This was netted in my spam box for comments the other day:
There could be frogs that possess subpar powers to hurdle jet planes while working on my car. This makes us angry and avenged at the same time.
It is English, even if it makes no sense whatsoever but it made me smile 
Talking, as I was the other day, of people who are my age, I’ve just discovered another, erm, person.
However, this one still looks exactly the same and will never, actually, die.
He is, of course, Paddington Bear!
I never did like Darty. Or Marcucci or whatever they were called before.
We bought our television from them when we first came here. It was the first ‘electrical’ shop we saw. They were, to be honest, quite unhelpful. As were their fitters. When part of the ‘system’ broke down I went back to the shop to try and find a fix. The staff were unhelpful, to say the least.
Then Darty took them over. I went back there, hoping that a change of ownership would improve the staff. It didn’t. I suppose it would have been like Fortnum and Masons taking over Woolworths – nothing could have been done about the uselessness of the staff. And so, nearly always, I go to Euronics and, over the last few years they have had quite a bit of business from me.
Not only are the staff at Darty unhelpful but they are also very rude …….. to me. I am mindful that it might just be me, though. Several people have mentioned going to Darty. I always try to avoid it. F suggested we look for irons at a Darty store at San Babila (as we went that way anyway). It wasn’t difficult. I wanted a fairly cheap iron and I wanted a Phillips since the last one had lasted so long.
I’m not really what you would call a ‘shopper’. I go in, see something I want and buy it. Unless I need a specific thing and am unsure, I don’t ask. I didn’t even know that this Darty store existed in San Babila! It’s not a real surprise for they have taken one of the entrances to the Metro and you enter into the shop that way.
Ah well, this is San Babila. Perhaps this will be different?
We go in. We find the area for irons. We see the Phillips brands on display. There isn’t much of a sale going on but there is one which has about 10 Euro off. I want that one. We check the boxes below and find the right model. OK, good. I find some new arial cable as well. We go to pay.
I pay but I think to myself that it is slightly more than I thought it would be. I check the receipt. The price is the original price and not the sale price. I call to the lady. She continues to walk away and ignore me. A man near her looks up. He looks like the store manager. He deigns to come over to help me. I explain that the price of the iron is wrong as it is shown at a reduced price on the shelf.
We go over together (including F, of course). As we start down the aisle, he asks a girl who works there about it. She also continues walking away from him, shouting over her shoulder that it was only the green one that was reduced. It was reduced because there is no box. I shrug and say OK, I’ll take the green one.
The girl switches direction and goes to get the green one from the display. As we walk to the cash desk, F gets involved.
I don’t understand all he has to say. There’s something about the ‘customer is right’ and that something is ‘not good education’ (our equivalent would be ‘not good manners’). This comes from both F and the ‘manager’ – to each other. There is some talk about giving us our money back. The argument is fairly short (a couple of minutes) and quite heated. The manager goes to a till and gives me money.
F is incensed. He explains all to me. Apparently he was not happy about me having the iron without the box and the instructions. He didn’t feel that it was right that is came without a box. The staff (including the manager) couldn’t have cared less what he thought. So he got me my money back.
He says he is pleased that he’s found out that they are not good. He will never shop there again. I explained that I knew this and never used them. He asked me why I hadn’t said anything and I explained that I thought it could just be me, being a foreigner and all. I was actually quite pleased that, with not a hint from me, he had ‘found out’ that they are crap.
And so we go to Euronics. This is out of our way. We ask someone about the cable as we cannot see it on the racks. The guy says that they have run out of the cable we want but there is a shop down the road that will, probably, have some. We find the iron section. I pay a few Euro more than the full price at Darty for the same iron. But I am happy with that as I feel Euronics, where the staff are always so helpful and the service is very good, deserve to have the money that Darty have lost.
I am now doubly sure that I won’t use Darty again, in future. F certainly won’t. All for the casual, unhelpful rude and indifferent attitude of the staff. So, don’t go to Darty, people. Go to Euronics instead
There was Gerry Rafferty just the other day. Wonderful artist who made going down to London that bit more special with his Baker Street – although, to be honest, for a kid from the countryside, the going down to London with my first partner was a magical business in the first place.
But, he was in his 60s. And he had a problem with drinking. It’s understandable.
There was the guy that wrote the book that later became the film ‘Babe’, which we watched just before Christmas. No, it’s OK. He was 88, for goodness sake.
And then there was Mick Karn. Who? You may ask that. I wasn’t sure. Turns out he was the bassist from Japan that group that had, erm, what was it now – that hit or two in the 80s.
But, the thing is, as you get a bit older, you start to catch up these people who are dying left, right and centre. And Mick Karn? Well, he was my age. So was Michael Jackson and he’s gone already. So is Madonna (although she seems in the rudest of health).
But it makes you think. Well, it kind of stops you in your tracks for a moment. I mean, some of these dead people are my age or less. Or, if older, then not a lifetime older. Kind of makes you grateful you’ve survived this long, really, doesn’t it?
New Year’s resolutions. Never believed in them myself and, so, I just don’t do them. To me, if you want to do something, then do it – don’t decide to make a list and then complete half of them or stop doing it before the end of January.
And, so, I have no resolutions. I have no things that I simply must do. I’m grateful for every day that I have and each one is the opportunity to do something new or different or just to live.
Today I have texted a few people to wish them a happy New Year and phoned one. For those of you who read this blog – then a very happy New Year to you.
Things that will/may happen in the New Year are as follows:
1. We shall go on holiday. F is already looking at places to go and he wants to book it now. It’s a thing I’ve never bothered about (booking in January) but if he wants to do it I really don’t mind. And the important thing is that a) he’s excited about it and b) it’s the future – together.
2. Rufus will depart this world. Bless him, he is just not well. He’s not in pain but so thin and ill so often now. But he is almost 16 years old! Amazing and I would never have believed he would get to this age.
3. We shall move in together. Actually, I really don’t know if that will happen at all. It’s really not a problem living as we do and I am very relaxed about it. I never thought it ‘wouldn’t matter’ but it really doesn’t matter.
4. I will get fat – if I don’t drink less beer and eat a little less food. Unfortunately, my age is against me on this and, so, if I don’t cut back the pounds will, not exactly pile on but, rather, slowly increase.
5. I will have to buy a new washing machine, iron and fridge. I’m not certain but I think all three are on their way out.
6. It will be a good year. Well, as I’m no fortune teller, I can’t really say that but, overall, every year has been a good year in one way or another even if I couldn’t see it at the time.
7. We shall get a new puppy. Well, obviously, that will be after 2 has happened.
8. I will find a new job; I will become very rich; I will become very famous; I will write a book. These are just pie-in-the-sky things but, who knows? Stranger things have happened. Or it may be none of these things but something else. I like the idea of the ‘unexpected’.
9. It will snow and make my investment in snow tyres worth it! Well, it better had do!
10. I will be very happy. And that’s a sure thing
If you make resolutions, then good and I hope they all work out. If you don’t then I hope it all works out for you anyway.
Looking back over 2010, it wasn’t all perfect but, really, it was a pretty good year – for me, anyway. I know that, for some, it was not so good, even bad or dreadful.
In any event and however bad or good your year was – here’s to 2011 and may it bring you joy and wealth and, most of all, happiness and contentment.
Cheers.
Those particular lines made me laugh out loud!
Enjoy!
“countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century”.
Of course, this is a quote made before Wikileaks posted cables from US embassies around the world. However, the USA government, it would seem, are putting pressure on all the organisations that ‘permit’, by use of their services, Wikileaks ‘to be seen’ by Internet users and, so I have read, US government agencies are restricting their employees from accessing the Wikileaks documents.
So, is it wrong to act as they are or not? Should the government be permitted to act as effective censors?
Well, according to quote, it would seem it is not a good idea.
And, of course, the quote came from Hilary Clinton, a slightly well-known American government official. Hmmmm. A touch of ‘do as I say and not as I do’ methinks.
I have no problem when I wake up with one of those headaches after a night spent sharing a bottle of that terrible poison (Sambucca) with someone. You know? The one where there’s that pain in the side of your head where your brain is trying to emigrate to somewhere with better climes; where your brain seems to have decided it has outgrown your head; where, in addition to the pain, it seems that everything is ever-so-slightly fuzzy, unfocused and unreal.
Now, I’m not one for illnesses, in any form. Not mine nor anyone else’s (although I can immediately think of some very noteworthy exceptions to this general rule). Certainly, if someone has a headache, please don’t tell me about it. If I have one, it is either because of the poison or it just annoys me and I force it to go away.
But, these last couple of weeks, nearly every morning, I have woken with this headache, this poison-inspired-like headache. And it is very annoying.
I really wouldn’t mind if I had had a ‘good’ night the night before – but, as an example, the only drink I had yesterday was coffee until about 4 p.m. and then several mugs of tea – as normal. I didn’t get to bed early – but neither was it later than normal. I slept fairly well – neither particularly good, nor particularly bad. Obviously, it wasn’t long enough but ……. on waking this morning I was disappointed that I hadn’t been drinking last night. At least, then, I could have said, “Ah well but it was worth it!”
I promised, a couple of weeks ago, as I was deleting the many, many ‘draft’ (for ‘draft’ read unfinished, ill-thought-out, forgotten posts that never made it to the post button) that I would be better in future. I would NOT keep starting to write about something that I had a feeling about, was angry about, was confused about or just thought was funny ………………….. and then just stop.
But it doesn’t work, really.
And, so, already, the unfinished draft posts are back and they are annoying me.
If you think this has no relevance to this post, think again.
This is another of these posts and the bit of rubbish above is just by way of explanation as to why this post will, in all probability, stay as another draft post. Waiting to be finished until, one day, whilst doing a ‘clean up’ of the blog, I will carefully cut this paragraph and paste it into a rambling post full of bits that have never been published – because I think this bit is really good and explains why the whole post is full of disconnected single paragraphs.
So, I digress.
I wonder, in fact, if it’s supposed to be like this. V is annoying me. He’s annoying me by not having got in touch with me nor wanting anything. He’s annoying me in my head. and it’s even more annoying that I’m even thinking about him!
I keep saying ‘I’m not bothered’, to myself. And that is true but it’s the truth of it that is annoying. I really am not bothered. But I do wish that he hadn’t originally treated it like he was bothered when, quite clearly, he isn’t.
I had hopes, at the beginning. I hoped that we were old enough and grown-up enough that we could transcend the hurt feelings and the crapness of it all to make it through to another place that meant we could be friends.
But it just ain’t happening.
And, that annoys me. But the problem is that, after so many broken promises (the ones after we split, I mean), I just gave up trying. And, it seems, that’s OK by him. And that pisses me off. I know that there are other people who, over the last couple of years or so, have been caught up by him and then discarded, seemingly for no reason (although, trust me, there’s always a reason) and I wonder, sometimes, if I should get in touch with them. Except, what would be the point, what good purpose could it possibly serve?
So, I won’t. Probably. They will find me if they want.
It annoys me that he’s not in touch with me. It annoys me more that he has, in all probability, sold many of the things that we bought ‘together’ – though, in actual fact, we didn’t buy them together. And, if he did buy any of them it was only because I bought almost everything else at the time – like food, fuel, paid the bills, etc. Really, of course, I should never have just him get away with it – when we split – but it seemed like a good idea at the time and, in particular, as I was thinking of our long-term friendship, which has, obviously now, gone to pot.
I have conversations with him (in my head, as usual) except that nowadays, they’re not really full conversations – more like thoughts of conversations. I don’t actually have sentences that go with the thoughts. Either from him nor me. And now, anyway, I know enough that the conversations will just never happen and, so, I stop them early. And I find that annoying too.
We are, very nearly, at the end of it all – with no need for any ties. Providing, of course, that I ignore the completion of the Final Question, the sofa cushions, his family and, generally ignore most people that he has any dealings with (which, with a few small exceptions, is not at all difficult).
Here I am, mentally, if not physically, slapping my hands together in the ‘all over and done with’ manner.
“The cushions are here for you to pick up”, she wrote. My response was “I had given up on them, to be honest”. Which is true. I suggested that I might go over to get them in the next couple of weeks. Which I might do. And then she said that she got home about 9.30 and I thought that at that time I’m not sure I want to be schlepping half way over town to get them. But that’s just stupid, I guess. I should go and get them. Probably. But 9.30 is such a pain-in-the-arse time. Maybe it would be better on a Saturday or Sunday. Yes. Probably. Maybe this weekend. Or next. Or sometime later. If I go and get them at least there would be even less reason to be in contact. Which will be better. Probably.
And, so, in summary, I am annoyed by being annoyed by something that I really shouldn’t be annoyed about.
And, yes, I will bloody well post it after all ……….