Che sera sera ....

Doing a bit of clearing out recently, came across this which elder son (the chef) drew when he was just seven.

And this is him, aged 18, when he won the Pudz Amateur Pudding Chef competition.  He's with the judge, Mich Turner, founder of the Little Venice Cake Company. 

And this picture was drawn by my daughter when she was three:

 And this is her a few weeks ago at the BMX World Championships in Birmingham.  (Note the way she's cunningly photoshopped it so she's the only one in colour.)  Yes, that is a Team GB jersey. Competitors came from as far afield as New Zealand and USA.

I have yet to find a picture drawn by my younger son when he was little that shows early indication of where he will go in life - but on current form I should be looking for one entitled Me on the Playstation!

Noah wouldn't feel out of place

Look, you know who you are.  Casting your weather spells.  Well, please stop it.  I am fed up with all this rain and now we have gale force winds as well and my house, which was built in 1870, is feeling the strain and bits are falling off.

In particular the front fascia board and soffit are disintegrating before my very eyes.  The bad news is that the telephone line is attached to the fascia board and at any moment we could lose our phone and internet connections.  The fact that you're reading this proves that they haven't detached themselves yet, but the bad weather elves aren't exactly helping matters.

So - to enable us to fix the problem OH has been buying and erecting scaffolding over the last couple of weeks.  No, no, no - in this house we do not employ scaffolding firms, we buy our own, because in the long run that's cheaper and anyway - we're bound to need it again somewhere else.  You mean, you haven't all got spare scaffolding in your back garden?

Of course, if you employed a scaffolding firm, they would have it all erected in a morning, but we are taking a different route.  We don't have scaffolding, we have "an installation".  Because OH feels nervous about being on a platform 20' in the air which might wobble, we have bracing poles here, there and everywhere.  Even I have been up to the top level (ie roof height) and felt perfectly safe.  (I did suggest that a couple of deckchairs would be useful and then we could have our own Jubilee celebrations up there.)

Actually, speaking of Jubilee, when I was last up there on Sunday I discovered, hiding between the ends of the rafters and presumably having been there for goodness knows how long, a rather splendid Union Jack, although it was a bit dirty.  I wanted to hang it from the scaffolding but OH wouldn't hear of it.  I shall wash it, and then I might take pictures.  Very appropriate for the day, though, I thought.

How's the weather with you?

To have or not to have. That is the question.

So.  Tomorrow we have the opportunity to vote on whether we, the people of Bristol, would like a mayor or not.  David Cameron and George Osborne have rushed down here to tell us to vote yes.  This instantly makes me think no.  I have watched the shenanigans with Boris and Ken.  This also makes me think no.  We have no idea whether a mayor would be good or bad, but  it is a step in an unknown direction, which also tempts me to think no.

But Bristol City Council has been consistently rubbish for the last, oh I don't know, millennium so maybe I should think yes.  Maybe anything is better than what we have now.  Look, we should have had a leaflet telling us about this election but have we had one?  Er, no.  But a lot of people in north Somerset and south Gloucestershire have had one.  They haven't got a vote on this, but Bristol City Council  (in its usual fashion) has cut corners and opted for the cheaper Royal Mail option which is to deliver the leaflet to ALL people with a BS postcode rather than selected postcodes actually within the city.

This is just indicative of what Bristol City Council is like.  There is never a majority so all decisions are compromises.  They have utterly failed on transport, schools, etc, etc.  Surely anything is better than what we have now.

But that is not a good basis on which to decide whether you want someone with vast power to rule over us for FOUR  years.  And so far no-one even knows what candidates there might be to vote for, which makes it even less appealing.

Okay, so that seems to be me decided.  Anyone want to change my opinion?

Novel ways of training staff

I just had to laugh when I saw this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-17834506

What does it say about Ikea?

Bits and bobs

Apologies to those who were expecting more...

Daughter has norovirus and is upstairs finally asleep, having been up till gone two sat in the bathroom. I know. I was there. I am so hoping this is the same one that I had on 30th March, and not a new strain that I shall succumb to. I have never felt so ill in all my life. It was worse than childbirth. I couldn't move. I lost 8lbs overnight.

And how do I remember exactly what date it was? Why, it was the day after the 2 year warranty on the microwave ran out. I'd thought something wasn't quite right for a few days previous but didn't have time to investigate. And then when I was ill and younger son said microwave didn't seem to be working I was past caring. So it was about 4 days later that I finally tracked down the receipt only to find that I'd missed out by days. I wasn't impressed given that this was a Miele, which I thought would have been a lot more reliable. After all the Sanyo microwave that I'd had previously, bought from Argos for less than half the price, had lasted 5½ years before it expired. But fortunately the supervisor in the customer care department sanctioned an under the warranty free repair. Turned out to be a customer serviceable part, anyway. A "wave guide" which had got damaged and was turning the microwaves back instead of letting them through.

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.