that’s about it”.

Historically speaking, I am led to believe that this small village was, at the time of the Domesday Book, bigger than Birmingham. How things change. I bet the residents of modern-day Birmingham would struggle with only two fish-and-chip shops, a chemist, newsagent, off-licence and two formal-wear-hire shops to sustain them. Mind you, on the plus side, they wouldn’t want for hairdressers, although I don’t think the Tesco Local would cope with the volume of customers. Our villagers inhabit one of the best-coiffed Thames-side villages for miles, but then, as members of the Royal Family could drive through here at any time, you wouldn’t want them to see you on a bad hair day, would you? And if you can’t get an appointment, then there’s also a hat-hire emporium, which does a roaring trade during the summer months when everyone-who’s-anyone (i.e. not me) is looking for fetching headgear for Ascot/Henley/Smith’s  Lawn/Royal Garden Party season.

Apart from being much smaller than Birmingham and getting a mention in “Three Men in a Boat”, N-o-T has only one other “feature”, and that is one of the very few public slipways on the River Thames. Apparently. And here’s where the twinsets are getting in a twist.
We are, for better or worse, but a hop and a skip away from the Olympic Rowing Venue. And, as one of the Australians said at the last Olympiad, Britain seems to excel at sports which are done sitting down. Rowing, thanks to the sainted Sir Steve Redgrave, is one of these, and is expected to draw many people to spectate.  The only fly in the ointment, as with much of the London Olympics, is transport.

Unbeknown to more or less anyone, a plan has been being hatched around these parts by the Parish Council and a large local company specialising in boat trips along the river, to provide transport facilities to the rowing venue. This will, apparently, entail the construction of some new pontoons adjacent to our local public slipway, so that the large river boats can moor there and pick up passengers who will alight at our local station and walk the hundred yards or so to the riverbank, where they will embark upon a short boat journey to the rowing venue. And nothing much would have been known of it still, had not a mole informed the local Village Society. 

I can see why they’re a bit concerned.  The intended site, apart from the slipway, is a small stretch of open riverfront with benches and a picnic spot, with uninterrupted views across the river to the grounds of Windsor Castle.  A pretty little spot, it is much used at the weekend (and indeed, during the week) by locals and visitors alike, who come to feed the ducks and swans, sit under the huge horse chestnut trees and relax or chat or read.  The Village Society wants us to protest and to Ask Questions. Questions such as “What will happen to this new infrastructure once the Games are over?” and “Will the boat operator have permission to continue the service beyond the Olympics?” and probably the most pertinent question of all: “Who’s paying?”

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. On the one hand, it might be quite nice to be (however peripherally) a sort of “hub” for part of the Olympics. On the other, I’ve always had a soft spot for our little bit of public space by the river. I don’t want to see it trampled underfoot by hordes of people on their way from A to B.  And I expect the dozens of ducks, geese and swans who hang about there in the hope of a regular feed will be traumatised if their regular lunch spot is invaded by Johnny Foreigners without so much as a bag of crusts between them.  If the Parish Council and the boat people get their way, then there’ll be many more than just three men in a boat down by the river. There’ll probably be the equivalent of a goodly slice of the population of Birmingham! And I bet JKJ will be spinning in his grave.



`

Sunday 15 January 2012

New Boots and Panties



Well, I lied about the panties...

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that I was strutting around the office in killer heels. Today, on those increasingly rare occasions where I have to don ANY sort of heel, I break out in a cold sweat. It wasn’t always like this. I think my relationship with heels finally hit rock bottom on the day of son #1’s graduation ceremony. Here’s what happened:

The ceremony was to take place in the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster. For those not familiar with central London, the location is more or less opposite Westminster Abbey, Just around the corner from the Palace of Westminster and Big Ben.

In June each year, and into July, Universities all over the country have their graduation ceremonies, and those without a campus or a big enough hall are forced to find alternative accommodation for the event.  In central London, the Methodist Central Hall must do a roaring trade, as son#1’s university was holding its graduation ceremonies in shifts. Our shift was the afternoon one.  Things were on quite a tight schedule, so the morning shift were pouring out in their rented caps and gowns into the June sunshine, looking for the best spots to take photos even as the afternoon shift started to arrive.

TH works in the Metropolis, and son#1 lives there, so they were both more or less on the spot. I had to travel in from Nowhere-on-Thames by train, decked out in my Sunday Best, complete with the dreaded heels.  It had been a while since I was required to wear heels, and although I visit a number of companies as part of my job, and manage to dress appropriately in business attire, I’m usually only required to totter from my car to an office, sit down for an hour or so, then totter back to the car and drive home, where I can slip into something more comfortable straight away. On this day, I was required to totter a lot further.

The tottering was all going rather well. I’d tottered all the way to the station (OK, it’s only about 100 metres from our house) and then I’d tottered to the tube, off the tube, down a maze of tunnels and corridors until finally I surfaced onto the Westminster pavement.  “It’s like riding a bike” I was thinking to myself, as I tottered along the pavement adjacent to Westminster Abbey.  Only by now, my confidence was growing, and the totter had become more of a purposeful stride. I was feeling quite proud of myself, and, as we all know, pride comes before.....

On my right, across the road, several hundred newly-minted graduates were enjoying the sunshine with their peers and parents. On my left, a coach was disgorging a tour group of Japanese tourists, and the queue for the Westminster Abbey Gift shop was snaking along towards the entrance.  And in the midst of the throng, I suddenly hit a bump in the pavement, staggered like a newborn giraffe and collapsed in a heap onto the pavement.  I don’t know if it was my imagination, but I could actually feel the shutters of several dozen cameras......Picking myself up and checking that there was no real damage, I adopted the best approach for such situations,  learned from my years of working in Central London, and carried on as if I’d fully intended to fall over, and that nothing could have been more normal. I think I pulled it off....

Crossing the road to meet up with TH and son#1, I was annoyed to discover that the road immediately outside the Methodist Central Hall is among the few streets in central London which is still cobbled. This I found rather sadistic. Negotiating cobbles in killer heels, especially after a recent wardrobe malfunction, is no easy feat.  I went back to tottering and hanging on to TH as if my life depended on it, until finally the ceremony and celebrations were over and I could totter home and consign  the heels to the back of the wardrobe, where they have remained ever since.

Now, as winter is finally upon us, and indeed for the last few months, I have stuck to wearing Sensible Shoes. Or, to be more precise, Sensible Boots.  Nice, flat, warm, comfortable Ugg boots, to be precise.




I know the Ugg divides opinion, but I’ve had a pair on the go pretty much all the time since 1982. I bought my first pair in Melbourne when I lived for a short spell in Australia, and in those days I don’t think anyone would have been seen dead wearing them outdoors. The first time I saw anyone wearing a pair outside, I was staying in a hotel in the centre of Paris in the early 90’s, and the wearer was a man with dreadlocks. It was probably another four or five years before I saw anyone else wearing them outdoors, and then, all of a sudden, everyone was doing it.  In the spirit of “if you can’t beat ‘em” etc., I joined ‘em.

My last pair came from a shop in Stansted airport. There’s a very good reason for this. Off with TH for a few days in France, I donned the then current pair, ready to leave for the airport, and popped out quickly on a rather wet morning to walk the dog. On my return,  my feet were cold. This is not normal when wearing Ugg boots, so I slipped one off to investigate, only to discover that the sole had split. Closer inspection revealed that BOTH soles had split. However, by this time, TH was revving up the car for the journey to the airport, and in a fit of last-minute panic, I grabbed two Tesco carrier bags and some dry socks and jumped into the car. Having swapped my wet socks for a dry pair, I stuck my feet in the carrier bags and resolved to deal with things once we were in France, where I have spare shoes. Imagine my embarrassment, then, when we arrived at Stansted, only to find that part of the security procedure for getting to the gate involved the removal of all footwear! So, there I was, standing barefoot in the security queue, trying to look nonchalant with both feet encased in carrier bags. Oh, the shame!  Once airside, I headed for the nearest shoe shop, and persuaded TH that I’d like a new pair of Uggs as an early Christmas present.

THAT pair lasted me three years. Until last Friday, in fact. I was heading up to London again, this time to meet son#1 and TH to go for a birthday meal. No tottering for me this time. Oh no siree! It was an Ugg day. By far the best footwear for tramping the streets of London. All was well until TH and I arrived back at the station, and were walking the dark pavements back to the house. All of a sudden, a lump shot up out of the pavement, tripped me up and I stumbled forwards. No harm done, no baby giraffe moment, no camera shutters...well, it was dark! Got home, looked down.....and realised that the fall had pushed my toe straight through the upper of my Ugg and there was a gaping furry hole in the top of my boot, exposing my toe to the elements.

Luckily, the sales are still on. Since the Ugg became the footwear of choice for so many people, they’re normally out of my price range and require some saving up for. It was with great joy, then, that I found a pair in my size in a local shoe shop, and not only that, but they were half price!! And so, my feet can remain warm and happy and there’ll be no tottering in the near future. I love a happy ending!











Saturday 14 January 2012

And while we're on the subject.

I'm not the only family member who has been dealing with the demise of electrical goods this week. TH's stereo tuner passed away recently, and has been much missed (by him).

Like laptops, stereo systems (or whatever they're now called) have moved on over recent years. The last purchase of a "system" in this household coincided with son #1's 6th birthday, and he's 25 tomorrow. It was one of those stacking systems which included CD player, tape deck, record player, tuner, teasmade, black box flight recorder, toaster and  microwave, standing proudly within a glass-fronted cabinet about the height of the average pre-teen, and featuring many flashing blue lights. Since the day it entered the house, I estimate that 75% of its features have remained unused. Over the past 10 years, most of those features have faded into obsolesence, and even the ones that are still used (The tuner. Just the tuner) have fallen well behind the latest technological advances.

If proof of this were needed, it certainly isn't now. Today, TH bit the bullet, struck while the iron was hot, took the bull by the horns and bought a New System.

This New System is, in fact, a box. Its overall dimensions are just slightly bigger than  the largest available box of Weetabix. It's a tuner/CDplayer/Normal-DAB-internet radio/ipod dock and probably several other things too.

We are now staring at an obsolete cabinet full of obsolete stereo eqipment. Perched on the very top is a small silver box.....


The first of many nothings from Nowhere...Battles with my laptop.

So...after many moons of promising myself I wouldn't do it, I've demonstrated my normal levels of willpower and given in. Here I am, writing a blog.

I've already convinced myself that I have absolutely nothing to say, so this effort may well be extremely short-lived,  but what the heck, it's only another half-hour of my life, and I wasn't planning on doing very much with it anyway!

It's a crazy time to choose, if I'm honest, to start writing a blog, as I am typing to you from a netbook with the world's smallest screen, and my failing eyesight (one of the many signs from my body that I am no longer as young as my mind wants to be) means that I'm squinting at the screen and hoping that I can make out any typos through the haze. Maybe the reason for the netbook would be a good place to start? Here goes...




 As I am not a city worker or the CEO of a FTSE 100 company, money is a bit tight. So, when an appliance shows signs of giving up the struggle, I worry.  In late October, I started to worry about my laptop. I'd already popped it into the repair shop for major surgery in June, thinking that it would be fine once repaired, but then the screen declined to illuminate. There was something there, something very faint. I could make it out if I waited till darkness fell, then carried the laptop over to a nearby table lamp and got both the screen and my head positioned at just the right angle. Much Googling and reading about remedies later, I came to the conclusion that the screen backlight had died, and that whilst a repair or replacement was possible, the cost, on top of the cost of previous surgery, was too high to be justified. I'd managed to get hold of a cable to link the laptop to the TV, allowing the TV to act as a giant monitor, so I could just about use the old laptop for as long as it took to rescue any precious files, but it was clearly time to shell out for a new one.

Once upon a time, the received wisdom was that any sort of new technology would, once established, gradually reduce in price. For a while, this was true of laptops. What happened???
In the couple of years since my last purchase, it appears that laptop prices have soared!! Silly me. In those couple of years, the price of almost everything has soared. I was squinting in disbelief at the dinky screen of my emergency netbook, reeling from shock at the cost of a new computer.

Help, in the form of  The Husband (TH), was at hand....

TH is a dab hand at bargain hunting. He is also a dab hand at finding people who know people who have connections to people who can Get Things. He has a work colleague, who has a cousin who can Get Things like computers, ipods, etc. "I'll have a word with him" he said. It was only a short wait before he sent me an e-mail from work. "Not much choice at the moment" it said, above a picture of one solitary laptop. However, the solitary laptop looked fine, was a reputable brand and, most importantly, it was CHEAP.

I should add, at this point, to avoid any confusion, that at no time in its life had the machine dropped off the back of any lorries, and that this was a totally legitimate commercial transaction. Just in case you were wondering..

Meanwhile, back at the story, I agreed to purchase the solitary laptop. After a couple of weeks of waiting (the laptop was coming from far away, and one delivery attempt had to be aborted after an accident closed the M40), it arrived. All shiny and new and working and..well, basically a pretty ordinary new laptop. The date (for future reference) was November 18th.

Everything was tickety-boo until Christmas morning. I switched on my laptop to read and exchange festive messages of good cheer with various people, and all was fine. An hour or so later, I switched on again, only to be met with the Black Screen of Death. Not to be fooled (I'd been here before, remember) I did the squinty under-the-table-lamp thing, and the cable-to-the-tv thing, but to no avail. I checked the manufacturer's website help pages and did everything they said, too. Nada. So I sent them an e-mail. Their robot sent me one back, telling me to do all the things I'd already done. I should have known then that this was only the beginning.

I'll spare you too much detail. This is my first blog entry and I don't want potential readers flatlining. Suffice it to say that the manufacturer came and took my laptop away on December 29th. They were supposed to come on the 28th but they didn't turn up. They were supposed to deliver my repaired laptop back on January 4th. This became January 7th, 11th, 17th, 28th and now FEBRUARY 28th. I've lost count of the number of e-mails we've exchanged, they're only reachable on a premium-rate phone number (and I've racked up about an hour on the phone so far) and  their "we care about you and our MD wants your feedback" form actually limits the number of words you can write when you finally decide to let the MD know exactly what you think of their customer service.

Oh, and talking of "customer service"...a couple of days after the second of their 6 delivery dates had passed, they sent me a survey to complete. "We'd like your views on your recent experience". There's nothing better (and, it seems, more rare) than a joined-up after-sales department.

I've given them a deadline and suggested that, as they've already had my laptop for longer than I did, they might like to consider replacing it with one that works. I'm not holding my breath...