Whinge Alert!

When does wangling become deceiving?

OH has always been what I call a Wangler.
This word personifies a tricky nature who will twist words and scenarios to get best advantage.
Some would call it Wiliness (think Wile E coyote from road runner).
In some ways, this is a lucky trait because ,after all it is the way shops trick you into buying their goods, so knowing the strategies can help guard against them being used upon you.
However, OH is not a salesman.
He is a husband and father.

So when he uses his wily ways on me, I hate it.
Not so very long ago we argued about his wanting to join the RAF reserves (with guaranteed deployment).

OH you must understand, does what OH wants and will ride rough shod over anyone who thinks differently.
In this matter however, I stood firm.
I married in a Quaker meeting house, understanding that we both were peaceful thinkers and actors.
It is just about acceptable that he should be a special constable, considering the rude and arrogant manner in which the police treat civilians.

I have watched him go from wanting to be a full time policeman in his early 20's,not revealed to me until after our marriage, to rejection after rejection on application.
They of course are quite happy to accommodate his need to perform in uniform by letting him do it for free.
He has been a Special for way over 15 years now.

I pointed out that I was not happy with his urge to join the armed forces. If he should decide to put himself  at risk to the detriment of our family and well being ,then he would be doing it as a single person.

Anyway ,I digress.
The point of this post is that he has decided he wants to help the riot police (again as an unpaid pawn).
It is an offshoot of the specials but would encompass more violence.
He did the training days and according to him is accepted.
Yesterday he informed me that this off shoot is part of the Honourable Artillery Company and he wants to join.

Hang on the  Honourable Artillery Company?
Artillery? Guns?

Yeah, the territorial Army.
He cant see why I am bothered.
He started the riot training in October and only mentioned the HAC yesterday.
4 Months later.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to discover why there was such a long space of time between the action and the revelation.
He decided he would first get accepted, then when the deed was all but done, he would just slip the other bit of information in as a quick comment.

This is his way of saying 'we discussed it' but actually... we didn't!
I have looked at the website and done some deeper reading.
The HAC is a subscription based affair.
Not only would his part in it be unpaid as he is already a special anyway, he must pay for the privilege or being told to come and perform.
The other thing that sits badly with me is the need to join.

I asked him if he needed to belong, to be able to do the riot police duty.
He said NO
So I asked him why he is talking about joining then?
Surely he is a special who is accepted by he specials to do riot work?

What on earth has the HAC to do with it?

As usual the question is met with stony silence.
Obviously I am spoiling his  wangling plans.

.........................................................................................................................


Just to add to the above..
This lunch time he informed me that he will not need to join the HAC after all.
Apparently they are not the same as the Riot squad.
I knew he was already accepted for the Riot work anyway.
The HAC is separate unless you join it as well.
I find it a little muddling that you would join it as well but there you go.

As far as I could tell from the HAC site, you must be no more than 43.
OH being 50 this year, is well beyond that.


Do I sound like a kill joy?

I don't feel like one!
Unless the definition of joy is that one person may enjoy themselves regardless of their family in a bachelor style existence.
If that is the case then OH already gets plenty .

Better weather and rainy days

It was sunny this weekend.
I decided to get out in the garden and weed the onion beds.
They are all that is planted so far for this years veg.
It took about 1 1/2 hours to hand weed 3 beds but it was worth it.

Saturday the guys went to Karate.
They were later than usual in getting back and I was just starting to get anxious as DS drove himself and has only just passed his test.
The phone rang and it was DS.
One of the other club members was taken ill so they were helping till an ambulance came.
It was a relief to hear they were okay but sad to hear someone was ill.
At home later ,they said the man had had to be resuscitated with a defibrillator.

Sunday they heard he was better but had had further heart attacks and will need to be under a doctor for some time to come and his heart condition was most likely due to cholesterol.

Bookish Monday

I am reading Simon Pegs book

Nerd Do Well

It is a Biography with a few little fantasies thrown in.
Quite interesting if you like Biography, it reminds me of a lighter version of David Nivens books.


Shopping

We needed a new teapot this weekend as I dropped the other in the sink and the handle broke into 3.
I did glue the handle and it has held so far but it is too risky what with the content being boiling tea.

The First shop we looked in had the ideal replacement. Red with an unrestricted spout and big enough to hold 6 mugs at once.
Quite a flashy sounding name.
The shop wanted £7 but we managed to haggle as it has a slight imperfection and got it for £5.

Trees

I finally got around to putting in the two fruit trees that I bought a few weeks ago.
It was too cold before today.
I dug a hole for each. DS filled in as I held each tree and support post.
The posts were the thin door posts from the dismantled shed.
I used half a bicycle inner tube to tie each tree to a post.

I did discuss where we would plant the trees with OH but he is as usual, completely disinterested in any manual work.
I planted one where I said I would and the other one elsewhere. He has pointed to a space behind the washing line but I don't want bird mess on my washing and no sun on it when the tree is in leaf.
About 4 years ago  when I planted the other 2 Apple trees, he watched me do it, then without a word,dug them up and moved them to the edge of the sloping bit of garden where they still stand.


If the weather keeps up ,I shall get out and start filling seed trays with earth ready for the new years seedlings.
Brassicas and Leeks first.

I bought a bag of Desiree potatoes in the supermarket on Sunday.
They are sitting in the dining room along side two small bags of seed potatoes and will be allowed to sprout so they can be planted.
The bag was 2.5k and cost about 1.80 while each seed potato bag was around 1.50 and both of those hold no where near as many as the supermarket bag contains.

Desiree's are red and reds seem to do much better than whites in our soil.

Our neighbour is going to pay a tree surgeon to hack a bit off our tree that over hangs her garden.
Part of me is quite angry that OH doesn't just take a ladder and a saw and do it himself.
Part of me wants to pay them the cost of the tree surgeon but logic tells me that I shouldn't because the tree is not actually dangerous and the branches are a good way up so they are actually being quite fussy.
Also the sun always shines on the front garden first then around to the left which means their garden gets the sun and our garden the shade from that particular tree.
It isn't blocking a view either because beyond the tree is another tree and then a fence and then houses.
We need the shade ourselves because the greenhouse becomes too hot and the plants become crispy little skeletons without it .

Success!

The DS has passed his driving test YAY
He took it yesterday.

Maintenance on the remote dwelling 


OH finally found a plumber to sort out the water at the flat where DD is living while she is at uni.
It is our flat ,DS lived there for 3 years while he did his studies too and the water always took an age to heat.
The plumber said the cylinder and thermostat are at least 40 years old.
He fitted a new shower but couldn't get the electric to run to it so OH will need to get a sparks to sort that out.
DD broke it when she slipped in the bath and grabbed the shower to stop herself falling.
Good thing it didn't electrocute her!

Smooth surfing 

We are now running on Sky LOL
The swap over from BT internet was smooth.
BT was running till 3pm on Monday and then cut out so we unplugged the modem and plugged in the new Sky modem.
It was all up and running in moments.

I have a new wifi dongle that I bought for my laptop as my wifi signal was not brilliant, the new dongle is wifi n which can take the faster speed sent by the modem.
It is running through at 144mbps instead of the 54 it previously ran at.

Left overs Friday

Today is Left overs day as usual.
When we have Bolognaise, I make the usual 4 portions just as though DD were here, then put one aside for DS to have today.
I generally have left overs curried with a baked spud or rice.
OH is back tonight instead of going to Police and we will have curried liver and bacon left over from Wednesday.

No Poo

I have gone back to washing my hair with bicarb.
It was too much bother last year when I was working from home but now I have time to faff about with it again.
It is quite easy and my hair has more body because of not being stripped of all oils every couple of days.
You put about 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate into a bowl, mix in some hot water and swirl it round, it goes cloudy and when you cant feel the granules(almost at once) you wet your hair with water and then work in the mixture.
Give it a good massage and wash it out.

Chilly Mondays, more books and the new TV Box

It was pretty Snowy last week.
We thought it was well and Truly over, only to wake up to a new sprinkling on Sunday.
The DS was narked because he has a Driving test this week.
OH was narked because he wanted to Motorbike into work instead of driving up there, it is more expensive for petrol for the car.
I was narked because I usually drive to the big supermarket on Sunday but I wont drive in snow.

So anyway, OH drove me to Asda and it turned out that our road was snowy but almost all the main roads were clear.
We live in a cul-de-sac which means that there is no through road to go anywhere , consequently the council never grit our road or the one leading to it as they aren't heavily trafficked.   I believe this is a mistake as we and many other residents of the town,there are numerous Cul-de-sacs due to the estate layout, must still get our vehicles TO the main roads in order to benefit from the gritting.
OH needed about 100 yards of clear road to get his Motorbike out last week and only managed it on Friday when the thaw began.
Today is warmer and we are set to have mild weather this week so hopefully DS will get his lessons and test after all.
OH buzzed off happily on the bike and said he might even get a cycle in .

R.I.P. (rest in pieces)BT Vision box

On Friday, our new free-view box was delivered by the courier. This is a non subscription box that I bought from Amazon.
It does everything that the BT vision box did , except,because it doesn't access the internet, it cant get BBC Iplayer. We can always hook up a laptop if we want to watch Iplayer though.
DS connected it up when he finished his driving lesson.
It took about 10 minutes.
We had to move the TV table forwards,de- cable the BT box from ethernet, TV out,TV in and scart.
Then we put it on the floor, put the new box in its place and reinserted TV out, TV in, scart and plugged it in to the power.
THE TV in comes from the Aerial, TV out goes through the DVD recorder, The scart goes to the Big Monitor on the wall as far as I remember.
Anyway,we turned it on and it just worked.
No faffing about.
We scanned for channels and it has the same channels as BT when you watch freeview.
The remote works and now we can use the volume control (BT's volume control was useless),instead of having to get up and go to the HIFI and turn it down.
Our HIFI is the volume on our TV because the screen is a Monitor not a Television.

The old BT box is on a table in my bedroom. I have opened the case and there is an IDE hard drive inside.
That will come out ,I will most likely salvage all the motherboard components using the Dremel and the rest of the box can be scrapped.

Tomorrow we switch over to sky for our internet and will plug in the new modem we got on Thursday and set that up.
We have a phone ready for getting our calls and can discard the rubbish that BT  were allowing us to pay £36.25 a month to use despite the fact that both home hub and phone were faulty units.
Ironically we have had a few calls on the BT phone and haven't been able to answer any as it cuts out the minute you remove it from the hub. I do hope they were from BT with offers to keep our custom.

Bookish Monday

This weeks book is Thief of time
By Terry Pratchet

I had a bit of a struggle getting into the first chapter as it seemed quite disjointed but once past that, it falls together quite well.
Each scenario fits a time-line and you must see them in entirety before you can really get into the story.
One of my favourite Pratchet Characters is DEATH.
He turns up in every book I have read so far and leads away the dearly departed whether they like it or not.
In this book ,he is a little more active and I just love that.
He even has a tiny little helper of sorts.

Anyway I mustn't spoil the story

Catalogs,credit cards and payday loans!

I have been having a long read through the debt free diaries on the Moneysavingexpert website.
The main problem for people seems not to have been, being low paid or 'poor', it has been that they haven't decided to live inside their own income.

When I was small, my parents were penniless a lot of the time.
Mum would borrow money to cover Christmas and would pay in all year to a hamper club run by a local shop.

As far as I know, that was the only credit she ever took out.

There were sometimes catalogs knocking about but they weren't the sort you see now.
Her catalogs (and Dads) were for Green Shield stamps which was a loyalty thing that some shops opted into.
You saved the stamps and then used them to buy things from the catalog.
Dads were Embassy Cigarette catalogs.
He would save the vouchers from every packet and they were used to buy each child a nice birthday present and a nice Christmas present so he got 6 redemptions a year from the scheme.

I remember my mum and dad buying a dining room suite which consisted of a fold up table and 4 chairs and the trouble they had in trying to find anywhere to let them pay in installments .
I don't know how they did it in the end but they did manage to scrape the money together after all .

Life these days is all about having it NOW!
Some people even think you are cruel if you say no to something or someone who makes demands.

I definitely thought my parents were mean when I couldn't have nice things as a child .
Sometimes they may have been a little unwise, for example a bicycle would have saved an awful lot of bus fares if one had been provided for me to get to school at age 11.

Mostly though, it showed me that if you really want something,there are ways to save for it and once you have it, it is so much more satisfying than if it had just been handed to you.

Catalogs ,credit cards and pay day loans are a scandal.

Actually thinking about it dad's was a false economy as well as a health hazard that cut his life short.
If only he had not smoked ,he could have used the money to buy presents and had plenty left over for things like dining room suites.
People haven't changed that much! They want their comforts in life and are blinded to the things they are losing out on just by giving in to their own wants.
Of course, dad was a Gambler also and mum mostly survived on money earned from cleaning jobs.
However,if she could have obtained credit back then, she would no doubt be in massive debt even today.

Who needs criminals when we have the utility providers?

We have been with BT Broadband for a number of years.
We get their Broadband and telephone and also have a TV box ,although we got the box to watch freeview only, we don't pay for any programmes on it.

The hub which is a fancy name for their modem,is glitchy.
It cuts you off in mid telephone call.
It turns off when you are surfing the web.
It leaves you watching buffering on the TV screen.
It displays an unsecure network when it actually is using encryption.

After many ,many moans, including the OH being quite insulting more than once to the telephone 'customer service' in far off India, we finally got the operative to admit that we have a fault on our hub.

'Oh right' says OH, 'so finally you agree it is the hub that is broken'!
'Yes,it is the router' says the operative.
'When will you be sending out a new one'? says OH.
'No it is your responsibility to get the new one' she says.
'You must take out a one year contract and we will send you a new one'.
.........................................................................!
'Okay' says OH, 'so what you are saying is, we are not in a contract any longer and so must either...
Sign up with a new one year contract where you will supply us with a new modem,everything else remaining exactly the same ...
OR
Not sign up with a contract and not be able to get your services which we are paying full price for...
OR
Sign up with another provider for £200 less a year, get a new phone and a new contract with them and they will give us a new modem'.

Decisions decisions!

Can you guess what we chose to do?

The operative had a long think and then said, 'no you are in contract'.
'Oh' says OH 'so when will you be sending us our new replacement modem'?
'No no',she says, 'we cannot give you a new modem unless you sign up for a 1 year contract, if you are not in contract, we cannot help you'!
ARGH!
This conversation went around and around until she admitted she was wrong (or right Hee hee) and we were no longer under contract.

Just then the phone cut out rather sealing the deal and we just laughed.

We decided on a new provider.
To connect with a new provider we had to ring the old one to request the MAC Code ,something like migration agreement code I think, so we can keep our phone number.

A smug sounding Brit came on the phone and asked very treacle voiced ,why on earth we should want to leave.
OH who is a bit gullible sometimes started to explain but I said 'look just ask for the wretched code'.
OH said he would get his wife to talk to the operative :P
He handed me the phone and I said 'We aren't interested in listening to offers any more, just give me the code please'.
He tried to talk over me but eventually the code was read out over the phone and we rang off.
His last words were ' we will be sorry to lose you'!

YER RIGHT!

Who was it told us to like it or lump it?....

I think the phrase is 'We will be sorry to lose your revenue'.

The new contract is all signed for and paid for etc and we are awaiting the new arrangements.

Incidentally , the TV vision box will not work once we don't have power to a BT Home Hub, they have it hard coded so that while it can connect to their servers, it will update its EPG(program guide) and allow recording schedules but as soon as you are not paying them, your free free-view box is a piece of Junk.

Shrug, who wants to be shackled to them just for a free-view box?
We have a new one on order to replace it with as we are not going to subscribe to TV with the new provider.
The new box should do exactly what the old one did without the need to be plugged in to the faulty home hub.


The new provider works out as £60 for the year for Broadband and £147 for the phone line with the free evening and weekend call package (same as BT eve/ weekend calls),so £207 all together.
Instead of £272 for the broadband +£159 phone=£431

Saving      £224

I decided to use some Amazon vouchers to buy a new free view PVR box.
It was £69.74 including delivery.
That still leaves us £154.26 richer.

Bookish Monday

I finished the Wheel of time book and ploughed straight on with good old Terry Pratchet once again..
I am reading 'The Night Watch'...
Which is a bit like a twist on a Doctor who story.
There are some interesting mentions of Quantum Theory - Ankh Morpork style.
If you know about Quantum theory, it is a little hint towards the plot ,if you don't, you wont guess unless you read the book !
I'm nearly finished already, it is a much smaller volume than the Wheel of time series.

Tablets

Whinge Alert!!


OH really liked my e-reader when he saw me using it.
He looked on Ebay and couldn't find one as good for the money (no shit sherlock) .
So he bought an Android tablet second hand(70 odd pounds).
It didn't work properly so he sent it back and was refunded.
Then yesterday, the new replacement turned up.
This one is brand new and was over £100.

Needless to say, I am not impressed.
I mean I love it, it is small and neat and clever and can do lots of things but why?
He has a Netbook ,a laptop and an android phone.
There is no reasoning with him,he just doesn't bother to answer if he cant justify an expense, he will look on silently until I shut up.

I thought about it for a bit and wondered if I could say the same about my having bought an e-reader.
Was I just being silly and impulsive?

But I honestly can justify my reader.
For a start it was cheap because I mended it myself.
The money to buy it was entirely from surveys.

I already had lots and lots of free books that were on my laptop but were awkward to read because I
couldn't have the laptop on in the bedroom at night in bed. (It is one I got from DD and I  mended by  wiring through the battery connection so it cant work without being plugged in).
OH of course shares the room and has to sleep in the bed  too and a 17" laptop is in the way however you position it.

It can display PDF which is handy as recipes are often put online and I  can print to PDF then take it into the kitchen to follow the instructions which is awkward with a laptop  and takes up loads less room.
I have used it every night since Christmas Eve.

Hobsons Choice

Anyway , it makes me reluctant to spend my squirreled pennies on anything  in which I don't have full choice .

I had planned on buying a new front door from ebay with survey money but when I mentioned it to OH a couple of weeks ago, he went browsing ebay and as usual looks to the absolute top end of what we could afford and then thinks about adding on extras like finishing ,then looks at me as though I am going to say ,okay I will save £ 600 so that we can get the one you choose . Well that is NOT happening.
It would take me more than a month to accrue enough just to get a door sealed for *****s sake,what is wrong with buying the door and sealing it ourselves?

We could buy a new hardwood glazed door for under £200 but shrug, that ain't going to happen.

I give up.

My survey money is going to reestablish itself as mums pin money and that is that.
That doesn't include money saved from the housekeeping of course, that is family money and gets used for unexpected bills and saving.

Always look on The Bright side of Life

Good things that have come from stopping the self employment.

I now have pin money that is considered to be mine,it is trickle pennies but I don't care .
Earnings from self employment were not mine and the choice as to what to spend it on was mysteriously lacking too.
I can stay in bed till 8 am instead of getting up at 6 am.
I get breakfast away from the computer.
I get a lunch break and eat away from the computer.
I have time to cook from scratch every day.
I can sit in the living room and watch TV in the evening.
I get a Saturday and Sunday and if DS wants company into town during the week, I can go.
I am back to bargain hunting when Grocery shopping.
It is cheaper when I go shopping for food! A lot cheaper, less than half the cost of sending OH.
The Garden can get back into production and we will have cheap,organic,fresh fruit and veg.
I have time to exercise every day.
Answering the phone or the front door do not have me doing mental sums to work out how much time/money it  is costing .
We have our dining room back and can eat like civilized people without dropping food down ourselves and being bombarded by the bloody Television. Absolute Bliss!