schlackman.org

Here’s the deal. Even though I’m currently off work recovering from surgery, the surgery wasn’t the result of any accident. So when you call me from an ambulance-chasing compensation firm, we are going to have words.

1. My telephone number is on the TPS do-not-call list. Just by calling me, you’ve broken the law — specifically, the Privacy and Electronic (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. That’s not a good start for a firm supposedly offering legal services.
2. If you tell me the legal name of the company you’re calling from is the “Accident Investigation Bureau”, and no such company is listed with Companies House, you are a liar. Also, you need to pick a less ridiculous-sounding name for your scam.
3. If I ask you where you got my details from, and you give me the name of a ‘government department’ with an equally ridiculous fake name, you are a liar.
4. If you tell me your name is “Jack Carr”, even though you have a thick Indian accent and have already told me you are calling from India, you are a liar.

Yours was possibly the least convicing scam I’ve heard in years. Tragically, I suspect someone will still fall for it and you will con them out of some money, so I have no qualms about wishing you and your telephone-scam sock-puppet buddies a swift and hopefully painful accident of your own. Preferably involving a long walk and a short pier.

Last month, a barrel planter disappeared from our front garden.

Said planter was, by all reckoning, rubbish. It had been falling apart since before we moved in and had degenerated to the point that I was planning to call the estate agent and ask if it was OK to dispose of it (since it was technically the landlord’s property). Before I got around to it, I arrived home from work one day to find it had vanished.

We wondered whether the landlord had stopped by and disposed of it. Or the agents. They pleaded ignorance. We then wondered whether our neighbours had gotten rid of it in an over-zealous attempt to keep the garden tidy (this may seem extreme, but they do have a habit of mowing our lawn if it gets too long for their taste, which is to say, anything over 4cm). They knew nothing. There was only one explanation left.

Someone nicked it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Years ago, my mum would insist on stopping into Lakeside shopping centre to visit Ikea whenever we passed it. My brother and I stayed in the car. These trips came to an end after she lost track of time on one visit and left us sitting in the car for two whole hours. I have had a pathological fear of Ikea ever since.

Last weekend, I was finally able to make my first purchase at Ikea. This was helped in no small part by the fact that they finally have a home delivery service, even if it is a bit rubbish, therefore eliminating the need to visit the store itself (or more accurately, visit the car park of the store itself). The Portis hat and coat stand may not be a major purchase, but one must approach one’s fears cautiously. Baby steps. It does fit quite nicely behind the server cabinet in my office, which has the bonus effect of keeping the coats warm.

About 60 people were injured in Birmingham yesterday after a crowd surge at a free outdoor concert. I maintain it was God’s way of telling them that turning on the Christmas lights in the middle of November is an abomination.

Things were not much better in Reading town centre this morning. After an amusing walk into town where every street corner was punctuated by a broken umbrella, half-stuffed into a bin following yesterdays storm, we found that the lights were up in Broad Street (though not yet on) and every department store was now a gaudy shrine to commercialisation.

What is normally a sedate menswear department in Marks & Spencer is now festooned with tacky Christmas gift displays, usurping about ten racks of smart/casual wear which bridges the divide in M&S between boardroom suits and the sort of thing you’d only wear while yachting in the Lake District with your two Labradors. Those ten racks were the only thing I’d come to look at, so finding instead nothing but crowds of mindless middle-aged mums considering whether to buy their brat a robotic snake for Christmas was somewhat irritating, especially since it was only in menswear because they’d never dare to clear space in the womens’ department for this junk.

Ultimately, I tried on some jackets of a similar cut to what I wanted for size, then traipsed home and ordered online. Is it any wonder the high street is dying?

It’s been nearly 6 months since we stopped shopping in Tesco.

As someone who quite literally grew up shopping in Tesco, it did take something reasonably drastic to get us to stop. Sure, we’d used al the other before on occasion, but we always found ourselves back in Tesco. After the May bank holiday weekend, that all changed. I went in on Friday to do the week’s shopping at about 9.30pm. It used to be quite common (and convenient) for us to shop late at night, taking advantage of the 24hr opening. Unfortunately, this was just after our local Tesco had just installed self-service checkouts, and the store manager had taken the ludicrous decision that after 10pm, only the self-service checkouts would be open.

If you’ve used self-service, you’ll realise that while a basketful of shopping is manageable, a trolley load is not. You’ll also no doubt have silently sworn about some imbecile in front of you who probably has trouble working their front door, let alone a checkout. Now imagine the same person with a week’s worth of shopping, on their own.

Now imagine 20 of them, queuing for just four checkouts. Four checkouts that were supervised by a single employee. Checkouts that required you to  ‘please wait for assistance’ for inexplicable items such as a bag of frozen sweetcorn.

Read the rest of this entry »