.... random rants and rambles. no agenda. yet.

I know I am 32. But snow is funnnnnnnnnn!

Posted by j at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Click on the house and be spooked!

Were you? I was. The things that L emails me!

Today, we learned that next door, Pussy's name is Daisy*. Pussy-aka-Daisy lives next door most of the time, although it is not her official home and she doesn't spend the night there (I think they're in denial). Her official home, our next door neighbours think, is with someone down the street who, um, how shall I put it, has problems looking after her. Nuff said.

* When C found out Pussy was aka Daisy, she said "Oh, is she a girl then?" and our neighbour said "I don't know! Is she?"

And we don't really want to learn how to find out.

Posted by j at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

This week has been a very hard week, largely because of an Evil Computer Company that I don't want to name in case they sue me - and because I might want to sue them, depending on how mad I decide I am with them, which, at the moment, is swaying hormonally between Very Mad and UNSPEAKABLY MAD and Really Not Caring At All. However, if you're thinking of buying a new computer, please email me and I will tell you who they are so that you can give them a wide berth and avoid major stresses and ridiculous situations like the one I'm in.

Here is a list of some of ECC's sins, in no particular order (mainly because I'm so fed up that I can't remember the order in which everything happened).

* They have been here four times in the last 6 weeks or so to fix my computer. Have they fixed it? No.

* One of the failed-fixings was due to the fact that the bum-fluff-bearded "engineer" forgot to connect a wire. Upon return, he found this really funny and embarrassing, and expressed that his main concern was that his mates in the office were going to rib him about it, and did not seem at all bothered that it had eaten into my work hours. Again.

* Did I mention they have eaten into my work hours? Loads of them.

* And I actually need a computer to do my job? Hello?

* Have they apologised for the above? No.

* They are staffed by a bunch of 20 year olds who all need to go on some kind of customer relations course and learn how to say thank-you, and sorry, and above all, THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

* They keep trying to make me use the phone, when I have told them repeatedly that I am Deaf and my preferred method of communication is email.

* They have ONE member of staff who is able to use email in the correct manner; in that she is able to press "reply" and "send" MOST of the time. Unfortunately she is merely the person who is responsible for booking the "engineers", i.e. not worth shouting at.

* They have not acknowledged my latest request for an engineer (which was two days ago!), nor any of my three requests for a refund, nor my threat of legal action or my other request for a simple one-lined reply. Reading forums, I realise with a heavy heart that I am not alone.

* I also realise that there's no chance of a reply for at least two days now because it's 7pm on a Friday night.

* All of the above has made me hate Vista, ECC and anything to do with desktop PCs. It's also given me a sore back because I'm having to use my laptop instead which is NOT GOOD FOR MY POSTURE.

And anyway, bum-fluff-beardy "engineer" left his tie in our garden (! I know !) and I am holding it to ransom, which makes me feel better in a silly, OTT and hormonal way.

Have a good weekend. And don't buy a computer!

Posted by j at 7:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

OK, so Mr Cousin kicked my ass and told me to link to Mrs Cousin's excellent new doula website, so I just did. (And in case you don't know what a doula does, they're like midwives, but nicer. I think. That's not to say midwives aren't nice, of course. I should probably stop here.)

So anyway, I thought I might as well do a complete spring clean of my wayyyyy olddddd links, so if you look to the right of your screen, you will find them. And yes, I know they are rather untidy. I like them like that!

And, for the record, the water has gone down and you can hardly tell there was a flood yesterday, except it's a bit muddy and stuff, and in places it looks like someone threw a huge bucket of water down the road.

Funnily enough, we've been meaning to buy wellies for a while now, seeing as we spend so much time tramping around in the mud with the dog and stuff like that. After yesterday, our need for wellies has become urgent - if you can have a Welly Emergency, we're close to having one - but now all the local shops have sold out. Seriously. Even the "youths" wear them around here... which means we can't be THAT uncool.

In other completely unrelated news, we saw the very good The Golden Compass with subtitles on Sunday, at our local cinema, which is a darn sight better than the ones in Preston (it sells cups of tea! in proper cups! imagine! L and A were thrilled, and C was jealous because she didn't get one)... not to mention nearer. Oh, the irony.

As well as that, this morning, I was very pleased and rather taken aback to find that one of the women who works in the local greengrocer's can sign, and remembered enough to have a conversation, despite not having signed for 10 years.

This place constantly intrigues me.

Posted by j at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Note how you can barely tell the difference between the road and the river, which is scarily high behind the wall - it seems to have risen a good few feet...

... On the way down the hill (we were walking the dog, alright!) we bumped into a neighbour who excitedly informed us that all of the shops in Mytholmroyd are closed except for Sainsbury's, where she works, which is "just" open because it's got more steps. We also saw someone bleakly bailing buckets and buckets of water out of their house. Right now I am just glad we live on a hill, and feel really sorry for those who don't.

More later, maybe.

Posted by j at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

This morning we were having a late breakfast (I know, I know, slow start) when C suddenly jumped out of her skin because there was a loud, LOUD noise outside that sounded just like an air raid siren from World War Two. Apparently it was like this:

WAAAAA-WOOOOOOOO, WAAAAAA-WOOOOOOO, WAAAAAA-OOOOOOO

So we rushed to the door and I could feel it if I touched the wood. I also saw a small child outside on a bike - in the rain - rather than at school, so we concluded it was probably a flood warning. Some quick googling told us that it was.

It's not exactly a surprise as there's been sand bags all over the place for a week or so now, but the main road is shut so C can't go and interpret later. Oh dear. We are trapped upon our hill!

Posted by j at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Did anyone see BNP Wives on Sky One last night? I watched it because I like to know my enemy - OK, so I'm white and 'Northern European' (their definition of 'acceptable'), but believe me, the BNP are my enemy.

I'm delighted to tell you that they made absolute prats of themselves and showed the BNP up as being what they are; racist bullies who don't know what they're talking about. Indeed, when one wife was asked why she didn't want a black midwife for the birth of her child, she just went blank, laughed nervously and said "Well, because I'm white, innit?" When pressed, she admitted it was actually all her husband's idea.

Another wife, clearly unable to form a coherent opinion/logical reason for racism, resorted to low level insults to argue her case, calling a very nice passer-by a "fat slag" because she dared object to the racist crap that was being handed out in the street.

And they had the nerve to call it all "politics"!

I can't begin to tell you how gobsmackingly stupid these people are. But you can see for yourself because I think it's being repeated about three times tonight on various channels (Sky One and HD or something like that). Remember - know your enemy.

And have a good weekend!

Posted by j at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Posted by j at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hooray, I have finally uploaded my new header (if you can't see it, press SHIFT-REFRESH). While it is unimportant in the face of, er, important things, it was important to me in the name of Tidiness Of The Brain. Thanks must go to R for helping me to realise that ".JPG" should have been ".jpg" - a small but important detail.

ANYWAY. The image you see at the top of this page is of the very fine dry stone wall that is at the end of our back garden... while we don't own this wall, we are apparently 'in charge' of it, whatever that means. I guess we have to make sure it doesn't fall down or something, but there isn't much chance of that as it's as heavy as hell - much respect for the people who built it in the first place - so I'm not too worried.

I'm also less worried about Pussy now that our special new cat shelter arrived this morning (kind of from eBay, yes, T) and is in its rightful place outside. Is it weird to worry so much about a cat that you don't even know?! It's not as if I don't have anything else to worry about - believe me, I do - but anyway, it was important to me, especially as it's freezing here. I'd post a photo of the shelter, but it's really unexciting - kind of like a curved lump of "sandstone" coloured plastic with a hole in it - but as long as it does the job, that's OK with me.

So who'd have thought I'd be scouring the net for cat shelters?! I'm probably just going soft in my old age. Further evidence of this softness/old age is the fact that I am ALLOWING Harrythecat to stand menacingly on my lap as I type this, partially pinning my right arm to the desk and making it very difficult to type indeed. This is something I mercilessly wound A up about for years, before I too succumbed to The Control Of The Cat.

I have to go. He really won't let me type.

Posted by j at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Posted by j at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night our neighbour kindly came to the door in the rain to tell us that our car was illegally parked facing the wrong way, and we should turn it round because "they fined 20 people all at the same time on that once." Ehhhh?! Yes, she said; it's something to do with a bizarre highway law that says you aren't allowed to park your car facing the 'wrong way' at night, otherwise other drivers might shine their headlights into yours and think you're about to move, or something like that:

Parking at night

248

You MUST NOT park on a road at night facing against the direction of the traffic flow unless in a recognised parking space.

[Laws CUR reg 101 & RVLR reg 24]

Has anyone else ever heard of this kind of thing happening?!

In other news, we are getting a cat shelter. Laugh if you may, but you don't live here and have to endure the nightly pain of sending Pussy The Stalker Cat away in the rain. Granted, Pussy doesn't seem to want to stay (s/he just wants food), but s/he looks neglected and always seems to be freezing. So, s/he is getting a wee shelter in our garden. A quick G00gle told me that cat houses are ridiculous both in terms of price and image (OK, so that's an American website, but the UK ones were no better - I even found one for over £700! Can you imagine?!), so I've appealed on Freecycle instead.

I wish people wouldn't treat animals so craply. I mean, what kind of evil monster does this?! (NOTE: Do not click on the link if you're easily upset and/or love horses)

Sigh.

Posted by j at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

As I said yesterday, too many Freecyclers wanted our Freeview digibox, so I put their names in a "hat" for Ce to draw the winner. I did this by emailing Ce a list of random first names to choose from, with no further information. Ce duly picked a name, saying she was "drawn" to it for some reason. Thinking Ce was a bit strange - but whatever - I emailed the woman to tell her that the digibox is now hers. And guess what?

She's Deaf!

Posted by j at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

While it's not quite a storm after the calm, getting back into the swing of things after Christmas always feels weirdly like you've just taken your brain out of a box and popped it back into your skull, doesn't it? Well, it does for me.

After grappling with my email inboxes, I managed to fill one again in about 12 minutes flat after advertising a long list of stuff on Freecycle (go on, you know you want to!) and suddenly becoming the most popular person in Mytholmroyd. Just as well it's a small place.

Notably, one woman was "really chuffed" to find that some of our old plates matched her plates and she now has a full set. Spooky, but cool!

Aside from that, I have had loads and loads of emails from random people who want our old digibox - because we now have Sky - each with their own Very Good Reason, which means one thing; they will all have to be put in a hat, with the winner drawn by Ce, who kindly gave us the digibox in the first place. I hate it when this happens... you never know who is genuine, and you feel like you can't judge, because who are you to judge who "deserves" something more than someone else? So Ce and the hat come in. Phew!

Next thing on today's list of boring things to do was to buy a mobile phone. "Oh, get her!" you may cry, but please bear in mind that I hate buying mobile phones. It's all so complicated! I did try to buy one from a shop, but the assistant was a bored, tuned-out youth who completely lacked a sense of humour, and whose vocabulary consisted mainly of "yeah" and "no" and "oh, I don't know," so I had zero luck. In fact, she was so demotivating that I wanted to wave my existing mobile phone in front of her, crush it into tiny pieces with my heel and ask her to dispose of it for me, just to see if she reacted. Lord.

So I decided to cut out the human whatsoever and buy one online. Cue much late-afternoon surfing by me and C, who is just about as clueless as I, trying desperately not to get bored and go and do something more exciting. Anyway I managed to find one in the end - the best thing about it was the fact that it was described as "simple to use" - but not before surfing through pictures of zillions of phones and having to fill in a long, long form online and then suffering much outrage at the fact that my first TWO user name choices were taken. God.

Who cares, anyway? It's on its way, apparently.

Why I am even blogging all this, I don't know. Perhaps my 2008 brain is full already and thus needs emptying? Fun!

Posted by j at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Mr Corbett

In view of today's events, I thought I would write to express my concerns. You need to understand that, as you have only ever ventured outside our house for about 10 minutes at a time, disappearing for FOUR AND A HALF hours without warning today was particularly traumatising for C and I.

While we know that you cats like to disappear outside for hours and hours on end, as it was your first time, we didn't know if you would remember where you lived, or if you would even want to come home (i.e. you had only pretended to like us thus far, and were waiting for an Escape Opportunity). That is what your constant mind games do to us. It is both unfair and unreasonable to expect us to live like this - as Dog People, we expect to be shown more loyalty and gratitude.

Furthermore, when you finally arrived home covered in oil, it would have been nice if you hadn't hissed at Mr Barker, who had kindly spent a couple of hours shut in the living room for YOU, just in case you returned.

As I am prone to neurosis and worrying, I would greatly appreciate it if, next time, you would take heed of the following suggestions:

- Please return to the building approximately once an hour, if only to let us know that you haven't been crushed by a car;
- If this isn't possible, please take a small, brightly coloured flag with you so that you can be seen while you are killing voles and mice at a distance.
- When you hear me shaking your Chicken Treats in the garden, please make yourself known - because it means I need proof that you are alive. When you have done so, you may resume killing whichever small, defenceless animals you were pursuing.*
* Do not, under any circumstances, bring these small, defenceless animals home, DEAD OR ALIVE.

(And, as an aside, I wonder why your new Favourite Place on the landing was selected, as it is rather draughty and gives the impression you wish to operate as a CCTV camera?)

Anyway, now that you have shown us what you are capable of, we will not worry ourselves unduly next time... if there is a next time.

Thanking you,
Your landlady

Posted by j at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Can anyone see a dry stone wall at the top of this blog? Let me know if you can, because I can't, and it's supposed to be there because it's my new header. Oh well - it's my own fault for being too lazy to go and get the external hard drive, plug it in and blahhhhhh *snips boring details*

So. Christmas is officially over. Our decorations are down, largely helped by Harry the cat, who (we suspect) knocked over our tree while we were out shopping the other day. This wouldn't have been quite so dramatic if a) the tree hadn't been 7 feet tall; b) it hadn't narrowly missed my new digital photo frame, C's new internet radio and our glass coffee table; and c) it hadn't happened on January 4th, which is the day that decorations are traditionally meant to come down. Spoooooky.

Herewith the dramatic evidence (*note the industrial-sized tin of Quality Street, brought by Ce, as it is an Essential Christmas Item. The tin no longer contains Quality Street. Hooray!):

Angel Number 1 landed flat on her face...

... while Angel Number 2 managed to stay upright, entangled in a mass of Christmas Tree Debris...

The cat rounded off his vandalism spree by throwing his bed halfway across the room and relocating to the dog's bed instead. Quite what was going through his mind, I don't know... maybe it was something to do with the fact that he's only just started to go outside, but it's too wet and cold to be fun, so he's sulking. Whatever.

In other news, me, C and Harry the dog - obviously - have bravely ignored my injured foot and managed to rack up about 10 miles' worth of canal towpath walking in the last couple of weeks. That's actually 20 miles if you consider how we do it on a there-and-back basis... only another 21 miles to Manchester (and a further 21 miles back). Hahahaha.

So anywayyyyyy I have to go and do more useful things, which means I need to make a pile of things to Freecycle because they are being replaced by new items, and because we now have millions of plates all over the place and C is trying patiently to do a jigsaw but there isn't room.

Ah, the trivial side of life. I like it!

Posted by j at 6:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

2007 was a year in which Things Happened. I hope 2008 is a year in which More Things Happen. Good Things; to me and to you all. After all, as KR just said in a text which managed to wriggle through the jammed network and find its way to my phone:

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day!

... If the cat had a book, it would be a big, heavy spy novel, because everything is one huge conspiracy. He constantly unnerves me and C by stalking around suspiciously and staring at us through narrowed cat eyes, as if he is casing the joint and working out his new move in his 52-year masterplan. On the other hand, the dog's novel would be more like a comic; perhaps a Tom and Jerry-style one or something like that. He's easily pleased!

And my book? It's called To Be Continued...

Posted by j at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)