rARsh!

Thonk once. Thonk twice.

I noticed a sign beside the road yesterday during my drive down (the A45, I think it was). It was intended as a reminder to car, van and lorry drivers coming off the dual carriageway A14 to be heedful of motorcyclists on what was about to become a single carriageway road.

In a clever stroke of genius, the letters “I” in the two word warning had been replaced with the silhouette of a motorcyclist, pitched at a slight angle to the vertical.

The problem was that the shape of the motorcyclist was slightly rounded, especially when compared to the other letters on the sign. Had the “T” “H” “N” and “K”, for example, been printed in a wide, bold typeface then the problem wouldn’t have arisen.

The problem? Oh, didn’t I say?

For the rest of the journey I was mindful to “thonk boke”. Not sure what that means, but I was thonking all the way.

Misleading update

Lyle is correct in that the “delayed” item in my order was a phone battery.

Since I wrote the last post I’ve still received nothing and my notification of a dispute via Paypal didn’t produce any response from the bastard in question (so I’ve escalated it to a claim). Hopefully Paypal will review what I wrote and give me my money back.

Let’s face it, if the order had been posted he’d have responded to that effect pretty darned quickly. Bastard.

Slightly misleading

“Ah, hello. I placed an order with you last week and had an email to say it had been sent on Tuesday but there’s been no sign of it.”

“What’s your order number?”

“66666”

“Ah, yes. We were out of stock of the BST-39 but they’ve come in now and all the orders are in the post today.”

“So when the website and email said it had been despatched on the 15th … ?”

“Yes, it had been sent for despatch, but we didn’t send it because we didn’t have all the things you ordered.”

“I see. Do you feel that the email and message on the website might be just a little misleading.”

“No. How?”

“Well, it’s … oh, never mind.”

Will my order arrive tomorrow? It had bloody better do. Harrumph.

Another one bites the dust

Santander agrees £1.2bn A&L deal
-BBC News

Oh well. Based on the fuckwittery now prevalent within Abbey I guess that’s another financial institution to avoid like the plague then.

If you’ve got any ties with A&L I can only strongly recommend you get your money out now, while you still can. Fuck knows it’s been a nightmare dealing with Abbey in the past eighteen months and the staff (being loyal company types) blamed Santander for having messed up their systems since the takeover.

You seem to have gained 7 pounds since your last body test. Do you know why?

I looked at the options I was being offered.

Ate too much?

No.

Drank too much?

No.

Not enough exercise?

Possibly.

The problem I had was that nowhere was there a button which said

My cat climbed onto the balance board while I was being weighed

A less than balanced approach

So, then. After last week’s clearing blitzlet (still lots left to do) there was enough space to finally set up the Wii Fit and have a go. Of course I prevaricated about this and didn’t actually get around to doing so until yesterday.

First impressions are favourable. Had a great time with the slalom skiing and especially the ski jumping but my first attempts at the tightrope walking we less than successful.

I also tried out a couple of yoga positions, the hula-hoops game and the step basic aerobics. Hell, I even went for a little “jog”. A very little job, but still.

Before I got started it did the necessary evil of the weigh-in and then, once it had depressed me, put me through a basic balance test.

The basic balance test isn’t your thing, is it? Do you often trip over while walking?

Cheeky bloody thing.

It did, at least, inspire me to have a healthy theme to my Big Shop today and I avoid all those lovely, fattening chocolately or fatty treats, replacing them with fruit and yoghurt. Mmmmm. Lovely. And that was before the program told me I’d lost a doubtful 4lbs between yesterday and today.

Let’s see how long this lasts, shall we?

Lifestyle choices - assistance required

As part of the long-overdue Great Tidy I found myself, earlier today, looking at a cupboard which contains (most of) three sets of crockery.

It occurred to me that this may well be slightly more crockery than I need.

Question 1: Do I dispose (sensibly) of two of the sets?

Question 1(a): Which one do I keep? The options are: the bright, cheerful, yellow/red set; the white with blue pattern set; the all-white but with raised fancy bits (the “for best” set).

Question 2: How many mugs do you have in your house? It would appear that I have 15,000 (or thereabouts). Is this too many?

Question 3: Does anyone (under the age of 70) use coffee cups any more?

Thank you.