SoftSabot – Life in my slippers

Well my family’s curse of bad luck continues…

I was in the Metrocentre at Gateshead getting a new watch battery, when I passed Florida Print. £18 per A2 print, so I thought I’d run back to the van and get my USB stick which had some photos on. I took it back in and they said 2 hours to get the 5 prints done.

So 2 hours of mooching about the Metrocentre and I returned to find my new prints which, I thought they looked a little blue, but nevertheless couldn’t wait to get them back to the van.

Later that evening I checked them over with my glasses on to find that they all had significant banding. Banding is horizontal lines which are usually indicative of a broken print head. I was disappointed but never mind, I hadn’t left yet, so I took them back the next day. They were going to reprint, but they told me that it would be Wednesday before they could do so as the machine was broken and could not be repaired til then.
Too late I replied, I have to be in Southport by Wednesday night so I’ll just take a refund if you don’t mind.

Oh we aren’t authorised to give refunds they say. OK no problem, I’ll wait til Monday and your boss can ring me.

The boss Anne Dobie does ring me and says no problem we can re-print them all for you. I explain sorry, not going to be there as I have to go south so can you just refund me please. She says no, we have to reprint them as that’s our policy. I said well given the situation can you not refund?

She then said no because they aren’t that bad, and you may have used them for their intended purpose overnight?

I was flabbergasted! First they are faulty and we’ll reprint, then they aren’t that bad, then…you may have used them lol

I checked with ConsumerDirect who indeed said they have to give you a refund if that’s what you want. I didn’t have a problem with reprints, it’s just it would cost me a fortune to have them posted out to somewhere, or drive back to the north to get them.

So I rang Mrs Dobie back, explained the situation again, and said I would have to write to her formally whereupon if she refused to give me a refund, I would take the matter to the small claims court.  She said I’ve dealt with Trading Standards before so I’m not worried.

So, I have to write to her, I have to go to small claims, I have to wait God knows how long before I can get my money back. The curse of my family strikes again lol Is anyone else in the world this unlucky?

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting to a mate on Facebook, when up pops Jo to say hello.  That’s Jo >>

Well I was surprised, cos the last time I saw Jo was about 3 years ago when after several meetings, we had a very nice date, then she disappeared!

So here she pops up and we catch up and swap numbers, then a week later we meet up and hey, she’s just as gorgeous as she was back then and I instantly fell for her all over again lol

She felt exactly the same thankfully so after 1 more date just to be certain, we decided we are an item.

She really is one of the loveliest women and I’m currently very happy indeed to be with her again.  :)

Update 8th March:

We’re not looking for the same things, I’m told

Oh well . . .

On  tea-break from work. My jaw hurts like hell and I had to have paracetamols this morning again. It’s not bleeding anymore but it’s very sore, not just the gum where he took the tooth out but the jaw itself. My lip is bust inside too tut

I’ll be writing that letter tonight to complain.

Is it just me that finds the deals on mobile phones an utter maze?

My Vodafone (spit) PAYG SIM is staying for the evenings as it has stop the clock. So my rate is 20p per minute, so 60p gets me an hour. So, if I top up £20, I get 33.3 hours or 200o minutes for that £20. Assuming I don’t text of course.

So today I got an asda SIM. It works off the Vodafone network, but has a flat rate of 8p per minute all the time to everywhere.  So if you used 2000 minutes on that it would be 16,000p or £160. Mmmm.

So, use Vodafone SIM for the evenings for stop the clock, and the ASDA SIM for during the day at cheap rates. Seems like a good plan to me cos I have 2 phones.

Just been to my dentist. What an ignorant rude ill mannered man he is. You ask for dental advice and he says he can’t predict the future. What? Idiot.

He’s that bad I’m actually going to write to the practice to complain. It’s now 6 hours after extraction and my jaw hurts like hell and the gum still has not stopped bleeding.

Well there I was in Arques, minding my own business when I happened to pass a vets. I popped in and asked “Je boisin de prendre de rendezvous pour mon chien pour le vaccine”?

She replied “Aj’hourd’hui?”

I said “Non, Vendredi. Cinq et demi?”

She checked her book and said “Oui monsieur” and that was it. I was booked in for Jack’s vaccinations to return to the UK.

I wandered back through town to the van, choosing the route along the canal which takes about an hour and a half. When I got back I started the laptop and booked ferry tickets for Saturday morning.  I had to do it sometime, I’ve got things to attend to not least taxing the van and getting new insurance. So … there’s me sitting by the dock, watching my boat come in. I have to say I am mightily sad. However ….

Hands up those who believe in fate? I took Jack off up the car park as we had an hour to wait and it’s a large one, so he could have a run around before the crossing. We wandered to the far edge which was partitioned off and around the top where there are some huge dumpsters.

As I was passing one, I heard a faint yowling. The unmistakable cry of a frightened cat. It only took a minute to find the pathetic little creature, stuck in one of the dumpsters and he was clearly cold, frightened and very much trapped.  I jammed a block of wood under the lid of the dumpster and stuck the camera in. This is what I saw. I’m 5′ 7″ so the top of the dumpster is about 6 feet, and the lip, where they’re emptied and there’s a hatch on the front, is easily 4 feet off the ground and weighs a ton. Kitty has no way to get out of that thing. Interestingly, kitty had no way to get in either.

I checked around it cos I’ve been around cats alll my life and I know how agile and purposeful they can be. However I decided there was no way that this cat could have got himself into this dumpster. So, who put him there and why? Someone who didn’t know the rules for bringing animals into the UK? I’ve no idea but I decided I was going to get kitty out!

I climbed onto the top of the dumpster to check out his situation and got covered in oil and grease and unspeakable things in the process. There’s a hatch on top so I had a good view of him.

Now as you can see, if I go in there and try to catch him, quite apart from getting ripped to shreds I am going to struggle to get out. The roof of it is easily my head height, so getting out would be possible, but I’d have to throw my clothes away and would still stink for a week.

So, I found a pallet and broke off 2 lengths, then used a larger block to jam the lid up. This way I could easily slide the two pallet planks down the sloping entrance to the dumpster, and within a second of my going round the back and banging the metal wall of the dumpster with a brick, kitty was up those planks and away like a shot. 

So,  I still have to get on the ferry and come back to the UK, but at least my four month stay in France left one person extremely happy.  Bon chance kitty and Hiya UK, see you in an hour or so!

Well, here’s what you get for a) not dressing a wound b) playing rough with a dog

While playing Jack dived on me and ripped some of the burned skin, grazing the flesh underneath and causing it to bleed. He made a right mess and it hurt!

But stoically I rinsed it clean, swabbed it with alcohol and carried on: just like most men would, instead of whining like most women would :p

Yes my friends, this small, sun-like disc of sticky plastic is my new best friend.

This is the chemical warfare of the future.

This is the thing that will release me from my daily burden.

This my friends, is Fly Death Star!

I sit each and every night in the heat, frustrated that I have to open the windows because I know THEY will invade. I despise flies and why scientists haven’t found a way to make them extinct I don’t know. They serve no purpose!!

I actually sat one night, covered in insect repellant, a tin of RAID spray in my hand, trying to squirt each and every one of them as I worked on the laptop.

So I set off looking for one of those tape type fly-catchers, a spiral of sticky stuff that hangs from the ceiling and traps the unwary fly for eternity in a gooey death. I never did find one but, I did find these stickers from RAID. I don’t know what they do becasue they’re in French but, I saw the name RAID and thought they’ll do.

So the idea is you stick them on your window, and they keep the flies away. Yeah right I thought, but I’ll try anything once so I put one at the front  and one at the back.

Now here’s the weird bit. They are only slightly sticky, so there’s no flies stuck to them, but there’s been no flies in here for the last 2 days. I have seen the odd one, then it’s disappeared. Whether it dropped down dead, was transported to another dimension or simply buggered off I don’t know but I do know that not one fly has stayed in here for longer than a minute or two!

So I am in heaven! This is fantastic! For 3 euros I am fly free! All praise to the mighty RAID guys and thank you!

Well I wanted a hanging backet for the van but after weeks of searching I could nto find one small enough to fit, and look good.

So I spotted a wicker candle holder and bought it for a quid. Inside was the candle holder bit itself so I unwired that and threw it away, then found a B n Q and got some thin brass effect chain.  Add a gold effect hook that I already had and hey Presto!

Check it out! >>>>>>>

So far I have had 2 ivy plants and a spider plant in it and they all died. My youngest daughter Keighly, made me some cuttings last year of an Aloe Vera plant she had and she guaranteed it would grow because as she said “They’re tough and grow anywhere and you just can’t kill them!”

Well Keighly, the Aloe Vera plant you made for me lasted about 2 months before it finally lost the will to live

So, my hanging basket looks all forlorn as it hangs emptily in front of the window. Any suggestions as to what hardy plant might live in there are welcomed.

Yesterday I was making a cuppa and you know when you’re doing more than one thing and sometimes you get your limbs mixed up? lol

Well, that’s what I did and as I reached out to open the window with my right hand, I was flicking the lid off the just-boiled kettle with my left and … well they met lol

Now I’m certain that steam is even hotter than boiling water so although I don’t want to man-flu this, a scald is worse than a burn!

Anyway, there it is with a bit of blister.  Painful but of course, I don’t complain and just get on with things

Well … this one doesn’t!

See I’m in Rouen, lovely city where they burned Joan of Arc. England was actually run from here once over. Anyway, the Seine flows through here and there’s a fair to middling trade from the barges which sweep up and down the river most of the day. These barges are 4,000 tons and 150 metres long lol Oh yer they big buggers.

Anyway there’s some smaller ones too, about 12 feet wide and 40 feet long. Where I’m parked on the quay there’s 2 such barges, clearly being lived in now and no longer working.

So there I was working away on the laptop when I spotted this blonde walking her dog. She headed back to the second barge off the quay and clearly she lives on it.  About a half hour after walking the dog, (9am) she comes out with some bright red marigolds and a red handled broom, even a matching bright red bucket! hehe So she sets about mopping the deck part of the barge.

Well after a little bit I pay attention cos she’s standing on the barge taking her trousers off! Hehe turns out she has shorts on underneath but as I had the camera ready I snapped a couple of pictures of her working away anyway, as I knew I was going to write about her.

Anyway the point is, she worked ALL day. I mean from about 9am, til just about the time I finished work at 4pm. She scrubbed with a scrubbing brush, she wiped with a cloth and she brushed with her red broom and she cleaned that entire 12ft by 40 foot boat by herself, getting down on her hands and knees and constantly dipping her bucket on a rope over the edge to fill from the river.

Not just the deck mind, she cleaned the windows of the deckhouse, the gunwales and even the mechanism that controls the anchors. Believe it or not she even leaned right over, dipped her broom in the river and brushed the anchors themselves clean!

Apart from an hour for lunch she worked the whole day cleaning that boat and I almost felt like going over and congratulating her and asking if she’d do my camper lol

(Actually I cleaned mine from top to bottom last week, inside and out using babywipes but that’s another story )

So … whilst she clearly is a clean and motivated person and should have a gold star for being so house proud, she is living roof that blondes do not have more fun. In fact, it looks like she has about as much fun as Gordon Ramsay at Sunday school.

I just heard tonight that someone I knew from when I was a teenager had died through drugs. His name was Keith.

Keith was at 16, everything I aspired to be. He was taller and thicker set, strong and fit, mean and quick witted. Although we were friends I looked up to him a little without letting him know I did. More people wanted to be his friend, girls flocked round him and there were many who respected him or indeed, were afraid of him.  I was never jealous, just slightly bitter that I’d been born short and skinny and dull witted.

We grew apart as lads do, I got married and had 3 kids then divorced and we got together after the divorce and drank a lot for a few weeks. He was clearly unhappy and weirdly, stated that he was envious of the life I had! I said anyone can go straight and do well for themselves, they just have to want to. After a while I got my head together and went to Uni and lost track of him again. I do know he was still til then being violent as he had to be to continue his life of drug dealing. We kept bumping into each other over the years but as I live this roaming lifestyle now I haven’t seen him in about 3 years.

So tonight I get a text to say he’s died doing what he did, drugs.

Although I’ve thought it before over the years, I think it so clearly now, that really he should have aspired to be me, not the other way around. Yeah I’m sure most people will say of course! But sometimes you need things to put your life into perspective.  I wish I knew when I was 16 what I know now, although sometimes I truly think ignorance really is bliss.

Yes folks I bring you here a picture of the amazing, the confounding, the must-be-real-magic of the indubitably fantastical … Unnnnnnnn … breakablllllllllllllllle … JOSS STICK!!!

See how despite burning down to within an inch of the base, it has bent smoothly and gracefully into a lovely arc of unbroken ash, and laid it’s head as if to sleep on it’s resting pyre.

Indeed below it’s majestic wave of death, you can claerly see the turd-like remnants of the stick that had gone before, alas not so prettily or gracefully.

I did nothing to hinder or help this stick but I think it may well be a sign from the Gods. Of what I know not, perhaps a lament for the time to come when the bull of my manhood will droop it’s tired head?

Well there I am in Feu Vert, France’s answer to Halfords trying to find one of those compressor type things that inflate your tyre. I’ve had a slow puncture for weeks now thanks to a screw in the tread, but my tyres are Vanco 2’s so you can’t repair them. There’s still life left in them though so I’ve been topping up now and again but it’s cost me €4 so far just in tyre inflating machines.

Sitting in an aire once I got chatting to a British lad who loaned me his Dad’s compressor and it worked a treat, so I promised myself I’d get one. It would come in handy for the bike too. But here they are in Fey Vert’s for a whopping €75! Feck that! But the lad is really nice so i let him sell me his cheapest bottle of puncture repair squirt. You cna pay €12 but he had the one pictured for a fiver so I said aww what the heck I’ll try it out.

Well you’re not going to believe this but, I filled the tyre and it’s been 6 days now and it has not gone down one little bit! Bloody marvellous! So I have been to Carrefour and now have two of them as spares. I admit to being a cynic but these things really do work. God knows how though as I can’t read the instructions

I just had to do it. I wasw getting fed up of the original broken one. I broke it when I lost reverse gear. Snapped the knob clean off the shaft one day trying to get reverse.

So because of this I took the housing off and had a look at the assembly. I could clearly see what turned out to be an adjuster, so now I have either reverse and 1-4 forward gears, or 1-5 forward gears and no reverse.

I celebrated by buying this new knob which set me back €20 but it was  a necessity. Hope you like it much as I do

(Typed on an Acer Aspire 8930. Probably the worst laptop I have ever owned or used.)

OK let me tell you some background ….

When I was a teenager I was a tad lazy and didn’t bother to use my culinary skills, like most young lads I suspect, egg and chips … apart from taking forever to make, is pretty simple and very tasty. So, that’s what I lived on. I would come in at stupid ‘o clock in the morning and make egg and chips,  cos you can’t go to bed on an empty belly. Ask any teenage lad.

I even developed the best way to make them: if you can be bothered, parboil them first, then drown em in red hot fat. Otherwise, just drown em in red hot fat. Lard I mean, not this poncey oil they use now, real proper ‘ard man lard. Bloody good for you it is.

Then get some lard from the chip pan into the frying pan and put your egg in and as soon as it hits the pan start splashing fat over the top of the egg. When the yolk goes milky white, it’s done so get it out sharpish like and lay it beside the chips. Not on the chips, that’s crude, make a space for it beside them. Make a space for them I should say cos any growing lad will need two eggs

So this was how I lived for several of my teenage years and laugh if you like but, how many of you know that potatoes are super food? Aye see that got ya there didn’t it. Well they are. And eggs are good for you, well they’re bad for you but, no they’re good for you but, maybe only when they’re not bad for you … oh bugger, Edwina! are they good or bad? I forgot!!

So, fast forward to my adult years. As a newly divorced man, egg banjos were a staple fast food. Especially with some onion salt mmmm.

Fast forward again, this time right to my forties. Some time ago I noticed that whenever I ate eggs I got a slightly upset stomach. Nothing that gave me the runs and no pain enough to distract me from my daily business, but quite uncomfortable and directly related to how many eggs I had eaten. I thought this was odd, but I put it down to developing some extremely mild allergic reaction over the years. I have been told this can happen, especially with dairy products.

Now here’s the weird thing.

Since coming to France I’ve enjoyed the freshness of their fresh fruit and veg. It’s on par with what Asda’s used to be like, til Asda’s started to be off before you even got it home. So it was a while before I tried their eggs but one day I bought half a dozen, mainly to make Yorkshire puddings with. (I make a mean Yorkshire pudding I do, you could almost abseil off them lol)

So one day I’m working away and I fancy a snack, except I rarely buy snacky type things anymore so I looked in the fridge and thought, yup, I’ll make an egg sandwich and sod the upset belly cos it’s bearable, but hunger isn’t. So I made one and guess what?

Yup … No bad belly!!

Not at all. Not so much as a twinge or a colon fart. I was most impressed!

Since then I buy eggs every shop to use in cooking, to poach and scramble, to make omelettes and banjos, boiled on salads and stirred into rice, I do the full range. Not once so far have I had even a hint of a bad belly.

So … what does it all mean? Someone suggested to me that by default all French eggs are free range. Well firstly I can’t verify that and secondly what does free range mean? It’s not organic, but are organic any better anyway I don’t know.

I haven’t got the answer to the why, all I can tell you is, if you like eggs but they make you ill, come to France.