Domesticity, Annoying Things, and Spring

I've been dealing with a few irritating things in the last couple of days; I have been having an ongoing issue with being unable to access on-line statements for one of my credit cards (and have now had 3 or 4 telephone conversations which go along the lines of "Oh, we thought that issue was resolved!") Usually followed up with "Oh, sorry, I can see there's a note to phone you back, did no-one call you?"

I think I shall be writing to them instead - perhaps a formal complaint will get their attention. I mean, a glitch is one thing, but o access since mid-November seems a little unreasonable to me!

And then this weekend, I got a call from my other bank, about the credit card I have with them, which it appears has been cloned. I'm not sure what's bee going on. Last week I logged on and found I couldn't see any of my recent transactions, and discovered that they were sending out a new card as apparently there is a 'security concern'. But apparently actually telling me in advance, so I knew that a card should be arriving, hadn't occurred to them.

Then on Friday I got a call from them about some suspicious transactions, and it turned out that yes, there *were* some transactions which were not made by me. My new card has arrived, but because it is linked to the same account it now gets cancelled too, and they will be sending me a new one...

All of which is a little frustrating, although at least it shouldn't cost me anything in the long term.

I have been being domesticated, and dealing with various dull-but-necessary things, such as renewing my car insurance, and getting the car MoT'd, and getting a fault with my central locking sorted out. All of which had to be done, but is not very exciting. (And not cheap, either)

The weekend was taken up with housework. I fear that I may have to buy a new vacuum cleaner soon, as mine seems to be getting a bit inefficient. Although part of this is my fault. I should get my hair cut, and then at least when I shed hair all over the place (as it appears that I do) there will be less of it, and perhaps the vacuum won't choke to death on it so often!  

Although persuading Loki not to bring half eaten birds into the house so I have to vacuum up so many feathers would probably help, too.

I also made a second batch of marmalade, on Saturday, although I clearly started to put it into jars just a few minutes too soon, as in the first couple of jars the peel has separated out a little.Still,  I'm sure it will taste fine!

 I still have a couple of pounds of oranges in the freezer so will be able to make one more batch. 


Meanwhile, Spring is coming. There are lots of snowdrops in the hedge-bottoms, and in gardens (although not mine!)

 There are lambs in the field down the road, and there are primroses, including some in my garden, where there are also daffodils in bud, and about to come into bloom.

All of which gives me hope that things are looking up, and that days will get longer and warmer.

Missed Me ?

This past week or so has been a little stressful - we've been replacing our elderly and very slow computer system, with new servers, hardware, and moving from having separate servers in every office, to having everything in one place.

And of course, things have not got entirely to plan, some stuff took longer than expected, and getting the various bits of software we use to play nice with each other has caused a few problems, so even through the main upgrade happened over the weekend, the IT guys have been in all week to get everything set up (and to try to work out why one (and only one) of the new computers is not playing nicely with the dictation system, and to make it behave itself)

My laptop has been to visit the IT guys to check out whether it was about to die (answer: probably not - it's running a bit hot but did well in its stress test, so for now I'm buying it nice cooling stand and am going to try not to spill any more drinks into it. I've heard they don't like that)

We're still having very hot weather, which I don't appreciate - I think we've had the hottest day in 7 years, and also one of the longest unbroken periods of sunshine.

On Monday, things changed a little - well, a lot.

We had torrential downpours, thunder, lightening, the lot. I popped out of the office at, lunch time for about 5 minutes, I got so wet that my shoes took 2 days to dry out, and I had to wring my hair out when I got back to the office..

It was still raining when I got home, and while I didn't dance naked in the rain (the neighbours are too close, and not understanding!) I did go out to enjoy the rain.

I wasn't the only one. There was a beautiful frog, and hundreds of lovely little snails. Mostly they were the stripey kind, but there were also dark brown ones, and yellow ones. They really are fascinating little creatures, and so beautifully shiny, in the rain.

(I admit I'm prejudiced. I can't feel quite so friendly towards the slugs. I'm sure they are just as fascinating, but they are rather less attractive)

Since Monday it has got hot again - I'm hoping it will be cool enough to do a little gardening tomorrow.

I'm also trying to get the house a bit less cluttered - last weekend I managed to completely fill the wheelie bin, and have taken 2 big bags of books to charity shops, and to tidy up the cupboard under the stairs so that I shall be able to fit several boxes of  my less-favourite books into it. There's a way to go yet, but I shall get there.

So, that's what I have been doing for the last week or so. How about you?

Under the Weather

I had various things planned for this week, but have not managed to do the fun bits - I got back from my holiday on Saturday, and I was due to go to the Amanda Palmer gig in Bristol on Monday night, but as it turned out,  couldn't go. It was simply too hot, and I finished the working day feeling exhausted, with a heat-induced headache, and felt that to drive all the way to Bristol to spend hours in a loud and hot environment would be a Bad Idea.

I was very disappointed to miss AFP, and to miss catching up with friends, but I think it was the right decision - I wound up having a quiet evening and an early night.

I am just not cut out for summer weather.

I also missed another outing on Thursday, due to heat and work related issues. *sigh*

Being a Girl

Life can be odd. Yesterday, I paid actual, real money; enough to have bought a paperback book and have enough left over for some beer, to have someone pull out some of my hairs by the roots.

And then spent some more cash on some make up, which it turns out comes really expensive. I don't normally wear make up, partly because I don't have the hand-eye coordination before I have my morning coffee, and and I don't have the time afterwards, and partly because I have very sensitive skin, and it gets old having to throw stuff out a quarter of the way through the tube because I've started to react to it.

Anyway, I think I have now finished all of my shopping and preparation for this bridesmaid gig. Which is just as well, as I have no more time. 2 days more of work then I'm off to Devon to help set stuff up.

Meanwhile, last night I went for a walk at about 11.30 p.m. to see whether I could see any of the Perseids, but when I got far enough from the house to be out of the glare from the street lights it became clear that there was a lot of low cloud, so I couldn't see any perseids - or indeed any stars at all. I'm hoping that maybe later in the week (when I'm down in Devon, with a lot less light pollution) I might get another chance.

How's everyone else's weekend been?

Thoughts on a Drunk

I've been young. I've been drunk. Often both together.

I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the scenario which involves wandering a little unsteadily along the street in stocking feet, clutching impossibly high heels in one hand, and occasionally hugging a lamp post. Admittedly, I've usually been the slightly-more-sober-friend (query: is this likely to be a cause, or an effect, of being unable to walk in really high heels to start with?)

BUT: I'm sure that when I was young and foolish (and occasionally drunk) I'm sure that that stage in the evening didn't happen until very late. In fact, I'm pretty sure it didn't happen until the following morning, around 2 a.m. Usually in time to miss the last bus home and end up sleeping on a friend's floor. Or, if one is fortunate in one's friends, spending the night sleeping at a friend's home, and only realising when you get up the next day later the same day that the friend has given you the beds and has spent the night in the sofa.

Anyway, I was out at the theatre last night, and it struck me, as I was walking back to my car,and having to manoeuvre around several young women in that condition  that 10.15 p.m. was awfully early to be in that state.

Am I getting old?

Friday at last!

I woke up this morning, about 10 minutes before the alarm went off, and was completely, utterly, convinced that it was Saturday. It was a terrible disappointment to me to realise, a few minutes later, that it was only Friday.

I think it's because it's been a very full week, so at some level I felt I'd already had a week's worth of work, without today!

I've been out of the office a lot - several court hearings, and conferences with Counsel, which has meant a lot of driving. One drive through a cold, foggy morning, another through glorious sunshine. I enjoyed the second. I had to go over the Levels, and saw not only the usual cows, and clouds of starlings, but also a group of 7 or 8 roe deer, bouncing along,  a heron fishing in one of the rhynes, and a Peregrine falcon perched, motionless, on a gatepost.

The downside of all this rushing about was that I wasn't able to go to see the National Theatre Live showing of 'The Comedy of Errors' (starring Lenny Henry) It was on yesterday, and I'd booked a ticket at a cinema in Bristol (as my closest participating cinema, in Bath, had sold out) Unfortunately, I found myself having to go to Taunton during the afternoon, and by the time I had finished, it was 5.30, which meant that the chances of me getting to the cinema in time were slim, and the chances of being able to grab anything to eat first were zero. I decided, reluctantly, that it wasn't practical. I admit that my decision was influences by the fact that I am going to get to see the live version, at the National Theatre, at the end of the month, but realistically I'd have had to make the same choice even if that weren't true.

And at least it meant that I got to have a (relatively) early night.

Tomorrow I'm going to the first of the events I've booked at the Bath Festival of Literature - Alain de Botton, talking about religion and atheism, and later, Claire Tomalin, talking about Dickens. I expect both will be interesting. I hope they will  be. And I should ahve time to pop into the library on my way, to pick up the DVd of 'The King's Speech', so I can compare it to last week's theatre version, and a copy of H.M. Castor's Henry VIII, which I've wanted to read for a while, since hearing Castor speak the BristolCon.

It should be a good weekend.

Autumn

It feels as though autumn has truly arrived, in the past few days. We've been rained on, and rained on some more, and my tomato plants seem to have gone, overnight, from green and vigorous to yellow and fading (although still with a fair number of tomatoes)

The rainy weather has suited my mood, as after the fun and excitement of the long weekend, full of treats, I have been back at work, and very busy.

Now, however, it's Friday again, and my last day at work for two weeks! The disadvantage of having upheavals at work requiring my presence, and lots of colleagues who want to book time off is school holidays is that you get very tired waiting for the point where you can have a holiday.

The advantage is that suddenly it's mid-September, autumn is coming, and you get to go off and play!
I have a theatre ticket for Saturday night, then on Monday I am off to Italy for a week, then I shall have a few days either at home, or in Devon, depending on the weather.

Hopefully I shall be able to relax, unwind, and return to work invigorated!

Plus, the Bath Kids' Lit. Fest starts at the end of  the month so there is something to look forward to on my return. Guests this year include Judith Kerr, Eoin Colfer and Philip Reeve, to name but a few.

And not long after that my birthday will come round again, with friends here for the weekend, and another theatre trip.
So, despite rain and wind, life has its charms!

In Which I am Disappointed (But Bounce Back)

I wasn't supposed to be here over the weekend. This weekend, I was supposed to be in a rented cottage in Wales, with no electricity, no phone signal, no inernet access - just time to relax with my Aunt, Uncle, Cousin H, plus Cousin's husband and adorable 8 month old baby.

I was due to leave yesterday morning, but as I was finishing my coffee yesterday morning, I got a phone call from my uncle, to say that unfortunately both my aunt, and my cousin had come down with a  nasty bug. So, initially we decided to leave it till noon to see whether perhaps they'd just eaten something which disagreed, to see if they felt any better, but they didn't. So  I didn't go.

Which was a disappointment. Worse for them, of course. Being poorly while on holiday, but a little sad for  me.

I ended up doing very little on Thursday- in the morning I was hanging around to see whether there was any chance of salvaging the trip, and doing bits of housework. Then it rained, and thundered, and lightened, so I stayed in and watched Doctor Who.

Today, however, started out a little brighter, so I decided, after a certain amount of faffing about, to go out. I went to Bath. I recently aquired an Artfund card, and on their website, it told me it would get me into the Roman Baths for free, so I decided I'd go there, because I have not been for simply YEARS.

However, when I got there, they told me it was not a bit true, but by that time I was all hyped up to see Regency/Roman architechtural mashups, so I went in even though I had to pay.

It's still a fascinating place.

Of course, most of the buildings are not Roman, but the water is the same as it always was, and there are the various finds, such as the head of Medusa, and the little folded lead sheets with the prayers and curses which people threw into the water.

There are also holographic Romans around one of the pools, and a couple of ladies dressed as a Roman matron & slave-girl answering questions by the Great Bath.  When i waas there, there was a slo a wedding party, which struck an odd note - I can see the appeal of the Baths & Pump Room as a wedding venue, but I'm not sure I'd want my wedding venue to be filled with coachloads of tourists.!

Having visited the Baths, I did make use of the ticket to procure a glass of the Waters, in the pump room. I cannot recommend it for internal use. It doesn't taste good.  it is possible, I suppose, that it may have done me good - I belive it was used to be considered particularly effective against gout, and I certianly don't have gout, so maybe it does work :-)

After leaving the baths, I went to the William Herschel Museum, (where once again my ArtFund Card was spurned) - I knew of Herschel as an astronomer and for discovering Uranus - I wasn't aware that he had originally come to Bath not as an astronomer, but as a musician (and a very successful one)

Other than that insight, owever, I found the museum a little disappointing; there isn't a lot there, and a lot of the more interesting exhibits, such as letters, are not well displayed. Still, there were some nice astrolabes and an orrerry, and a scale model of Herschel's telescope, and photographs of his decendents, so not all bad.

I'd thought about ending the day with a trip to the cinema, but by this stage I was rather cold, and a little damp from being rained on, and getting tired, so I went home and spent the evening watching Grosse Pointe Blank with the cat, instead.

It was not a bad day.

Drive-By Builders Strike Back

I blogged before about the Strange Affair of the Stolen Tiles, and  since then, I have had a couple of ... interesting conversations with the builders, and with the guy from the housing association.

   Sad,Naked Porch

The upshot of which was that they asked whether it would be alright for them to come back, to re-tile the proch, today.

I agreed, and asked them about replacing the ?strut? at the same time - the old one was broken (and I can't pin that on them - may have been them, may have been local vandals) - they had put up a temporary one when the took away the tiles, but it wasn't attached with a proper joint to the rest of the frame, and I thought it would be nicer if it were.

And it seemed to me, that it would be easier & cheaper to get them to do that at the same time as they were doing the re-tiling. 

Happy, Tiled Porch

The builders turned up just as I was preparing to leave for work, and I came home to a beautifully neat, and not-naked-at-all porch.

So that's alright.

Nice things to come

Yesterday I got a copy of the programme booklet for the Bath Fesitival of Children's Literature through the post; reading through it, I was very happy to find that Dave McKean is going to be there, doign a panel entitled "Graphic Novels: the new revolution" with Garen Ewing and Robin Ethrington. I have to admit that I'm notfamiliar with Ewing or Ethrington's work, but the chance of seeing Dave McKean was more than enough to have me on the phone to the ticket line without delay!

I was also interested to see that Michael Rosen, Michael Morpurgo and Cornelia Funke are also all going to be there, and was disappointed to see that while David Almond is there his panel is on a Wednesday lunchtime, which means I won't be able to get to that, unless I book a day off work..

I have also received the new season's brochure for the Bath Theatre Royal - they have Sheridan's "The Rivals", Monty Python's "Spamalot", Coward's "Blithe Spirit" and Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor"all coming up, as well as the (now traditional) performance of Handel's Messiah. Unfortunately, theatre tickets are rather more expensive than tickets for the Literature Fesitval, so I shall have to do a little more in the way of calculation before I get start booking - going to all those shows would set me back by about £150, and while I think it's worth it, I still need to actually get the money in place before I can spend it!

In other news, the bruises I gave myself on Saturday are all turning an unlovely shade of yellow, with purple highlights, and continue to be rather ouchy, and it's clear that falling so heavily also jarred my neck/shoulder (which I have a long standing problem with anyway) so that is much more painful than normal. *sigh*

On the plus side, I have a theatre ticket for this evening, to see Simon Callow in his one-man show "The Man From Stratford", which should be fun.

In Which There is a Day Off, and some Cooking

I found out last week that I had a day of holiday left from this year's entitlement, so I booked it for today.

I feel I have used it wisely.

There is, I think, very little which is more pleasurable than being able to lie in bed, and in the smug knowledge that all around you other people are having to get up and go out to work. Not, I hasten to add, that I stayed there all morning, but just an extra hour can sometimes make a lot of difference.

Most of the rest of the day was taken up with various jobs - I went and queued in the Post office to send Christmas gifts to friends and family members: It appears that the last posting date for posting 2nd class post in time for Christmas was yesterday, but I decided to risk it and send everything 2nd class anyway - none of the people I was sending stuff to are young enough to get upset if their Christmas presents are a day or two late, and anyway, I have a vast and touching faith in Royal Mail, and secretly believe that they will get there on time despite the late posting! We shall see.

I also did some shopping (mainly food) and some cooking - mostly the time-consuming stuff for the things I'm planning to cook at the weekend when my friends come to stay. Then I did a second lot of shopping to buy the things I forgot the first time, such as the camembert, which is destined to be studded with garlic, and baked into cheesy submission, and the lasagna dish, as I realised that the only dish I have is fine for making lasagna for one, but that I don't have a dish suitable for making lasagna. Just as well I realised today, and not, say, on saturday morning with a sheet of lasagna in one hand and a spoonful of sauce in the other...

And as it was, after all, my day off, I also found time to watch a little TV (A very old episode of StarTrek TNG, since you ask) and to have a lovely long hot bath accompanied by a murder mystery and and a nice cup of tea.

It didn't snow here, despite the weather forecast. It was however, cold. Tybalt managed to get into my bed, under the duvet (which he knows is not allowed, at least until he learns to wipe his feet first) twice - the second time despite my not only having made the bed, but also most unfairly having tucked the throw in all the way round to stop him... Of course, if he had been paying more attention, he might have noticed that as I was at home, I'd turned the heating on all day, so downstairs (where there are radiators) was much warmer than upstairs (where there are not).

Tomorrow I shall be back at work, and have the questionable pleasure of a meeting with Social Services to look forward to.