Archive for the 'Rambling on…' Category

Caught red-handed

Posted by on June 23rd 2011 in In the garden, Rambling on...

Recently there's been a spate of burglaries around here. Notices have been put up in shop-windows and other prominent places, advising the public to be alert and vigilant. We're out to catch the thieving bastards one way or another.

With this in mind, you can imagine how I felt about an hour ago when I was sitting in the kitchen having a well-earned cuppa and I heard somebody moving about on our back yard and trying the door-handle. I looked up and through the patterned glass I could see a shadowy figure the other side. I grabbed the nearest defensive item (a decent bit of rough-cut 2-by-2 left over from a recent DIY job) and made my way slowly and silently to the door...

The intruder was still there. By then my pulse was racing and the adrenaline was kicking in.  I jumped up to the door and flung it wide open, knocking the intruder to the ground (the door opens outwards). Jumping though the doorway I shouted something profane at the prostrate figure before me, and took up a stance a sensible distance away from him while holding the 2-by-2 in a state of readiness in case he got a bit shirty.

He was a bit dazed and didn't look much of a threat so I backed off a bit and let him get to his feet. When he reached into his open shoulder-bag I tensed a little but I relaxed and was somewhat amused when he presented me with this:


(Click it)

He said he wasn't injured so I sent him packing after showing him the front door (complete with letterbox slot) and the front gateway, and after telling him to refrain from trespassing on our driveway to gain illegal access to our back garden via a gate with a "PRIVATE" sign on it.

Checkmate

Posted by on June 17th 2011 in Rambling on...
Tags:

Am I the only person that thinks it rather odd that the word "Firefox" isn't pre-loaded into the British English Dictionary Add-on for the Firefox spellchecker?

I know that it isn't feasible to include every word and acronym, but not including your own product name does seem to be a bit of a fail.

Furthermore, I'd have expected plenty of techie terminology to be in there too, but it ain't so. Here are some words and abbreviations which I expected to be listed but which don't merit inclusion:

 

Premium chat line

Posted by on June 16th 2011 in Car stuff, Discounts, Rambling on...

When my car-insurance renewal docket arrived last June I was so bemused by the hiked premium that I rang the insurers to check the reasons for the increase. After I'd listened to the explanation I was put on hold [cue the music] while the assistant went in search of a supervisor, and when the conversation resumed I was offered a 10% discount which I gratefully accepted.

Anyway, one year on and this year's premium was due. I did the usual exercise of finding the best like-for-like deals via the various price-comparison sites out there on the interwebnet thingy. The results weren't good - prices are much higher this year due to interest-rate hikes, the global financial meltdown and all of the natural disasters that have led to huge insurance claims.

Eventually this year's renewal docket arrived and to be honest when I was opening the envelope I was expecting to be faced with the 10% back on AND a huge premium increase. Imagine my surprise when I found that the premium had gone up by much less than I'd been expecting! In fact, it was such a shock that I decided to break out the plastic and pay for the whole year in one hit as opposed to by DD as I usually do. I phoned the insurers to sort the details and just as I'd calculated I saved having to pay about 43 quid in credit interest. During the conversation, and with no provocation whatsoever from me, the nice lass I was dealing with said that she was going to put me on hold for a while [cue the music again]... after a few minutes she came back and offered me a discount of just over 11%.

Sweet!

I do realise that I'm probably not getting any preferential treatment, and that other folk who make the call will be offered discounts too, but it does make me wonder how much other folk miss out by letting their renewals go through on auto and not bothering to make that call.

My thanks go to Rhona for sorting this for me.

Baffled

Posted by on June 14th 2011 in Rambling on...

 

Eh?

Not going the extra mile

Posted by on April 30th 2011 in Great Escapes, Lakes Escapes, Maps, Rambling on...
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One of the minor hassles of walking the Wainwrights is that there are times when I'm up on the fells and I get to thinking "I'm happy, I've done enough, I don't really fancy going up that next bit just for the sake of another tick on a list". At the time it seems the right thing to do, there's no point in over-stretching, it takes the fun out of it. After all, we've probably all heard, and possibly even used, phrases like "the hills will still be there tomorrow". Fell-walking is supposed to be about pleasure, not pressure.

Trouble is, it plays with my mind, especially straight after the choice becomes irrevocable, usually on the walk-out. Those nagging thoughts that it would have been easy, that I've let myself down, that I'll have to walk large bits again for less gain. It needles me, it makes me regretful, and eventually it starts to rob me of the pleasure that I thought I'd had.

The problems become even more apparent later when an OCD list-ticker such as myself, 200 miles away from the fells, looks at the map and at the "to do" list and thinks...

  • twice I've been up Skiddaw and twice I've not continued northwards that extra mile to visit Bakestall...
  • if I'd detoured the extra mile to Lonscale Fell the first time I went up Skiddaw, I wouldn't have had to go up there again last week...
  • if I'd just walked that extra mile further during the 2008 wildcamp with Chris, I would have got to Shipman Knotts...
  • if my mind hadn't been preoccupied with other things, I wouldn't have turned back half a mile short of Green Crag way back in 2006...
  • if I'd been a bit more strict with myself, I wouldn't have declined the half-mile detour to Rest Dodd during the 2007 wildcamp with Chris...
  • the further mile or so from there to The Nab would have been doable too...
  • and as for the first two circuits of Seat Sandal, before the third attempt when I actually did reach the top, the less said, the better.

So now, apart from a couple of decent-length walks during each of which I can pull in a handful of currently-unascended tops, I'm left with several singletons or pairs of unvisited short-walk fells, linked only to places that I've trodden before. "Fragmented" is the word that springs to mind.

I suppose that a weekend dedicated solely to nabbing these scattered things would be effective, but there'd be as much time spent driving as would be spent walking - where's the fun in that?

 

Rest Dodd

 

Maybe I should simply chill out, bin the list and just walk for the hell of it.

Mind you, I'm only 20 shy of the finish - that's the stats-equivalent of the last mile...

Maybe a beer would help?

How does this work, then?

Posted by on March 29th 2011 in Lost in translation, Rambling on...

Teachers of Physics teach physics...

teachers of Music teach music...

teachers of French teach French.

I've been trying to apply the same logic to the following ad, but it just doesn't seem right:
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