a view through my own eyes

When we knew where and and when we would be moving we decided to shop around on house insurance (buildings and contents). We found somewhere that would give us what we wanted at a more reasonable price. Though I admit that it would be more accurate to mention that our mortgage adviser did the actual work.

This though was after our current policies ran out (early January). So at the time it seemed sensible to contact the current insurers and tell them that we would be moving but we were not sure when it would be or to where. Could we please have a monthly policy to ensure we are covered?

Certainly sir, that is not a problem. We do a monthly plan for people in your situation, they said.

Excellent, thought I.

When we moved I phoned them on the day to let them know that we were moving and that the policies should be canceled with immediate effect and gave them the new address so that they could confirm the cancellation in writing.

Job done, thought I.

A week or so later we had some redirected post arrive from the old address, amongst these was a policy reminder from the ex insurance company.

How odd, thought I.

So I called them and confirmed that the policies were canceled on the 22nd February and gave them the new address. They said that they would sort this out.

Sorted, thought I.

A few days later I receive a call at work from the insurance company seeking clarification that I want to cancel the insurance and confirming that my address was the old address. No. Wrong. So having given the right address for the third time they confirmed again that they would send out details in the post.

Bollocks, thought I.

Straight after that call, I phoned my bank to cancel the direct debits to ensure that no money could be extracted should they try.

Gotcha, thought I.

Two days later I receive a letter from the payments dept of the insurance company via redirected email concerned that I have canceled my direct debits and I should contact them straight away to sort things out or they will sort things out.

What on earth?, thought I.

So the next working day I phone the payments dept of the insurance company explaining the situation. At which point they said I need to speak to the insurance people directly to sort it out.

How helpful, thought I.

I phone the insurance company and explain all of the above. Don’t worry Mr Osborne we will get it all sorted out, your account will be credited and a letter will be with you soon. Your address is……. THE WRONG ONE. So I corrected them – again.

Useless wankers, thought I.

A few days later mrspao confirms that until I canceled the direct debit that they had been taking money from my account.

Thieving bastards, thought I.

So I phone them today, I explain the situation to one droid who passes me over to another. They try to pass me to the local branch, I explain that I do not want to speak to the local branch as they have already managed to ignore several requests to change my address details etc etc etc. So I ask to speak to the manager, they are on holiday. The managers manager is on a training course. I am starting to lose the will to live. Apparently someone from their investigations department will give me a call.

Useless thieving lying wankers, thought I.

They have seven days. If they do not contact me within seven days I will write them a letter suggesting that they sort themselves out and refund me what they owe. I will indicate in that letter that they have twenty eight days from receipt of the letter (it will be sent recorded delivery so that I will know when they have received it) to pay me what they owe, or I will pursue a civil court action against them.

I do not like utter incompetence, nor do I like liars or thieves.

So a year on from the cornea transplant and I have been to the opticians and collected the new glasses that were ordered the week before. Yes I know I could use a chain store opticians and have the glasses within the hour, but I like to use the small independent optician, if only because they and not a chain store optician spotted the eye problem eighteen months ago.

Glasses collected and to be honest its fantastic. For the first time in around ten years I can see clearly with my left eye. It is taking some getting used to, but it is working.

Interestingly, two pairs of glasses for me (one normal, one sunglasses) and a pair of sun glasses for mrspao came to less that one pair of glasses was for me last time when a chain store optician said “I can do you a lens for that”.

I would like to thank (in no particular order): Tim, Darren, Keith, Anna, Lynne, Chris, others (who’s names do not spring to mind at this precise moment) and particularly mrspao (for buying the bloody thing) for buggering up plans for the weekend.

Why? why? I hear you cry.

24

Say no more.

Also to really help matters along, the queue at Yo Sushi yesterday was so huge that we didn’t get to sit down as I was hungry and when hungry get angry so it was better to back off before I developed a taste for raw waitress (that does not actually sounds good for a happily married man does it?). So we had a takeaway box instead – which was nice but not the same. Perhaps in hindsight we should have gone and got a burger to sate the hunger and then rejoin the queue for the Sushi.

Next it appears that I may have been a skein short of the Noro Kochoran no 17 when buying mrspao some yarn from John Lewis yesterday, so I am going to have to return one evening after work to get another skein. The downside of this means I get another go at not sitting down in Yo Sushi.

We did however manage to order the light fittings for the lounge and conservatory (as the previous owners took theirs with them) however John Lewis did not have them all in stock – so hopefully they will be delivered later in the week.

Finally to really make my weekend I woke up in the middle of the night with bloody toothache, pain killers have taken the edge off it for now. If it does not ease up come Monday I will be off to the dentist (if I can find one who can fit me in) to part with a million dollars.

A year ago I could barely see with my left eye.

A year ago I received a donated cornea.

Tomorrow I will be collecting new glasses with a prescription for my left eye.

What a difference a year makes.

The improvement is astonishing to the extent that I am typing this entry reading the screen clearly with my grafted eye – I can barely make out the text with my right eye and I am not wearing my glasses at the moment as I usually would.

Happy Birthday George.

In the new house we are lacking curtains as the previous owners took them with them. They wanted to take the curtain poles as well but mrspao threatened to pull out of buying the house and so they relented and left them.

Lets face it replacing curtain poles is not at all difficult but invariably the new ones would have been somehow different even if they were “the same” and so we would have had more holes to drill for the new poles and the filling and decorating to do to cover up the old ones. Which is something that we did not want to do.

The lounge is double aspect and so two sets of curtains are needed. However to complicate things whilst three walls are plastered the other is brickwork probably we thing to show off the previous owners pointing ability and so one window is in a creamy coloured plastered wall whilst the other is in the red brick one. Consequently curtains have to be chosen to match both.

Months spent trawling the shops (look I know we have only been there a month, but this is how it feels) resulted in us narrowing it down to two patterns. Handily one of the shops let us borrow the spare show curtain for each pattern so we could take them home and try them.

First we went to see my gran and asked her opinion, she chose curtain B.

Then we went home and hung them both on one window and decided that they both looked very nice.

So we hung them on the other window and decided that they still looked very nice.

Then we hung only one curtain on one window for a day and on the next day hung it on the other window. It looked very nice.

So we did the same for the other curtain. That too looked very nice.

We sat and had a cup of tea and decided that yes both curtains looked very nice. Later we had a glass of wine and agreed that they both still looked very nice.

Then our friends and my goddaughter came round for tea, so we thought it would be a good idea to see what they thought.

Chris decided that curtain A was very nice as is curtain B. Caz decided that curtain B was also very nice and that curtain A was nice as well.

So we asked Emily who is nearly four, “Which curtain do you like Emily?”.

Straight away Emily raised her arm and pointed at curtain A and said: “That one!”.

Job done.

Curtains B will be in our bedroom, so we have both lots that are indeed very nice.

Take a large carrot and finely dice, thinly slice an onion. Remove the skins from a packet of sausages (red onion and pork from Sainsburys are good though I suspect any good quality pork sausage will be good).

Take a largish pan, add the onion, carrot and sausage with a little olive oil and heat through stirring occasionally until the meat is cooked. Add a 400g can of chopped tomatoes and a good splash of red wine (don’t go mad you need the rest later) season with salt, pepper and basil. Gently simmer for ten minutes.

Serve with pasta shells, asparagus and the rest of the bottle of wine.

Today I phoned my bank to order a new debit card, the old one is well worn and the chip gets the odd read error which to be honest is a pain. So this afternoon I played the game of “you are in a maze of telephone menus all very similar, press 1 for an option similar to this, press 2 for a similar option to the one you want, press 3 for this option which is similar to the one you don’t want….” anyway you get the idea.

Eventually I got to an operator who could assist me with my call and ordered a new card, the new card should be with me in five days and then the old one will be canceled automatically in thirty days.

Excellent thought I.

Then the operator announced that the computer has flagged a problem, apparently because I have just moved they cannot send me a new card to my new address within sixty days of my change of address. Instead the new card will go to my branch for me to collect.

This means that on a Saturday probably in around a week or so’s time I am going to have to go to the branch to collect the card, which means that my bank has decided my agenda for the Saturday.

At which point being none too impressed I asked if I could cancel the request for a new card and just request it in another forty or so days time when they will just post it home. Well I can do that, BUT, my current card will still expire in thirty days and they cannot rescind it.

Pictures of the new house will be coming soon – honest.

It is May 1940, the German Reich have turned their attention to France, Belgium and Holland, the blitzkrieg continues.

The British Expeditionary Force are in France trying to hold the Germans at bay, in the meantime Winston Churchill is under fire from his own Government, his own people and the King for his sheer bloody mindedness and trying to run the entire war on his own. Orders conflict, the BEF advance and retreat and the press report that the BEF are winning the battle, France falls.

In reality the BEF is being withdrawn to the French coast by their commander Gort in direct conflict to Churchill’s orders, the Panzers advance and in London even Churchill’s allies appear to be out to stab him for his sheer bloodymindedness.

Not only is this a tale of one mans refusal to give in, but it is also a tale of his relationship with his father and the ghosts of his past. This is theme is intertwined with the relationship between a medic in the BEF and his father a vicar in the seaport of Dover and their own damaged relationship.

The facts that this book presents can be gleaned from numerous history books written about this period, what Dobbs does so lucidly is add flesh to the dry bones of history and so bring the period to life, the awfulness of war, the danger to the British Forces, the political climate and probably most terrifyingly the mayhem of the battle of Calais and the beaches of Dunkirk. My grandfather was at Dunkirk, he never talked about Dunkirk nor anything else he experienced in those years though he would admit that Dunkirk, Normandy and Arheim were never going to be on his list of holiday destinations later in life.

The anti fraud unit of my credit card company phoned today, so naturally disbelieving who they were I phoned them back via their customer call center.

Whilst slowly losing the will to live as they hastened to remind me that I am an important customer, that they also offer other financial services etc they played allegedly soothing classical music.

At one point I think I nodded off – though that could have been whilst my concentration slipped as I was busy making impolite hand signals about telephone call centers.

Anyway the point of the posting is that the message changed to the following:

If your call is not urgent please phone back later so that we can deal with your query sooner.

You could not make it up.

I finished this a week or so ago, lacking ADSL at home (thanks Pipex, BT and the previous owner for the house for not cancelling their broadband to start with.

Anyway back to the book.

Trainee Nurse Pierce has been murdered during a live demonstration where she volunteered to play the patient in front of peers and supervisors. In classic who dunnit style there are a limited number of protagonists in a smallish location and it did keep me guessing up to the end. As usual there are red herrings, tales of the past, blackmail and hidden relationships.

Since the book was written in the 70s its interesting to see how the NHS is represented and the attitudes of the characters (yes I know its a work of fiction) and how things compare to what we see and hear today.

A good fun read. Reccomended.