The weekender

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As I started to write this post the dear wife was getting ready to go away for the weekend. She has a group of friends that she has known either since primary school, or high school. There are five of them and although they have all taken their different paths in life; they meet up every year for a long weekender.

One lives just down the road, one just north of London, one in Devon and finally one in New Zealand, although because of the distance she comes back every other year.

The wife has booked half a days holiday so she can finish early, and once I've dropped her off at work at 8am I won't see or hear from her again until she arrives back home late on Sunday. Her local friend is picking up from her office at Lunch time and they will be heading to South Woodford. It's a time for the good wife to recharge her batteries.

I will be looking after the children and I'm quite looking forward to it. I have everything planned. The children and myself enjoy watching the Big Bang Theory so tonight they can stay up a bit a later than normal, and we can watch as many episodes of it as we like instead of having to sit through those terrible soaps my wife likes to watch. Because we only have the one television in the house we all have to put up with watching each others programmes.

On Saturday I'm taking my daughter to her athletics training while my mother-in-law takes her grandson to his football training. In the evening we will experience the rare treat of sitting in front of the television watching Doctor Who while enjoying pizza and ice cream. As the saying goes, 'why the cat is away the mice will play.'

On Sunday I will watch my daughter sing in the church choir, then after the service we will nip next door to the café-on-the-green for tea and cake, before feeding the many different birds that live by the river. After this we are meeting the mother-in-law for a pub lunch. Afterwards we are all going on a long walk with Pippin the puppy through the local woods and country side.

By the time my good lady returns the children will be in their Jim-Jams and looking forward to bed.

But that's not the best bit of the weekend because on Saturday afternoon I'm taking the children to the Kett's Tavern to watch the Cardiff v Norwich football game on their very, very big screen.

It reminds of my own youth as a young child when my dad returned back to the U.K from working abroad. He would take me up to the local pub on a Sunday lunch time. Of course in them days children weren't allowed in the bar and had to stay in the beer garden. It wasn't a garden at all but a concrete yard were the empty barrels were stored with a couple of plastic chairs to sit on. But I was happy because I had a can of Coke, a packet of Walkers crisps and my football which I would kick against the wall. Sometimes there would be other children and we could have a kick-about together.

Occasionally the door would open as the smoke bellowed out and the smell of tobacco would waft under your nostrils. An adult would pop out to check everyone was ok, or needed a top up, and then they would disappear inside again. This was the 70's after all, and now we live in the 21st century were I will be standing in the bar looking out of the window at the adult smokers shivering outside, while the children now have the run of the bar.

Progress or madness?

That's up to the individual to thing about. All I hope is that Norwich win ( and our arch-rival's Ipswich Town F.C loose) and then all in all the whole family will have enjoyed the perfect weekender.

Regards

Mark

The Five-a-side tournament

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My daughter came home from school a couple of months ago with some exciting news she wanted to tell me. She had persuaded her primary school to start a girls football team. I think there may have been one in previous years, but it must have faded away from lack of players.

For my American readers let me clarify that we are talking about the game of football invented by the English and what is commonly known in the U.S as Soccer, and not what we call American Football which to us resembles the game known as rugby.

My daughter has been to some football matches at Carrow Road to watch the mighty Norwich City F.C but I didn't think it had kindled any interest in playing the game itself.

Anyway she approached a teacher to ask why there wasn't a girls football team, and if they would help to set one up. He agreed to help if more girls were interested so she and another friend went around asking other friends if they wanted to play. At the first training session during the lunch break four girl's turned up. After a couple of weeks there were five girls playing, but these numbers weren't enough to justify the teachers time. He is a very good teacher that runs many different children's clubs during school term so his time is limited.

Undaunted she approached some other teachers who have an interested in football. Two agreed to give it another go if more girls showed an interest; so they approached girls from the higher year groups, and after two months the numbers had increased to twelve girls.

The school was impressed enough to enter two teams into a inter-schools five-a-side tournament. It was being held at the Norfolk F.A training Centre at Bowthorpe in Norwich on the other side of the city during the school day last Friday.

After dropping the good wife off at her office so I could have use of the car I drove to Bowthorpe to watch one or two of my daughter's games. Their team didn't even have a football strip to play in until 24 hours before the tournament, but one was found. They looked a motley crew with shorts that were too long, and baggy shirts, but I was pleased it was in the same colours as Norwich of  yellow and green. Some of the other girl teams had very impressive sets of strips with sponsorship from large national companies.

I didn't get to see much because when my daughter saw me she told me she didn't want me to watch. There were no other parents there so my presence embarrassed her! I agreed to leave and as I tried to give her a good by kiss on the cheek her friends started to take the mick. I slinked off but just far enough so I could watch a game without anyone knowing I was still there.

What was the teams performance like? Well you know the saying, "it's not the winning that counts, but the taking part that is important." Well on this occasion is was 100% true. They lost every game but you couldn't fault any of the girls for their enthusiasm.

The good wife and I always say that our children are made up of a little bit of me and a little bit of her, but one thing my daughter has got from the both of us is her determination.

Regards

Mark.

fleached once again.

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British retailers and the U.K Government are experts when it comes to screwing every penny out of the British public. Again the wife and I have been left with that sinking feeling that once more we have robbed by deceitful trading practises.

Before picking up our new car the wife went onto one of these comparison web-sites to arrange insurance for the new motor. We put in all the information and up popped pages of quotes. As the cheapest price was quoted by a bank that we both have accounts with we were happy to buy their product. We paid in full on line and made a note to send in our previous Insurance documents to prove we had a full no claims discount.

Now in the U.K most insurance companies will only show their no claims discount as being seven years which were on the documents we sent in to the new insurer as requested. So image our surprise when they emailed back two weeks later to say they had received the document and all was OK.

Now you know what I am going to say because I say it all the time; there is always a but and this occasion was no different. The new company claimed that they needed nine years no claims to get a full discount and not the standard seven years as used throughout the industry. Because of this there would be an extra charge to pay.

We got in contact with our previous insurance company to ask if they could send us another document with nine years on it so we could pass it on to the new insurer, but they stated they only went up to the standard seven years as do most other companies so they couldn't

We have now had to pay an extra 12% on top of the quoted price. What could we do? It was too much hassle to go through the whole process after spending hours upon hours trying to sort this out in the first place.

It didn't stop there. We then found out that our excess on the policy, were we to make a claim, is £500 nearly double what we normally have. This was defiantly not the amount we put into the computer system. And guess what? Yes there is an extra charge if we want to reduce it to the amount we wanted in the first place. So in truth if we had been quoted the true price of the policy at the beginning it would have cost an extra 25% making it the fifth most expensive.

Would we have bought it if we knew the true cost? No of course we wouldn't have.

This happens time and again in the U.K. I don't know if this is common practise in other countries around the world, and no doubt my readers will be able to tell me, but I think it may not be the case. One thing that impressed me about the American retailer Apple when I went into their store in Norwich was their honesty. Before I bought their product they checked the Internet to find out if another retailer was selling it any cheaper, and then reduced the price accordingly.

When I visited New York I was surprised that the sales tax on products is added at the till so you know exactly how much the cost of that product is made up of tax. In the U.K the governments equivalent is called Value Added Tax (V.A.T for short) and is hidden within the general price so most people take it for granted. Because of this rouge successive British governments of all political wings have been able to increase this so called "temporary" tax over the last forty years from 8% to 20%.

Although how making a product more expensive can add any extra value is beyond me?

Be it the Power companies, certain airlines or food producers the list goes on and on. I don't think it would happen in Germany as they have very strict laws that govern what companies can get away with and which protects the buying public. In Italy the mafia would just kidnap the head of company, chop off a couple of fingers, and demand millions in payments if they got ripped off.

And to be truthful the dear wife and I were so pissed off yesterday morning about the situation it caused an argument between us even though it wasn't my fault. But what could I expect from a bank that had to be saved by, and thus is owned by the British government? Or should I say is owned by us the tax payer.

Either way it seems we got screwed twice.

Regards

Mark.

The Daily Mirror

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Yesterday on Monday the 13th there was a full page spread in The Daily Mirror on page 13 written by the journalist Martin Bagot about on line harassment. And yours truly was featured in it. It still feels strange when you see yourself in a newspaper or magazine. There is a picture of me sitting at our dinning room table next to a lap-top.

I was featured because of an incident that myself and the wife experienced with a so called neighbour who thought she owned the road and it was for her personal use only. When a new family moved in across the road from us with four adults living in the same house, plus four cars, with only a drive way that could accommodate one, problems began. She blamed us for the fact that she now had to drive slowly down a residential 20 mph road to navigate her way through. She could no longer drive at speeds that caused her twice to damage her car and demolish another neighbours fence. One day while driving pass she stopped and verbally abused my wife while she was cleaning the family car on our own drive way. When I went out to investigate she then turned her abuse onto me.

It didn't stop there because a couple of weeks later a friend phoned to say that our address had appeared on Facebook after being posted by this women. The kindest thing she said in a torrent of online abuse was she wished our home would burn down. When we checked it out we were horrified to see total strangers to us joining in.

Now I have led a rough and tough life. I was once a court bailiff a very dangerous job that during the execution of my duty led to three different attempts on life. One man with a baseball bat, another through strangulation and the third with a knife. And this isn't the only time I have faced death and lived to tell the tale. I have been through a terrible car crash, in my youth I have been knocked out in a night club with my head being kicked about like a football while I lay unconscious on the floor, and hurtled uncontrollably down a mountain slope after being knocked off my skies while on holiday. When I was just a small boy I experienced the frill of flying in a plane when the engines failed in mid-flight, and then having to make an emergency landing at some small airport somewhere in Africa. From being crushed on the football terraces to standing up to bullies I have tasted fear, and believe me it can be frightening.

But as the saying goes "stick and stones may brake my bones but words will never hurt" I wish this was only true because when you have a wife, and young children, you become very vulnerable. You have to think about their safety and the fact that you can't be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week to protect them. We decided to move. Sometimes you can stand and fight, and sometimes you can run! Well we did neither. We just moved on to a bigger and better house and left behind that small minded women who one day will be laying stiff in a box while her soul goes to hell, and all because she couldn't drive like a lady.

Regards

Mark

Wii

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A printer is not the only piece of technology which has crept into the King household over Christmas. After much nagging by the children, which I have held my ground over the last two years, the dear wife thought it would be a good time to get a joint present for them.

She had found in her own words 'a fantastic deal' on a Wii. Yes one of them electronic game machines. True to her boast she had and it was very hard to say no after all the hard work she had put into finding it.

The other bits of modern machinery to recently arrive are touch screen telephones. Both our old contracts finished in the same month, and after discussing the pros and cons we decided to upgrade to 3G phones. 4G is now being rolled out across the U.K, but at the moment there has been quite a bad press about problems with the system so we decided to take one G step at a time.

The children loved the Wii but it caused more problems than it solved with a new set of arguments while they fought over what games to play, and whose turn it was to play. Because we now have games on our phones we let one of the little rascals play on it while the other was on the Wii. Then they both wanted to play on the phones so the Wii is now sitting in the corner while the good wife and myself have two phones that are constantly flat, and who spend their time being recharged when not used like gaming machines in an amusement arcade.

I must say I did get a fright yesterday when driving home with the news on the radio, and there was a feature about children running up hundreds of pounds in charges on their parents phones by playing games that charge a small fee to buy extra add-ons.

I'm now waiting eagerly for my next bank statement to see if my monthly direct debit for my phone hasn't left me bankrupt.

What is most worrying about the whole thing with the Wii is that we had to ask our nine year daughters advice on how to set it up, and what is even more worrying is that both her and my five year old son know how to use the phone better than both myself and the wife.

If I had thought about it I should have waited until the children got back from school on Monday to see if they could have set up the new printer; they may have done the job in half the time it took me.

Now that is a sobering thought!

Regards

Mark

The Printer

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I had planned to spend the day writing my manuscript to Daniel Jones Doom the sequel to Frenzy a Daniel Jones story, but like I say there is always a but. I didn't write a single word.

For the last four months we have not had the use of a printer at home so when there were any documents we needed to print I would have to load it on a memory stick, and then head to the local copy shop to get it printed off there. It was a nuisance and with a cost to go with it. So in the run up to Christmas the wife and myself let it be known the King household would like a printer from Father Christmas; nothing too fancy and one duly arrived on the big day.

It has been in the box ever since until Sunday when the dear wife attempted to set it up. After an hour she called for my help because the cartridge kept getting stuck, and that was the first step that needed to be taken before she could go any further. As I was cooking the Sunday roast lunch, and had enjoyed a few glasses of cider I really didn't have the time, or was in the right frame of mind to do much other than take a quick look when she called out.

On Monday morning she was on the phone to the supplier stating it was faulty and making arrangements to have it replaced. I volunteered to take a look at it before she went out to her appointment for her eye-brow wax, and after a minute or two I had solved the cartridge problem. Then I spent the afternoon setting it up on both our laptops which I must admit did take a couple of hours for each machine. By 5pm I had the printer working on both and the wife was over the moon.

In fact she was so delighted she phoned her mother to exclaim 'we have managed to set it up.' I thought it ironic when she said 'we had done it' and not that I had done it single handed with her sole contribution being a cup of tea she brought me. But never mind we now have a printer at long last.

We are supposed to live in the new future of paperless communication but this is one of those myths we have come to believe which isn't true; alongside the other lie which is technology is reliable when it fact it never lasts more than two years at best before it breaks down.

All of you now reading this no matter where you live around the world will have some electronic gadget that is either stuffed in some draw, or packed away in the garage, or loft and is no longer of any use. But the fact is most of us are now hooked on some type of gadget and it would be hard for most people to go back to living a life without it.

Regards

Mark

Pissed off

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I don't know why but I've have woken up on the wrong side of the bed today. It's was only 07.45 in the morning when I started to write this blog in the U.K and I was already pissed off. I should be in a good mood because after six months of tramping through car show rooms and scanning the sales pages we have a new family car.

Our old Peugeot 407 SE 2.2. ltr car has gone and so has hopefully the expensive running costs that went with it. Now we have a 2013 Chevrolet Spark LTZ and with it's 1.2 ltr engine so the running costs should be cut in half. It's a bit tight when someone as big as myself climbs in and especially when the whole family are in, but still it's a time to be thankful, and not pissed off as I feel right now.

Maybe it's just the New Year blues that we are supposed to feel after all the celebrating after Christmas? Maybe its because of my tooth. After three visits in six weeks I thought the problem had been sorted, and without the need to have it pulled out as the last dentist I saw wanted to do, but yesterday while enjoying a cup of tea while chomping on a biscuit half my temporary filling came out. Within the hour my tooth became sensitive and I fear I am back to were I started six weeks ago. Ten days pain free in which I could once again chew food without fear disappeared in just a few seconds.

What do I do now?

Do I go back to the dentist for a fourth time, admit defeat and let them pull out my tooth which I have been carefully looking after for the last forty five years?

Or do I try and fix it myself? I could purchase from the chemist a filling repair kit and try to refill it!

The saga has been going on and on and you are probably as fed up with it all as I am? But then again you probably have been through a similar situation at some point in your life. Basically if the dentists' did their job properly in the first place I shouldn't have gone through six weeks of which at times has been terrible pain. But that's the thing about the NHS in Britain because it basically free at point of use it's very hard to complain about your standard if treatment. Of course if I had had to pay hundreds, or maybe even thousands of pounds, then it would have been a different matter. I would have expected the job to be done correctly the first time around and would have acted differently if it hadn't.

Never mind life goes on and there are millions of people around the world who are going through a lot more pain than myself at this present moment so I should be grateful it's not a lot worse. And if any of you are suffering from pain at the moment I wish you a speedy recovery.

Regards
Mark


  

And now it's all over.

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The decorations are down, the children are back at school and now it's all over. Yes for another eleven months at least.

I managed to even make it back to the gym this morning for a 45 minutes work out on the running machine. Well I should say it was more like a brisk walk, but still it was good after two weeks of feasting. I had planned to go over the Christmas period but the pain from my tooth ache was too much for me to take alongside the pain of  sweating in a gym. 

Now it's time to hanker down for the cold, wet winter month's of January and February. By the look of the weather in America with the freezing snow, plus the west of Great Britain which has been battered by storms, and floods, we will all need to batten down the hatches.

Of course we are lucky in the west because we can shut the curtains, turn on the heating, make a nice hot mug of tea, and forget all about the conditions outside. Millions of people aren't so lucky especially for those living in refuge accounts. It can look strange to see snow in the Middle East but its falling there too.

I'm just thankful nothing major seems to happen in my town when it comes to the weather, or geology, and long may it last that way.

Regards

Mark.

 

 

I'm back and it feels like 2014

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I'm back and it feels like 2014.

For all of my followers around the the world who logged onto my blog at always-hanging-around over the last week expecting my usual Tuesday, and Friday, posting I'm sorry for their nonappearance, but I decided to take a break over the festive period. On Christmas day and Boxing day I was totally technology free. No Blogging, no Twitter, no Facebook, no checking emails, in fact I turned off my mobile as well as the laptop.

But it wasn't the same for some people. I did read that 1500 British people filed their yearly tax returns on-line on Christmas Day! Then hundreds of thousands of people, and maybe a lot more spent this day of celebration on their computer shopping.

Why in hell would you want to do this? So you may not be a Christen fare enough, but as the saying goes 'when in Rome do as the Romans do.' It doesn't matter what belief you have, or even non-belief, but when there is a good dam excuse to take 24 hrs off why not take it?

I think it's sad.

At the end of the day it's each individuals choice what they do on any particular day, and it's not my business to tell anyone how they should spend their time. All I can do is take control of my own life, and to make it as enjoyable for others around me who share my time. And on Christmas day I enjoyed it with nine other family members, plus Pippin the puppy, as we feasted for ten hours in my home.

I decided my tooth which was still playing up wouldn't ruin my day, so I pumped my system with pain killers, and alcohol, and before I knew it the day was coming to an end.

I would like to be able to go into more detail but in half an hour I'm off for an appointment, because after two months of pain, two previous visits to the dentist, and a shed load of money spent on pain relief, I can no longer live with my dodgy, and now very painful tooth. I am going to the dentist and I'm  determined to get this problem sorted once and for all.

So I wish you all the best for 2014 and hope it is pain free not just for myself but also for you.

Regards

Mark.