I am getting cross

D'you remember, back in the day, when you used to get junk mail by the ton, and then fortunately recycling arrived and you merely glanced at it before sending it on its way? You'd moan about the waste of printing it, but at least you felt that by recycling it you weren't compounding the problem.

And if you've ever had a fax machine then you know all about personalised sweatshirts for your staff, how many people would like to buy your business (if only), how reasonable car leasing schemes are, etc, etc. But then you found a way to receive your faxes via PC so you weren't paying for the paper to print this junk. You could just glance and delete.

Well I'm now getting really pissed off with junk phone calls. For a long time we've had caller display (admittedly initially so we'd didn't accidentally answer mad ex-wife, but hey). We never answer anything starting 08. In fact we don't answer area codes we don't recognise, working on the principle that they can always leave a message if it's that important. (It's especially important that you DON'T answer HMRC without prior warning of what they might ask you!)

We have one account with two phone lines - one is just a phone, and the other one (whilst being a second phone) is also the fax line and it carries broadband. You have to answer it quick if you want to use the phone option as the fax cuts in after 2 rings. If I HAVE to give a phone number to someone that I'm not sure of, I give them that number. They soon revert to writing if they really want to get in touch with me.

About 18 months ago we changed from BT to TalkTalk. I know, dubious whether that was a good move or not but BT had become SO unreliable. They were especially bad at broadband speed which would suddenly drop and it would then take an hour or more talking to Delhi to get it uprated again. I got to knowing all the phone numbers to bypass the bottom tiers of monkeys but it was so exasperating.
Now TalkTalk is forever ringing me to persuade me to upgrade to broadband on my phone line. Hello, I have broadband, I have it through you, does your left hand even know where your right hand is? It seems the concept of one account, two lines is a bit much for them.

But the phone calls that really piss me off at the moment are the mis-selling PPI ones. Usually they've used an 0845 number so we've ignored it, googled whophonesme,and added it to the list of numbers not to answer. This is quite a long list by now.

But they've recently started to use a new tactic. They've bought/rented phone numbers all over the country. I've always answered local numbers on the basis that it's someone who I might actually want to talk to, even if it's only because they're answering an advert of mine in Trade-It, but these bastards are now ringing using local numbers. And they are really annoying me.

Okay, rant over, I'm sure I need the exercise getting up to look at the phone to see if I want to answer it or not.

Babies galore!

Following on from DG's excellent list of Leap Day facts, including a link to Raenell's site celebrating Leap Day babies - it would seem the current stock of Leap Day quads (ie. one) has just doubled.

Did you notice that - four babies, four links - clever, eh? Mind you, I've never embedded links before so they might not work.

Please tell me this is not for real

Card through the door today from local estate agent bearing the phrase "Sale your home for £xxxx". Sale? SALE? Please tell me this is local idiot who can't proof-read. Please say it's not entered the English language.

Useful skills for the 21st century?

Daughter went on bushcraft day yesterday. Learnt how to light fire without matches, build a shelter using a tarp (yes, I know how to do these, I've duplicated enough Ray Mears programmes in my time) and how to skin a squirrel.

That's right, squirrel. Already dead, I hasten to add. They also cooked it, but weren't allowed to eat it due to Health & Safety. I think that's probably just as well

Lynne Truss wouldn't be surprised

I've just seen a shop advertising that they buy "Gold Mobiles, Laptops".

This and that

On popping out to buy a phone top-up voucher for younger son this morning I noticed in the confectionary near the till that Cadbury "Olympic mascots" were 2 for £1. Except that the goods on offer were actually Aero lambs, Cadbury mini eggs and Maltesers. When I commented on this to the lad on the till he asked "What's an Olympic mascot? Is it a lion or something?" Seems I'm not the only one with a lack of interest in the Olympics, although I have heard of the mascots - I just can't remember their names as it's all so twee.

In other news, older son has had his car wrapped. At first we thought he'd had a respray and were horrified as that surely would have knocked at least 3 grand off its value. There was nothing wrong with it before, he just fancied a different colour. So now it's white instead of silver, white being the new black as it were. This is now being seen as "a good thing" in this household, as it's protecting the original paintwork and can be "unwrapped" at any time to return to the silver. Just think, if I'd written this paragraph twenty years ago you wouldn't even know what I was talking about.

I be liking local

When I went out at lunchtime today the sun was shining, the birds were singing, it was quite warm - I thought this feels like Spring. Are we living in the same country as all these folks with snow?

We did have snow on Saturday. It lasted about half an hour, was all of about a millimetre thick and then it turned to sleety stuff for about ten minutes. It was quite cold but then it warmed up. I don't know what the rest of the country is getting so worked up about.

Daughter got quite worked up this evening. Older son brought home a bike that friends of his had bought for their son from Toys****Us. It cost £250 and they had to put it together themselves. Which of course they couldn't do. So it was brought round for Daughter (that's right, the wannabe professional mountain biker) to fix it so it worked. Which she did, in as far as you can make crap work, but she then pointed out that they could have bought a far superior bike, from a named brand, for £30 less from the bike shop where she works, and it would have been delivered fully assembled and with a free service in a month's time. When will people learn that mass retailing is bad, and that local traders are good?

We have a new initiative in Brizzle today - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-16852326 - should be interesting. There's probably enough outside the box thinkers around here to make it work. Let's see.