Is This The World’s Most Annoying Christmas Present?
A guy on the radio, has just claimed he had a Match of the Day mug for Christmas.
That bit is fine.
But every time he picks it up to drink, the mug plays the theme tune.
Now that is a superb way to annoy someone!
My Second Worst Christmas Ever!
This has been my second worst Christmas ever! Except for Christmas lunch with my son, his partner and a few friends, it has been an unmitigated disaster.
I’ve frozen stiff, as my house has fought back against the plumber, who has gamely tried to fix the killer central heating system.
One of my pleasures at Christmas is going to see Ipswich play and the fixture list and the trains conspired to make that impossible. My attempts at finding a lift were a futile waste of time. I think, I should have developed a Plan B, where I skipped Christmas lunch and found a good hotel near Doncaster, from where I could have got a taxi to the match. But then knowing my luck, it would have been flooded out.
Incidentally, I’ve not bought my ticket for the trains to Bournemouth for Sunday, as the day I do, something will come about to stop that!
Next Christmas, I won’t be here at Christmas! Perhaps, I’ll just hit a policeman on Christmas Eve, so I’m inside for a day or so. At least, I’d have some new friends to talk to.
On the other hand there must be hotels that specialise in miserable Christmases. I could always try a cruise, as from past experience, I know they’re pretty grim.
My worst Christmas wasn’t 2007 when C died just before. I helped out at the Old Peoples’ Christmas Lunch and I seem to remember there was plenty of football to watch amongst friends.
The worst one had actually been a few years before, when our eldest son and his wife, went off skiing and left C and myself to look after about a dozen horses. And it snowed! I’m not in contact with them any more, as she feels that husbands should have no contact with their former families. That was a Christmas to truly forget. But as we did, C and myself, laughed it off. I do hope my son and his wife are flooded out this Christmas and have their worst Christmas ever. I know that’s uncharitable, but they deserve nothing better.
Getting Back To Normal
After yesterday’s disaster on getting to Doncaster, which was compounded by Ipswich playing extremely well and winning three-nil, things seem to be getting back to normal.
They are dual-handed on BBC Breakfast with Naga Munchetty and Jon Kay.
Even our cricketers are doing better!
But I’ve still got a long list of things to sort out.
My e-mail and e-commerce computer has a missing R on the keyboard. I think a USB keyboard and mouse will solve that one.
I’m typing this on my other computer, which I hate because it’s Windows 7 and Office 2010, which is just another case of fiddling and is far inferior for my purposes to Vista and Office 2007. I also hate the keyboard on this computer, as the Delete key is in the wrong place amongst many design faults. Can’t they leave well enough alone. All PCs and laptops must have the same keyboard! It should be the law!
I’m also virtually typing in the dark, as I have this computer at the other end of the table, and Jerry’s lights are crap. I need to grow another pair of hands, so I can put the Anglepoise up at this end of the table. When I first saw this house, I said that the lights must be replaced, but short of tearing down the ceiling, no-one seems to have any idea on how to do it. Obviously, Jerry used to walk around with a miner’s helmet on.
I must hope that the plumber can get over to fix my heating system. It’s just nineteen in here.
The humidity is up to forty six, which is better, but that is due to my little humidifier, I bought at John Lewis. The humidifier, I hired at great expense has failed.
One of the weird things about this house is that small electrical things fail. One of my Nokia 6310i’s needed repair and the menders thought I’d dropped it in water. I hadn’t. The latest casualty is an expensive mouse, which seems to have given up the ghost. It wouldn’t even let me change the battery, as it seemed to have glued itself solid. So I’m using an old fashioned USB mouse shared between my two computers. And both have their USB ports on the left, which means the cable runs in front of me and constantly gets tangled up in my dressing gown.
Life could be worse!
That Was A Waste Of Time That Was!
I’m now back home, as I failed to get a lift to Doncaster, in time to get there for the match. So my ticket and the one I bought for a possible driver have gone to waste. The money is irrevalent, but i don’t like to throw tickets in the bin, when someone less well off trhan myself, might have used them.
I probably didn’t leave myself enough time to get to the A1 at Apex Corner. As Doncaster, is one of these towns, where I’ve never had a gluten-free meal in the centre and the ground is some way away from the centre, I went to the only open Carluccuio’s near me at St. Pancras to get a meal, before taking a Tube and a 113 bus out of London.
The Tube and bus was my downfall, as it took about half-an-hour longer than I thought it would.
So when the clock went past 12:30, my cut-off time for getting to the match, I reversed my route and came home.
As luck would have it, I got home a lot quicker, than it had taken me to go.
In a way the missing of this match might be a blessing. The two other impossible ones; Yeovil and Leeds, can now be missed, without them breaking a perfect record.
Unless of course today’s match should be abandoned!
I’ve Got My Banners Ready!
I’ve made a couple of banners to help in my journey.
I’ve Got My Banners Ready!
Whether I go though, is up to the weather!
Can This Christmas Get Any Worse?
Yesterday’s lunch with my son and his friends went well, but I had to come home, as I wasn’t feeling well! Nothing serious and I suspect it was just the effect of the cold dry weather, affecting my gut. I don’t think I ate any gluten, but it was as if I had. So it was alone and back to watching old Two Ronnies and Morecambe and Wise on BBC2.
To make matters worse, when I returned home, I did find that I’d left a window open, when I went out. The house had a temperature of eighteen. At least, the open window only let the cold in.
At least, I was able to use the air conditioning to take the chill off of the temperature. But of course, the humidifier I’d hired in to get the humidity up had failed. Although, I’m doubtful it was ever working properly.
Why does she hate me so much? You can understand, why I feel that religion and God, herself, is so much rubbish.
I went to bed at about ten last night, as bed was the one warm place in the house. The temperature was about 20 °C with a humidity somewhere in the low thirties.
I slept well as I always do and decided to get up at five, as I was fully awake. I thought there might be some good news on the cricket and with the air-conditioning on, I might get the temperature up to twenty-three or so.
But of course, the news from Melbourne was its usual load of old rubbish.
And then the letter R on my e-mail computer packed up. Try typing anything sensible without that letter. It could have been worse, as the E might have failed. So now, I’m using my other computer, which is not as easy for my one-handed typing. It also doesn’t run my preferred Windows Vista.
At six-thirty, I decided to have a hot bath. That was good, but the bathroom is stone cold, as the heating isn’t really working.
In an hour or so, I’m going to get my paper and see if I can find a nice warm cafe. Sadly, there isn’t a hotel near me with a restaurant I can trust. Carluccio’s don’t open until eleven.
At least though, I’ve got plenty of porridge and some bacon, eggs and beans for a fry-up. I’d love to have some sausages, but they’re all in my freezer. But would they freeze out before next weekend, if I got them out now? The nearest supplier is one of two Sainsbury stores, which open at ten. I’ll need to go to one, as I’m virtually out of gluten-free bread.
I still intend to get to Doncaster, and as I write this, I haven’t got a lift. I did think there’d be someone in the area going north with a space, so I didn’t make alternative provisions. This would have been to book a place on the coach from Newmarket. I can get there by taking a train to Stansted and then using a taxi. But it is now too late to book the coach.
So if I do go, it’ll be a 113 bus to Apex Corner and then hitching up the A1.
I’m really looking forward to tomorrow and the return to some degree of normality.
Next winter, I’ll book myself into a five-star hotel on Christmas Eve. Then when it all goes pear-shaped, I’ll at least ruin the Christmas of a lot of other people.
My Upside Down Heating System
My heating system is proving a nightmare to get right. On Friday the plumber found that instead of having the normally closed actuators on the valves with an M30 thread, they are normally open ones with an M28 thread.
Obviously, the originals fell of the back of a lorry somewhere in foreign parts, but they are totally incompatible with a modern heating control system. One supplier said that they were probably specially made, so they could charge a fortune for replacements.
The outcome is that there is little or no control of the temperature of the floors in my house. They seem to remain stone cold all the time.
Although, you can get some heat into them at odd times, but I suspect that is because the sun warms the room above the temperature set on the controls. This opens the valve and it gets even hotter, when it should switch the system off.
Was this why I collapsed in the heat and ended up in hospital? The doctors don’t think so, but I’m not going to let the house repeat its attempt to kill me!
The more I find out about this house, the more I come to the conclusion, that the architect had a few good ideas, but was very short on detail and calculations, the house was built by Jerry and he used a heating engineer, who used components with a very dodgy history. But then the name of company who developed the site was called Back Street Developments. They seem to have taken the money from those who bought the houses and run, as there is no trace of the company or an NHBRC Warranty.
I’m going to change the manifolds and actuators to the standard that every other system uses.
Are Smoke Detectors Worth It?
For the last three days, I’ve been living with the constant beep of a smoke detector every few seconds.
I thought, I only had three smoke detectors; one in the kitchen, one in my bedroom and one in the boiler room. I check them regularly and know the beep when they need a new battery. Not that that would have helped, as I have none of the standby batteries needed, as if I do need one, I just get one from the 25 hour a day convenience store round the corner.
The builders, who put in my false ceiling in the hall, made provision for another, as this picture shows.
Provision For A Smoke Detector
But fourteen months after they started, it’s still not finished.
I eventually traced the noise to the smoke detector intended for that ceiling, which some helpful soul had placed in the downstairs bedroom.
The Errant Detector
As I couldn’t be bothered to silence it correctly, I stuffed it under some coats in a drawer.
If I hear it again it goes in a bucket of water! What noise does a drowning smoke detector make?
So how many smoke detectors end up being silenced or removed, because they annoy the house owner or tenant. Incidentally, when I moved in this house, all were beeping like an orchestra of mice. But that’s tenants for you and after having them for ten years this house wasn’t happy.
Smoke detectors as they are designed now are a nightmare. I’m not against them, but they should be independent of any form of changeable battery. I do wonder how many people end up in hospital, trying to put a battery in a smoke detector.
A Chief Fire Officer for Ipswich once told me, that they put smoke detectors in all the Council’s housing stock. But within six months none worked, as the kids had had the batteries for their toys and games machines.
RBS Tries A New Line In Customer Service
I love this story, from the Edinburgh Evening News.
For RBS customers, it’s Christmas.
But obviously, only in Edinburgh!
They would never have tried such a stunt to get new customers in Glasgow!
Will Farringdon Station Become A Destination In Itself?
Until Crossrail is opened, I don’t think we can know the effect that it will have on London’s transport systems. I put a few of my thoughts in this post about London’s airports, but at the time I hadn’t read read Crossrail’s description of the new Farringdon station on its web site. Here’s a key paragraph.
Situated at the intersection of a new east-west and north-south axis, it will be possible to directly connect with three of London’s five airports (with single interchange to the other two), providing a highly desirable railway connection between Heathrow and Gatwick. We believe this interchange will become so important to London that Farringdon will re-emerge as a destination in itself.
I couldn’t agree more.
There will need to be a new Airports Commission, as Crossrail will be the London’s biggest gamechanger since the Underground.
The Anonymous Widower 