Dom Davis (The Blog)

Educating the world about the importance of, and need for pancake griddles, one post at a time.

For reasons I’d rather not go into on a public forum this morning left me so angry I was shaking. It’s home time and I’m still pretty pissed off, however, I have a remedy for that.

Say what you will about Mr Clarkson and his chums but I find Top Gear to be hysterically funny (I will probably agree with every complaint you raise about them, only I find these things good things). The Zozo, unfortunately, does not, so in order to avoid inflicting it on her I have the latest series on my iPhone (yes, I know, it’s taken me a while to get round to it).

45 minutes (the length of the train journey, unfortunately not long enough to take in an entire episode) of Clarkson shouting “Power!!!” while driving something ridiculous, May trying to be sophisticated in the face of the other two and failing and Hammond reversing into May all the time is guaranteed to put a smile on my face and mean I’m not in my current killer mood when I get home. In the olden days I would have just sat on the train listening to angry music and seething. Isn’t modern technology grand

Yesterday our pterodactyl proof bird table arrived. I’d bought this with two main criteria in mind. Firstly, did it look good. Secondly, would it be sturdy and survive gale force winds and giant wing-ed beasties with little or no external support.

After a quick Google I found the perfect match. Two tier, hook to hang the new hanging birdbath The Zozo had got, nice wide base, sturdy wooden construction. Being a man I didn’t read the full set of details (too much like instructions and we don’t need them), leapt straight to the headline figure of 1.6m height, visualised the item in the picture being 1.6m tall and decided it was perfect. Job done.

Yesterday our bird table arrived. It’s… well… big. You see I’d failed to realise the stand was 1.6m tall and with the bird mansion bit on the top (‘house’ doesn’t convey the scale of the thing) it’s about 2m tall. This means it’s all about 20% bigger than expected. One thing is for sure though, it’ll survive a whole flock of bloody pterodactyls

Given the small miscalculation with size the outside area where it’s going needs to be prepared. It’s not our land and is a right of way so blocking it with oversized bird condos will be frowned upon. Chopping back the shrubs and putting it right up against the fence should be fine, it just needs some work one weekend. In the interim the whole thing is being stored out the back in our tiny yard there (and I mean tiny, it’s now full with just the bird table).

Getting the bird table in the house was easy enough. We have a good, wide front door and the table itself was in two bits. Getting the base into the kitchen was more problematic. I had to rotate the whole thing through to get the legs through the door. Getting it out the back door threw up a new problem.

Sitting there, pretending to be dead to sucker me into coming within killing distance, was Shelob. I did what any red blooded male would have done: I ran to The Zozo for help. The Zozo then scooped up Shelob and promptly declared that she wasn’t sure about feeding it to the mice because she’d “grown quite attached to it”. I certainly hadn’t, that’s for sure, so I simply resorted to good old emotional blackmail: save the spider and deny the mice their treat, or show the mice how much you love them and throw the vile thing in the mouse house. That worked. A few seconds later and our very cute mice had descended on the hapless spider and ripped it to pieces with me cheering them on in the background. A glorious moment, I can tell you.

With Shelob dispatched and our wyrmery (with added pterodactyl shelf) stored out back pending assembly and positioning it won’t be long until we’re safe from all mythical beasties for a while.

We have a spider in our living room. Normally I’d not mention such seemingly trivial things but this particular spider is a monster. I’ve named it Shelob which should help convey the sheer monstrosity of this beast.

I’m not great with spiders and anything over a few mm in diameter (including legs) needs to be dealt with using specialist equipment. Medium sized spiders are handled with a glass with a bit of card slid underneath. Larger and more dangerous specimens are handled at a remove with the Dyson. Monster spiders, such as the one we have are traditionally with by small, hairy footed hominids wielding magic swords. Lacking, as we do, a friendly hobbit I am turning to a more modern solution.

The Zozo, you see, is made of sterner stuff than I and will happily scoop up Shelob In Her Bare Hands. This manoeuvre is performed with me safely out of harms way so that should the spider attack, or run, or look at either of us funny I can then run screaming like a little girl out of the house.

Once captured Shelob is then dumped unceremoniously into the mouse house whereupon our cute little meeces proceed to rip Shelob to shreds and devour her.

This is all very well and good but Shelob escaped the attempt to capture her and is still running free. I’ve checked my bag and jumper many times today in case she’s decided to hitch a lift so she can eat me in the office. I’m hoping this is not the case and that I’ll get to watch the latest episode of meeces vs spider tonight.

This weekend is the first time in 3 weeks that The Zozo and I have shared a day off so we decided to go out and do something. Being a bank holiday weekend there was lots of choice but we opted for village fête at one of the villages just down the road from us. It rained. But then it was a bank holiday.

Undeterred we went further along the coast road and visited a military vehicle museum. This post isn’t about that. Nope, this post is about the pointless ‘Please drive carefully’ signs all over the place, especially on the coast road.

Now don’t get me wrong here, the coast road going west from Cromer is windy¹, narrow and not something to be traversed at speed. By all means drop the limit from 60 to 40 well before the villages, and it’s eminently sensible to have a 30 limit in the villages themselves, or even 20 in some parts where it’s very narrow and has 90 degree corners. But do I really need “Welcome to Coastal Village, please drive carefully” on the 30 sign? No. And here’s why:

Firstly you should always drive carefully. It’s why we have the offence “Driving without due care and attention”.

Secondly you’ve slowed me from 60 to 40 to 30 and in 50 yards you’re going to drop me to 20. I’ve kind of worked out that some care is needed.

Thirdly at the 40 sign on the other side of the village you’re effectively saying “thankyou for driving carefully through our village, you may now drive like a moron”.

No, if they need reminding to drive carefully they shouldn’t be driving at all. What next: “Welcome to Coastal Village, please don’t rape, pillage and murder”?

¹As in bendy, but sometimes, depending on the weather, as in blowy too.

Now that nPower had my £40 I thought I was in for a long and protracted period of letter writing that would start with them sending me the final statement and end with me getting satisfaction. As has happened many times during the saga I was, once again, wrong. Just as I was phoning the Chinese for my dinner my mobile rang. It was the minion from nPower. It turns out he’d made a mistake (I retorted with “I thought you had”). It turns out that the final bill was in fact nearer £2 and he’d worked out the amount that the current bill was over, not the amount I was supposed to pay. £2 sounds a lot more sensible for the usage we had over that month and certainly better than £40. Of course the £40 payment had already gone through so there they were having taken nearly a year to sort the bill out, with a final demand for an incorrect amount having not acted on my previous call and me being overcharged to the tune of 20 times the size of my bill. Not a strong bargaining position. They knew this and instantly started with the actions they were going to take to placate me. The £40 would be refunded in full. The bill would be cancelled. A letter of apology would be sent and a cheque for £25 would be issued.

Now in the grand scheme of things £25 may not seem like a lot but you’ve got to remember that I only had nPower providing energy for a month and the house was empty for that month. The gas bill was pence. The electric bill was nothing and they’re giving me money. nPower have actually paid me to use them… and I still wont ever touch them with a barge pole again.

The only downside to this resolution is that I don’t get to write my indignant letter of outrage demanding an apology and recompense, although I may still write once the cheque has come through and demand I get written confirmation that nPower will never contact my mobile number or home number ever again unless they’re going to give me more money.

If you remember the Zozo and I aren’t overly keen on nPower. They didn’t do themselves any favours in how they [eventually] handled our final bill, but after phoning them up and complaining it seemed all was sorted. I just needed to wait for the new final bill, pay it and write a letter of complaint. Simple right? Wrong.

Today I [eventually - thanks NXEA] got home to a letter from nPower. ‘Finally!’ I thought, ‘A revised bill’. I cheerfully opened it wondering how much the final bill finally was. Oh look, it’s exactly the same amount as last time. Except this time it’s a final demand and if I don’t pay it in 7 days they’re passing me to the debt collectors. Great.

Girding myself I grabbed the phone and headed upstairs to get the old letters and the meter readings so I could tell them again. Phoning the special number reserved for debtors, paupers and criminals I enquired as to why I was holding an unrevised final demand when I was supposed to be receiving a revised bill that I could actually pay. The minion on the phone has a look into my account notes and indicated there may well have been a mistake. Indeed there has. To his credit the minion then suggested we sort it there and then over the phone rather that letting it go back into the bowels of the process to then no doubt surface again in a couple of months with nothing having changed. Agreeing with him I preferred my mobile number so he could call me back at the most expensive rate possible. There was then much being on hold while various departments were called and I was finally put through to another minion in the complains department.

The new minion was armed with my incorrect statement, my final readings and a new, freshly created statement and had the authority to sort everything there and then. He informed me that the old bill was over by 7 units on the night rate and 2 units on the day rate which sounded very low and proceeded to work out the new cost. Instead of being just of £53 the new bill was… just over £51! But as a gesture of good will they were willing to reduce it to £40. Lets just take a moment to let that sink in.

£51 to run a fridge for a month. Which was going to be discounted to £40 to run a fridge for a month.

I informed the minion that I thought that was quite steep given what was being powered then versus what’s being powered now and the relative prices. The minion said that this was now off my meter readings so I grudgingly accepted the £40 offer and paid with my card. I then asked for a breakdown of the bill including the start readings, final readings, amount per unit, final total of £51ish and the final discounted amount of £40 all clearly marked. The minion agreed, the call was terminated and my thoughts turned to dinner (Chinese, yay!) and the stinking letter of complaint I was going to write about the scandalous prices nPower seemed to have charged both The Zozo and I for power. After all, I wanted my £40 worth from them, and I was going to get it.

After the incident yesterday I was faced with a conductor this morning who looked at my ticket, looked confused, then went “ah!”, smiled and moved on. I checked my ticket, I’d put it back in upside down yesterday. So it’s acceptable and readable upside down.

To avoid any future problems though I riddled to the ticket office and got my replacement. While she was filling out the required forms (by hand, love this modern age we’re in) I mused about the plastic tickets.

“Our machines won’t print on plastic” was the reply.

“Yes, but you could print a temporary one and send a nice plastic one by post later”, I suggested.

“Our machines only print on plastic.”

Giving up I waited for the form filling to be complete and then enquired about a refund for yesterdays ticket.

“Oh dear, you leave your ticket at home yesterday?” was the slightly condescending reply.

“No, I’d have a return then”, I said, “The conductor wouldn’t accept it. Made me buy a ticket.”

“Really? Why?”

“Claimed he couldn’t read it.”

The lady actually got the ticket out from the drawer looked at it and said “Well I can see it’s faded, but you can still read the date.”

“Exactly!” I replied, “But I was told that if you can’t read the station names it’s not valid.”

“Really?” she said.

“Apparently so.”

And so we started filling in the refund forms. By hand. Joy.

Still, I got my new ticket, got my refund and was only 15 minutes late for work. God I hate NXEA.

Forget what I said in the last post, events have transpired that I need to rant about.

I have an annual season ticket printed, as with all annual season tickets, on the bog standard ticket stock using the normal printers. This fades with use going through the ticket machines. Why they don’t use the same plastic tickets they have for season direct I don’t know. I’d be willing to pay to have the paper ticket upgraded to a plastic one, even if it meant using a normal one for a week or two while waiting for the plastic one to be posted.

Anyway, every day I get on the train, every day the ticket inspectors either inspect the ticket, glance at it, point at me and give me a thumbs up because the recognise me or fail to notice me and don’t check the ticket (the latter two happen more in the morning when it’s quiet). Recently there have been incidents of the ticket inspectors taking a closer look at the ticket because it’s faded a bit, however, no one has told me I need to replace it (which is ball ache because it involves queuing at rush hour in the ticket office to get it sorted).

Until, that is today. One of the more regular conductors decided today that I’d have to take my ticket out of it’s holder so he could inspect it. He then declared it unreadable and told me I’d have to buy a ticket. When I asked why he told me it was because the destination station was not visible. It’s not been visible for about a month. I’ve had many season tickets where it’s not visible, it’s one of the first things to go. When the ruddy great big expiry date stops being visible, that’s when people start complaining. Never in my decade plus of commuting have I ever been faced with that argument. I’ve also never been forced to buy a ticket, I’ve always been told to get it sorted soon, and I have. Nope, jobsworth is having none of it. I have to buy a single ticket to Cromer. Great. What if I don’t have any money? Well then, it turns out, I get treated like a fare evader and would be treated the same way someone with no ticket who refused to buy one would be, i.e. like a common criminal. I paid.

I also asked would I have to pay to get into Norwich tomorrow and got met with a smug “If the conductor is doing their job correctly and not just glancing at the tickets then yes”. In other words if another jobsworth is on the train in the morning I’ll need to buy another ticket. It’s ‘OK though’, because I can get the tickets refunded. Well that’s fine, except getting a refund on a ticket is bigger ball ache than getting the ticket changed. I can see me wasting half an hour tomorrow all because some git (who has inspected my ticket already thus week I should point out) is in a bad mood.

Grrrrrrrrrrr!

It’s too wet, windy a grey to blog today and even though I have my big brolly it’s hard to walk, type, fight the wind and keep the phone dry. I am aware that by telling you this I have in fact blogged and, therefore, contradicted myself but that’s my parogative. There is a certain irony that I’m listening to Queen The Show Must Go On while I write this. So yes, the show has gone on, but it’s actually a show about how the show is cancelled. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

I don’t know about you, but if I get woken in the night one of two things is going to happen. I’m either going to roll over and go to sleep straight away (sometimes not even remembering that I woke up at all according to The Zozo) or I’m awake for hours. There is no middle ground, it’s seconds or hours.

The tipping point seems to be how far my brain gets woken up. Occasionally my computer, which is in the bedroom, decides to wake up from sleep mode for no apparent reason. There is a click as the power supply goes from low power mode to fully on, the fans spin up to full speed for a few seconds before settling down and both monster screens turn on. You know how much light a 30″ TV throws out when you’re watching it? Double that. It ranks pretty low on my all time favourite ways to be woken up at random times but I can get up, put it to sleep and head back to bed and put myself back to sleep without really thinking.

Compare that with being woken by a machine that’s pulled your telephone number randomly out of a hat and forces your brain to actually do something. Still being woken, still having to get out of bed to do something but this time your brain has woken up too. You head back to bead and it suddenly decides were going to go over the points that need to be raised in my next meeting, the fix to my current coding problem…

…and no matter what you try it doesn’t let up until about 5am where it goes “phew, long night, let’s get some really deep sleep”. 90 minutes later and the alarm is letting you know that the extra 7 hours of that deep sleep you really need to face the day isn’t happening.

And it’s the time you need to wake up that dictates when your brain let’s up, not how long it’s been awake for. Don’t need to be up till 8? Fine, I’ll sit here and spin, keeping you awake until 6:30 instead.

As you can guess I didn’t get much sleep last night.