10 February

170th anniversary of the marriage of Victoria & Albert. And muckle guid may the knowledge thereof dae ye.

Scattering of snow on the ground this morning at first light. Heavy shower of powdery snow during the morning, light flurries this afternoon as I write. One is getting tired of this. Especially at a time when (see previous posts) one is surrounded by mediocrity.

Phone rang yesterday early evening: 'your delivery will be there tomorrow between 08:00 and 13:00'. Good. Checked website late morning (absent delivery by that point): 'your delivery will be there between 11:45 and 15:45'. Great, thought I: another day sterilised. Well, they were both right. The fridge-freezer arrived at 12:35, but damaged. They could have seen it before they removed the clear plastic packaging. They made it half-way to the door, at which point I said 'damaged - back you go'. Had the damage been on the side that didn't show, I'd have haggled a hefty price reduction. Not so, alas, so back it went, after some more or less acrimonious discussion of new delivery dates, and a reminder to pick up a lump of expanded polystyrene they'd left lying on the roadway. I feel sorry for the fellows who are at the customer-facing end of the mediocre consumer transaction, but they hardly covered themselves in glory.

Gracious provider of pension, on the other hand, seems to be improving the internet service: after some fiddling at the local exchange, downstream speed is almost half as fast again as last time it was tested, so maybe we're winning. But I still have a kitchen full of displaced fridge and freezer. Veteran blog readers will recall the fun when I was buying a fridge-freezer for the 2004 kitchen rebuild at Smith Towers. Looks like being a similar experience.