Service, various

I eventually got an acknowledgement from British Gas to my two-page catalogue of their incompetence and discourtesy.  They aim to reply substantively within eight weeks, no less.  Well, there’s a surprise.  In the meantime they have sent me a flyer offering a discount on a replacement boiler!  They are the last company we’d go to.

In stark contrast, the new food processor turned up the day after we ordered it, and seems satisfactory: we haven’t used it yet.  The old accessories don’t fit the new machine, of course, and the shop doesn’t take old machines back for recycling, so we were reconciled to the prospect of a trip to the tip.  Until it occurred to me to give Freegle a try.  This used to be known as Freecycle, and we’ve made a lot of use of it over the years.  I thought it was a bit of a long shot, since the bowl was broken and replacements are no longer available.  Sure enough, someone wanted it for the accessories, and came to collect it this morning. I packed it in the box that the new one came in, so that too has had a second life.

A brighter day

 

The food processor I nabbed from Mum’s place back in 1998 has served us pretty well for the ensuing 23 years, albeit with a replacement bowl or two.  When the last bowl broke, we learned that it has been discontinued.  What?  After only 40 years?  A repair with contact adhesive worked for a batch of pastry and some bread crumbing, but then failed.  I got a discount on the replacement machine, and a voucher for another useful accessory, so the shocking cost of said replacement was slightly relieved.  Getting rid of the packaging is another story.

The afternoon was much less dreich than of late, so I did a brief stint in the garden.  The hellebores look very promising, and are now relieved of the manky old foliage.  Some of the bulbs we planted last year are starting to show themselves.  I spent half an hour in the front garden the other day, doing a spot of weeding and pruning, so am getting back into the little-and-often gardening regime whenever the ancient joints permit.

Elegant non-committal drafting

 Thus from our MP, in response to my 18 January post, Getting it off one’s chest:

Thank you for your email.

 

I do understand your dismay and anger about the revelations of what has happened in Downing Street.

 

It was clearly wrong that these gatherings took place. The next question is what should happen as a consequence. For an elected Prime Minister to be removed from office is a big step. So I do think it is right to consider the results of the inquiry that is taking place. But when I do I will reflect carefully on your view, which you express very clearly.

 

With best wishes and thanks for taking the trouble to write to me.

On this day…

 …fifty years ago, also a grey Monday morning, I turned up at 2-12 Gresham Street, EC2, for the first of 10660 (I think) days on the payroll of the Post Office and later its offshoot BT.  My first assignment, symbolically enough, was to room G01 - room N°1 on the ground floor.  My rise through the ranks was hardly meteoric, but I managed to rack up enough promotions to get me a good pension, and have now been drawing it for nearly 21 years.  That’s probably the most notable achievement of my salaried life.  Jobs of one kind and another took me to many different countries, in some of which I could eventually use the languages I’d studied at school and university.  But of all the subjects I dabbled in, I think it was history that gave me the skills of research, analysis and argumentation that my work called for.  Let nobody talk down the value of a broad-based arts degree.  

I’ve maundered on in the past about the Post Office and BT, and their curious ways, language and addiction to reorganisation, so won’t go back into that.  Living was not too easy in the early years.  Flat-sharing was a necessary evil, relieved by kind, generous relatives who gave me lodgings at intervals (I was the boomerang nephew for some years).  Eight years into salaried work I was finally able, aged 30, to buy a comfortable little house.  I could have done so a few years earlier.  I wonder how many of today’s graduates can do the same?  Similarly, I doubt if many, if any, can expect to stay and progress steadily through a variety of jobs with the same employer throughout their working life, let alone retire at 50 with a decent index-linked pension.  Though I grizzle about the afflictions of age, I know I have much to be grateful for.

Getting it off one’s chest

Thus to our MP:

It will not have escaped your attention that a majority stronger even than yours was overturned at a recent by-election, and of course our local experience in [our ward] is perhaps an interesting reflection on the times.  R (who is our next-door neighbour) ought to have romped home, particularly in view of the respect we all had for her late Dad [whose untimely death created the vacancy].  She told me that she had quite a tough time on the doorsteps, and remarked to me that ‘of course, Boris isn’t helping!’.  This of course was before the latest scandals.

Others will have explained better than I can the revulsion felt by so many of us at the egregious, cynical behaviour of the PM and his entourage.  This stands in stark contrast to the willing sacrifices and suffering of so many.  Johnson ought to have gone after the Cummings episode.  Since then, he has repeatedly breached the Ministerial Code, wriggling out of his responsibility with excuses that sound feebler each time.  The current attempts to draw the fire away from Johnson by means of accelerated populist policy lash-ups just serve to underline the moral bankruptcy of the PM and his entourage.  

In times past, a prime minister thus compromised would long since have had the decency to resign.  He is plainly too pusillanimous to face up to his duty sua sponte, so, in the elegant words of a fellow Scot interviewed a few days ago, he wants a kick up the arse.  This could be administered by a vote of no confidence, a visit from the men in the grey suits or a suitably damning conclusion (however improbable) following Gray’s enquiry.  Which is it going to be?  For the good of the country and its shattered international reputation, one way or another, he has to go. 

Here comes another one

No news is good news, in case anyone was wondering about my silence.

With the exception of missing utilities, we’re starting the new year in good enough shape.  Telephone service was restored after ten days out of action: on that day, we were also awaiting a visit from the gas man to sort the boiler.  Good news: BT improved on its mediocre target by a day.  Bad news: British Gas neither showed up nor made contact on the due date.  I looked into my account on line next day to find that we were scheduled a visit that day.  This time, the fellow did turn up, and replaced the fan on the boiler.  Hurrah: warm bathrooms again, at last!  Fortunately it had been exceptionally mild for most of the time the central heating was on the fritz.  We’d managed to heat the house and water by other means.  My two-page snottygram cataloguing the sorry chronology of failures and delays should be on someone’s desk by now, together with a statement of our out-of-pocket added costs.  Meanwhile, we’ve shut down the direct debit for their so called HomeCare offering, and identified some local chaps who can provide service ad hoc. 

The garden is pretty dismal at this time of year, but we have at least had an ad hoc garden waste collection.  This encouraged me to do a bit more tidying out there so as to make sure the bin was worth emptying!  We have a bit of colour in pots on the steps up to the grass, and at the side of the house (where passers-by get the benefit) the clematis ‘Freckles’ is flowering well.  Magnolias and camellias are budding well, and a few bulbs are timidly poking their noses through the surface.  And I’ve finally got round to emptying the last two growing bags.

Just wondering whether the latest news of Downing Street’s flouting of Covid regulations will finally consign the current Rt Hon First Lord of the Treasury to his long awaited and richly deserved oblivion.  He has been in resignation territory for ages now, but integrity and accountability are words that conspicuously fail to figure in his vocabulary.  Trouble is, the potential replacements are about as bad.