If interns at my MP’s office (allegedly) get free (to them) mars bars (I’m told, by rumour & supposition), paid for by HOP, surely I, as paper-folder and leaflet-deliverer extra-ordinaire (on Mothering Sunday, no less, among other dates), should get at least a twix? There’s a whole exchange rate/currency system to be worked out here
Category Archives: poke the croc
investigation pending
We got a letter today from Homeserve/United Utilities. I blogged briefly (OK, then, not *very* briefly) about our loft pipe leak woes at Easter. Steve has pursued a complaint with H/UU maintaining that they should cover the cost of the repair, what with us having insurance with them & all.
Today’s letter said that they hadn’t got back to us yet because their investigations were still ongoing. They added that they hoped we understood the reason for the delay. They delay is because there’s a delay. Not really sure what’s to understand. Maybe they’re hoping with the passage of time we’ll forget about the incident and stop pestering them.
swimming update
Lily had her swimming lesson yesterday, and chatting to one of the other mums I was about to comment on the fact that they hadn’t repaired the steps in the little pool… only to see that they had!
On the down side, though, the mum I was talking to had just put 60p in the drinks machine only to watch her coffee dispense into the drainer because the machine was out of cups. The reception staff’s response? “It’s not our machine.” So they didn’t even put a sign on to warn other unsuspecting punters. I would have asked them for a post-it, but I got the impression she thought I was making too much of a fuss…
just swimming in it
We went swimming this morning as a holiday treat, and I’m sorry to say that I’m unimpressed with the maintenance at Ormskirk’s Park Pool. I can’t pass comment on the “big” pool, as we don’t use it, but the little pool & changing rooms aren’t well maintained. On the way in we used one of the 3 family changing rooms – the lock was broken, and had been replaced with a bolt-style lock which had nothing to lock into. So I used our clothes to keep the door shut while I changed. One of the toilets was blocked with paper & who knows what else. The showers dribbled rather than gushed.
One of the sets of steps to get out of the pool at the “deep” end of the small pool has been broken & roped off for a long while. Now the other one is also broken and roped off. This doesn’t actually bother my kids, since they just hop up the steps anyway, missing out the top step which isn’t there, but it can’t be described as at all “safe”.
We had the misfortune to leave at the same time as the baby swimming class, so had to use one of the “normal” changing rooms. The first one we tried had what looked like poo on the floor, and one of the other ones had scraps of paper throughout. I appreciate that the area gets scrappier as folks use it throughout the day, but we arrived at 10 & left at 11. DOes it really get that bad, that quickly? We went into one of the “group” changing rooms to change, and I ducked into a cubicle to sort myself out, which it turns out is held together with duct tape.
I’m pretty sure there’s a contractual obligation on Serco to maintain the baths. Maybe my good friend over at Bickerstaffe can fill in the details?
sucky suck suck (drip)
This weekend it has been easy to feel sorry for myself, even without the help of my lovely hormones.
We are in the process of trying to tidy up after the week’s plastering, and to decide what else we want to tackle, if anything. So we were crammed into the sitting room with an extra chair and Steve’s exciting media PC that I’m not sure of how to operate. Joel came in on Friday morning and told me that his chair was all wet. Water dripping from the ceiling – from the second-least accessible bit of the loft. We dismissed it as rainfall from a new direction, and didn’t worry too hard, but when it was still dripping at Joel’s bedtime, Steve investigated & found the pipes were indeed leaking. We have homeserve emergency plumbing cover, so we called them and they sent an engineer round the following day. He turned up over an hour late (given a window of 5 hours to hit, he managed to miss it), and refused to go into the loft on health & safety grounds. I’ll give him that the loft was inaccessible, especially given his height & girth. What really narked me was his statement that “you won’t get any other engineer to get up there, either.” After Steve spoke to them (I got too ranty) it turns out their policy in this instance is “fuck you”, swiftly followed by “you’re on your own”.
To rewind slightly, earlier in the day, while Steve was waiting in for said engineer, I took the kids on a trip to the office to sort out our cardboard recycling mountain. When I saw that there was water dripping from the ceiling there, too, I honestly thought I was hallucinating. The landlord arranged for me to meet up with a plumber at 4pm. I got M&D to look after L&J and returned to the office to wait for said plumber who not only didn’t show, he had turned his phone off and was presumably in the process of getting pissed in the lovely sunshine which was beating down. While I was removing soggy crumbling ceiling tiles, and re-arranging buckets, and NOT spending a Saturday afternoon down the park with my children. Turns out, Martin in the flat above found water pouring down his walls later in the afternoon from the flat above, so at least we know the source of that one, and hopefully it’ll be sorted by the time we want to run a business from those premises on Tuesday.
So, this morning, instead of taking my Catholic children to Easter mass, Steve & I spent a happy hour or so putting planks in the loft so that the next plumber we get to suck his teeth in the general direction of our pipes has less of an excuse to not fix them.
I’ve finally managed to chill, but it took an afternoon of sun, food & chocolate at my Mum’s house to do it!
Recycling – middle ground not covered
I’m (still just about) a governor at a small school in Scarisbrick, and director of a small company in Wigan. Both have recycling issues, the school more serious than ourselves.
The school has a roll in the 20s, and operates recesption to Juniors in 2 small classes. As the school is not residential, they don’t pay the council tax required to be included in the District Council’s refuse collection, which includes blue box, paper, plastic, cardboard, glass & textile recycling (it’s really quite good, and the council claim none of it goes to landfill – I make as much use of it as I can at home). So they have to operate as a commercial organisation. Their current refuse contractor just plain doesn’t “do”recycling, so they are looking for alternatives, however, they haven’t had much luck so far. I’m guessing they’ll come across the same problem we do at work (outlined below) which is that they’ll have to pay for some ridiculously large volume of recycling collection when they only produce a little of each kind. This ends up making it financially unviable – did I mention they only have 20+ children on roll, with 6 or so full time staff? Even the paper produced wouldn’t make it worthwhile to pay for weekly wheelie bin collections.
As well as the basic issue of how does the school dispose of its waste responsibly & in an environmentally friendly manner, they also want to be encouraging the children into good habits. If the children know that the paper they put in the “recycling” box is just put in the general waste, they won’t do it, will they? A creative alternative would be to get the children to take it in turns to take a bag of recycling home with them each week to include in their household’s kerbside collection, but that’s probably illegal or Against Council Policy, besides the obvious problem of asking children to essentially take rubbish home as well as homework.
And so to work. I’ve been recycling office paper since I started work in 1993. It feels wrong to put paper in the bin, in the same way as it feels wrong to put organic waste in my normal bin at home. Because it’s only me saving my office paper (and to be fair, I do the most paperwork – they boys are mainly doing the chargeable stuff which generates broken motherboards & the like – a whole different waste disposal issue!) I generate a 5-ream box of paper about every 3 months. However, the lowest level of waste collection our refuse collection company can provide is a wheelie bin which would be collected every week (or possibly every other week) charged at much the same rate as our main refuse collection, which is just over £90/6 months. I don’t have a problem taking the boxes to the council tip, given that they aren’t big or heavy, however, I either take them whole, thus possibly creating a confidentiality problem in these paranoid times, or I shred them in which case I have to put them in the general waste otherwise the tip turns into a snowstorm of shredded paper & the whole recycling thing goes down the pan.
I’m now looking into mobile shredding services, as I passed such a van parked on our street the other day. I’m now kicking myself that I didn’t make a note of who they were or their contact details…
ps & qs
I like Seth. He frequently speaks wisdom.
For anyone who’s looking – I’m hard-working, committed to whatever I’m doing at the time, and knit a mean jumper. In my own spare time!!
phrase that pays
We did our bit for consumer boosting of the economy today. Pedometers & super mario garaxy from Argos, brochures and lampshades from Homebase, nappies from Tesco The Evil Giant and a combi microwave-oven-grill from Currys. The pedometers are a reaction to a feature on Eamonn Holmes on 5Live this morning which we both listened to independently. We think they may be registering at different rates, as we both put them on when we got back, have moved around a similar amount & Steve’s on 1280 while I’m on 1542. We’ll see. We actually went into JJB to get them, but they had sold out. The salesman, who was very cheerful, tried to sell us bikes instead, and when we declined, suggested we go and look in “the laminated book of dreams” next door in Argos instead. We brought our own non-laminated book of dreams home (against my better judgement, I might add) and Lily & Joel havealready spent the next 10 years’ income on High School Musical & In The Night Garden tat.
Steve’s been on about getting SMG since we rented it from LoveFilm a few months back, so I’m confident it’ll be a good distraction for him. I still find it v frustrating.
The oven is an attempt to use less energy cooking 2 fish fingers at the kids’ teatime by using a reasonably sized grill rather than “a grill the size of a sunbed” to quote Steve. He got the ex-display model, and came out of the store (we’d waited in the car – the kids had had enough of shopping by then) carrying a microwave. For one moment I feared he’d gotten desperate and lifted it, but he *did* have a receipt with him…
My 2 favourite phrases of the day, then are: “laminated book of dreams” which apart from being quite sweet, also conjures up all kinds of inappropriate images, and “grill the size of a sunbed” which is not inaccurate, frankly.
Knitting continues apace, I’ve gotten over the p4 decreases – it’s all working for me now. Now I can worry that the colour and texture are inappropriate for the workplace, which is where I’m knitting it for.
asda spazda
I tweeted about this yesterday, but I felt it merits a bit more presence.
Yesterday I went to the Asda in Skelmersdale onmy way home, as it handily has a post office in the building, and there were a few things we needed. As someone with 2 car-seated small children in tow, only making one stop is worth its weight in gold. This is why I mainly shop at supermarkets rather than “proper” shops, although I’m improving.
We needed dishwasher tablets & washing up liquid. Asda offered NO eco-friendly products in either category. I did, however, notice that they stock ecover washing powder for clothes. Given that they clearly have ecover as a supplier on their books, why not stock their full range? It doesn’t make sense to me.
It’s possible they’ve tried stocking the items I’m referring to and have discontinued them because they’re not popular – the demographic in Skem is mainly non- or low-earners so budgets are tight. I put the lack of eco-friendly nappies down to this, mainly.
When compared to Tesco The Evil Giant, who give me points for using my own (asda-bought) bags (asda’s were the first & best – sadly now they don’t seel the ones I have which are FAB) & compete with ecover with their own-brand eco-friendly products, it just seems a bit lack-lustre.
It’s not scientific, and I’m not really making accusations. I should fill in a customer comment form, but by the time I’d cleared the checkout (festooned with chocolates – THANKS AGAIN ASDA – good to know you’re helping tackle obesity & helping the parents of small suggestible children – we ended up with 2 creme eggs, which wouldn’t have happened at TTEG) I was keen to be on my way.
No campaign – just saying, I’m quite happy with my choice of supermarket thanks.
who knew?
I drive past Blythe Hall nearly every day on my way to pick up the kids from their various daytime locations, and I thought I’d look up if it was interesting or famous in any way. Turns out, it is a bit.
Hot bed of lovey-ism & lavish parties in the early 20th Century. Must do more research – I’m sure it has a previously more illustrious past.
According to google, it was recently on the market for £3.5m, although the page has disappeared now, so I don’t know how accurate that is. Good one for the long dark winter evenings, I think!