Monthly Archives: July 2023

Back to Work – Day 3 – The Owner Returns & I Make Plans

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We had a quiet morning. I had all the parcels done before my workmate arrived, the customers filtered in, we bought, we sold and we relaxed. The owner returned home in the early afternoon and came to work immediately as he arranged to meet a client. Personally, I would have left it until Monday, but that’s life at the cutting edge of retail.

My new glasses are performing well, though a couple of bits of plastic in frame shouldn’t be too difficult to manufacture and there’s a limit to the number of things that can be wrong. The main problem I find is that the frames aren’t wide enough, which eventually makes them crack. these have sprung hinges, so that won’t happen. Actually, they aren’t glasses, are they? They have no glass in them.

I now have a timeline for retirement. It needs a few more details but we seem to have covered all the main points. The difficult part is knowing the best time for us to retire as Julia is younger than me. We want to be in the bungalow for Christmas next year but that’s nearly a year before she retires. I don’t think it’s worth worrying about, but she seems to be vacillating about whether retire to early or not. I get so annoyed by the way she’s treated at work I’ve suggested that she retires now, as we won’t be much worse off and can work round it. We do, after all, have a low cost lifestyle.

Books . . .

I am going to start adding more tasks to the timeline, plus mileposts, Key Performance Indicators, landmarks and a roadmap. I may have made some of them up, but you get the idea. I will be writing about targets soon, so had better brush up on my jargon so I can sound knowledgeable.

Books are going first. Some will be offered to specialist dealers or go into auction, many will go to charity shops and quite a few are destined for recycling. Some books, it pains me to admit, are just not worth anything. Some of them haven’t been opened for thirty years, so I’m not going to spend good money on transport just so I can clutter up another house. Those days have gone.

I will be putting parts of my collection on eBay, starting in the autumn, and other bits and pieces are destined for auction or a skip. I still have a lot of stuff inherited from my grandfather – including a magnifier for a 1950s TV (they only had 7″ screens in those days), a valve tester and a variety of hand tools that I will never use.

There are also 12 plastic boxes of military surplus clothing from my market days in the garage. They have been unreachable for ten years and if they aren’t mouse bedding by now they will be going to the charity.

The more I think of it, the more stuff I remember that I need to get rid of. I was happier when I wasn’t planning . . .

Books by Paul Hollywood

 

 

Back to Work – Day 2 – The End of the Nightmare

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We dived straight in to packing this morning and managed to get quite a bit done before the first customers arrived. They were a lot easier than yesterday’s crowd,  the emails and telephone calls were all easier too and by 3pm everything was done and the desks were clear. launched into it, saw a few customers and ended up at 3pm with a clean slate. It was nice to have  a change of pace. There will be a few things to sort out tomorrow when the  owner returns but most things are up to date.

I now have nine months before I retire. In that time I could have a baby, so it’s surely time to sort out the decluttering. We will see . . . Julia is not convinced.

Last night, as part of the retirement process, I looked into my state pension arrangements. It is not riveting stuff and only an accountant would enjoy a blog post on the subject, so I will skirt round the subject. I will get a letter in seven months time and I have to decide whether to claim my pension or defer it. You can get extra pension by deferring it, but the figures suggest that I am better just taking it as soon as possible. That, to be honest, is my view on all these matters. Being sensible and putting things off for a little long term benefit is grand if you are forty and fit. I’m sixty five and I’m fraying round the edges so priorities change.

I may defer my retirement for a few months (the extra pay will be welcome) but I will claim the pension as soon as it becomes due.

Having braved the terrors of the pensions website  last night, I am going to apply for a passport and a blue badge over the next few months. Next year I will also apply for a free bus pass. If I’m going to be old I may as well embrace it. I’ve just been looking at the bus timetables – just over three hours from Peterborough to Norwich. I can take sandwiches, stare out of the window, maybe stop off at Wisbech or Swaffham, and fully embrace my role as an elderly eccentric. If I’d known it was going to be this good I would have retired years ago.

Simon Wilson, Nottingham Poet

Simon Wilson, Elderly Eccentric

Back to Work – Day 1 – Nightmare

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I don’t understand why we had to shut the shop for  week. We could have kept it open with just two of us working. We’ve done that before and it works OK. If we had, we wouldn’t have come back to a pile of emails and a stack of sales. But that’s what happens when you work for someone else. When I was self-employed I could make my own decisions, but the hours were longer and the pay was more erratic. It’s swings and roundabouts.

Though we had a note on the site telling people that we were away for a week (it’s an eBay thing and the message is clear to see) we had several cases of people writing then writing again – “didn’t you get my last message?” was a common refrain from people who are clearly not able to see the prominently displayed holiday message.

Heavily stamped envelope

One man, a German, wrote us half a dozen messages, including one where he complained that he couldn’t understand our replies and that we should write to him in German. The messages he couldn’t understand were the automatic replies set by eBay, telling him we were on holiday. I was very polite, and pointed out that every one of my replies had included a German translation and that if he needed one he could get a translation from Google. I was tempted to mention that I’d appreciate an English translation when he was writing, but didn’t. Strange though, that he should be so keen on me doing something that he won’t do. Generally a translation is little effort, but when you have so much mail to get through, each extra keystroke seems like a mammoth task.

One of them has even gone as far as to give us negative feedback because we didn’t reply within a week.  He is returning an item from America, has used the cheapest (least secure) method of postage and, just days after posting it has accused us of ignoring him and trying to rip him off by not telling him the item has been returned. I have news for him – international post is not that fast. As an additional problem he has returned it by ordinary post as he felt the appropriate secure postage rate was too expensive. I look forward to future developments on that when it disappears in transit.

Heavily stamped envelope

Irish Customs are back to normal – they received a parcel in Dublin and decided to send it back as it didn’t have the correct documentation. It did have the correct documentation, it’s just that Irish Customs interpret the regulations differently to us, and differently to the rest of Europe. Nobody knows why and nobody will explain. They say it is due to insufficient information on the customs label, but we fill in every box on the form and most of the parcels are allowed through. I think that they just select some at random and send them back.

Mallard stamp

Meanwhile, after answering all the emails, and all the phone calls, and attending to all the customers who found it necessary to call in on our first day back, we still had a mountain of stuff to send off. That, I’m afraid, proved to be too much for us and we still have nearly half of it to do. It’s annoying, as we pride ourselves on our level of service, but some things are just not possible.

On a lighter note – my new glasses arrived and they seem OK. And we had chips for tea. We both had gruelling first days back and neither of us felt like cooking.

Holidays, are they really worth it?

More Stampish Inspiration

Holiday – Day 8 – Part 2 Fish & Chips Remembered

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I have had two poems accepted for the next Blithe Spirit, which is good. I have broken my glasses (the second pair in two weeks), which is bad. It’s also what you expect when you buy cheap glasses from Amazon and then treat them badly. Today’s set should be repairable, if I had a screw of the correct size, but nobody ever does. I could, I suppose, take one out of another broken pair, but that relies on the screws being compatible and my eyes being good enough to get it all back together. It’s easier just to buy four new pairs for £9. And that, of course, is one of the things that defines our throwaway society.

I would say that is depressing, but it isn’t, not compared to facing up to retirement.

Julia, Sutton-on-Sea

On the way past Peterborough yesterday I went to have a look round at where we will be living after we move. I lived in the area from about 1967 to 1977 and there’s something depressing about going back. I’m not quite sure why, as it’s not a bad area and I had a happy time there. I think it’s because I feel a crushing sense of failure compared to the hopes and ambitions I had as a youth. I also remember the 20 mile walks I used to take in the countryside, and compare them to my current state. If I were to stay in Nottingham this feeling wouldn’t be the same, as I never had such high hopes.

Hake and Chips in Cromer

We will be living near a country park and preserved steam railway. I’m quite excited about the country park, even if it does mean using a mobility scooter, less excited by the steam railway. They always seem like a good idea but don’t really deliver. The Nene Valley Railway is quite a good one, and we used to go on the Thomas Specials with the kids at Christmas. This was enjoyable, but even now that they have extended the line a trip from one end to the other will take just over one and a half hours, including two breaks to let you look around the stations.  We did look at the steam railways in Norfolk while we were there (there are three) but they didn’t quite fit with what we wanted to do. I may see about this trip later in the year. Actually, when looking for a link, I find there are possibly as many as six steam railways in Norfolk, though some of them may be a bit small.

Haddock Special at the Fishpan, Scarborough

The Fish & Chip Special on the North Norfolk Railway costs £28 per person. It’s expensive for Fish & Chips but not bad value for a dining experience. Look at this – celebrity chef Tom Kerridge defending the £35 fish and chips her serves up at Harrods. The problem for me isn’t the price or the quality – it’s at Harrods after all, and you expect to overpay. For me the problem is that the bread roll and butter is £6 and that when you read the reviews the service appears to leave something to be desired at times. Also, if I’m going ti be picky, I take issue with his comments on the fish served by others – the fish served with the meals in the picture are all excellent pieces of fish. In general though, I agree with him that  top quality fish and chips sold in Harrods is worth paying extra for. Fish and Chips from our local shop is now up around £10 a portion so they are no longer a cheap meal. They are, however, usually a very good meal. Well, from the point of view of taste and enjoyment. From a health perspective they are less good.

 

Haddock Special at the Dolphin Fish Bar, Sutton on Sea

Holiday – Day 8 – The Final Day

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Beach Huts at Southwold, Suffolk

Subtitle – Bronchitis, Beach Huts and Boredom

I’m a bit tired today. You can tell this because I slept through the alarm without noticing it. When I did get up I found a grey day waiting and, several hours later nothing much has changed. It has been grey, it has been wet, is has been almost sunny and now it is wet again. A pigeon is perching on the top of the garden fence, I was tempted to call it disgruntled, but it actually looks quite calm. I’m the disgruntled one. Raining, back to work, what’s to be happy about? Well, Julia is making a bacon sandwiches as a late breakfast, so it’s not all bad.  Actually, going back to work isn’t that bad, as I like my job. Mainly. And, as I have no plans to go outside today, the rain is a matter of indifference. Maybe I should cheer up and count my blessings.

Perhaps I’m just tired from last night. It was a bit of  marathon journey which, amongst other things, fighting my way past King’s Lynn with a sat-nav that is not only out of date, but in one case gave me the wrong information. I also had to trail along behind a couple of tractors and trailers at different times, find that a road I normally use has been closed by roadworks wait twenty minutes for 5 trains to pass on the East Coast Main Line, thread my way through Grantham (A1 closed overnight for yet more roadworks). What chance of a route involving two road closures? It was a long slow tip, though by using the country roads we were able to get a good view of a hare by the roadside. Even better, I get to use the word lagomorph. That’s not a word I get much chance to use.

Photos are from yesterday. It was not the sort of day you would confuse with summer. In Australia they have sharks and skin cancer as hazards on the beach. We have to contend with bronchitis and boredom.

Toilet on the beach at Weybourne. It is not as interesting as it sounds.

With its own Post Code. However, I note it shares the Post Code with the Village Hall. Don’t get them confused.

Holiday – Day 5, Day 6, Day 7 . . .

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Sorry, I decided at the last minute that I wouldn’t take the lap-top to Norfolk with me when we popped down for a couple of days. It was a spur of the moment decision, and not necessarily one of my best planned.  However, it was nice to have a few days off from the computer, even if it did leave a gap in my title sequence.

This wasn’t my choice of holiday, as I may have mentioned. I’m happy enough with a visit to Number one Son, but not particularly happy with the choice of week, which was sprung on me as an unwelcome surprise. Of course, while we were away the roofer turned up to start work. Typical.

Because it’s only a couple of weeks until the school summer holidays, a lot of people were trying to fit in a holiday before everything becomes too crowded. Of course, this just means it is crowded with people who don’t have kids. Car parking spaces were almost non-existent, camper vans were parked haphazardly (they seem to be becoming more popular) and tempers became frayed. Well, one temper definitely became frayed.

Barge on River Alde at Snape Maltings

Southwold was crowded, Snape Maltings was crammed and Holt looked like a scene from a zombie movie, if the zombies were all white-haired, accompanied by their wives and dressed in shorts and sandals.I have nothing against elderly men, in fact some of my most loyal readers may fit that description, come to think of it, so do I. The difference is that I don’t expose my shiny ivory legs to public gaze whilst wandering into the road and pointing out the joys of Georgian architecture to my long-suffering wife.

We had Monday’s lunch in the car park at Dunwich, which was not crowded. It seldom is. On Tuesday we also found a quiet spot, accompanied by a few cars a rusty bulldozer and some toilets, one of which has its own postcode.

We will be going back again during the summer but will do it as a daytrip. Then we will probably visit again in September after the kids are back at school. Not the first week they go back, as experience shows that can be busy – we will wait for a couple of weeks.I’m hoping it will be quiet and the weather will still be good.

It’s late and I’m not sure where I put my camera, so will post photos tomorrow, The photos with the post will be old photos from previous visits. They are probably better than the ones I took on this trip.

On Dunwich beach

 

 

Holiday Day 4 – Decay, Declutter and Downsize

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We went into the garden this afternoon, sorting out the shed because we  have promised Number One Son some tools for his new house. It’s amazing what rubbish I have stored when I should really have binned it.

However, the first thing we noticed was that the guttering had come off the shed at one end. It’s been raining quite a lot and it has also ben quite blustery. The shed has started to rot a little in places and the screws at one end have pulled out. With no decent wood left to screw it into and, to be honest, no idea how to get a bracket off the gutter, I resorted to green garden wire and blue polypropylene string. It’s a very agricultural look, but it should hold it until the builders come to do the house gutters. If they ever come . . .

I have a hint for all homeowners. Move before 30 years in a property. We need a new back door and the gutter fixing (though other parts of the shed are showing their age too. The other shed, made out of wood that was less well prepared was taken down a few years ago.

As things stand, we will be taking a bag of hand tools with us, a bag of books, two household appliances and the last of his clothes. I reckon if we move this much each week it will only take us three or four years to clear the the house. It’s just a shame that we want to be out in less that 18 months, and that the shed will probably disintegrate before then, now it has started.

The photograph is part of my Sweetheart Brooch Collection – at the end of the war (1917 according to Wikipedia) the Army stated to issue overseas service chevrons – red for service in 1914 and blue for other years. The maximum that could be awarded was six – one red and five blue.  This would involve someone fighting through from 1914 to the end of the war in Russia in 1919 and I’m not sure how many people managed that. I’ve never seen a set of six, and never seen a set of five blue ones either. However, I digress.

These badges were meant for men to wear (the crescent fittings were meant to go through the buttonhole on a man’s jacket, and is a hybrid Sweetheart/Regimental Brooch.  It’s a subject area of its own and I have started a post on Sweethearts, as well as mentioning them before, so I may make sure I get down to finishing the half-complete post.

In the meantime, note how the two pieces seem to screw together, though I’m not quite sure how they manged it when you see how they fit. It was clearly a case of buying a badge and specifying the number of chevrons – a cunning marketing ploy. The Patent Date appears to be 1918 and the maker was TLM – Thomas L Mott, who made a lot of fine Victorian sweetheart brooches too. He also did loads of other jewellery, often using butterfly wing, as a quick search of his name will prove. Yes, butterfly wing – I shudder at the thought.

Wiltshire Regiment (Reverse)

Wiltshire Regiment (Front)

Holiday Day 3 Part 2 Me v the NHS

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This is about day 3 but written on Day 4. Day 4 will follow later.

Yesterday I went for my Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) Screening. It’s a free NHS service available to men at the age of 65. It used to be 67 (which was when I first heard of it, when one of the shop customers warned me about it as one of the signs of ageing).

To have the procedure you first have to sit in a temporary waiting room with notices sellotaped to the wall. One of the notices details the terms and conditions of how they will treat your records and tells you that if you don’t agree to them you can’t have the screening and they will report this to your GP. This rather ominous start to the process would benefit from a redesign. I have found before that although they employ thousands of clerical staff in the NHS they don’t seem to have anyone capable of communicating in a cheery and welcoming manner.

After sitting around for a bit, comparing how old I looked compared to the others in the room, I came to the conclusion that I was looking about average for a 65-year-old and that none of them had facial hair. It’s something I have noticed before. I was unusual in my generation for having a beard, though in later generations it has become widespread. Just an observation . . .

 

None of them had tattoos either. That’s something else that we didn’t do, but the younger generation does.

And none of us was staring at the screen of a  mobile phone.

I’ll stop the list now.

I was then taken along to a room where I had to answer some undemanding questions (name, address, date of birth, ethnicity and whether I had read the leaflets they had sent me.) I failed the last one as I hadn’t, but I had looked at the pictures so I had the general idea.

Then I was made to lie down on a bed where my feet hung off the end whilst the lady spread me with gel and kept prodding me with the thing they use for scanning. I haven’t a clue what they would call it. Maybe a probe (though that sounds a bit intrusive) or a scanner (though that might be confused with  other sorts of scanning technology) r even a wand. It was a bit wand shaped. It appears that my aorta was not easy to find. It seemed to take a long time. However, she was persistent and tactful and never mentioned my girth.

There are four results. One is that you are fine with no abnormalities and can be signed off, never to be seen again. One is that you have signs causing concern. Aneurysms grow slowly so you get another scan in 12 months to check. If you have more signs causing concern they have you back every three months. The fourth is that you have cause for major concern, in which case they hand you over to the medical team who will, in the worst cases, operate.

I am in category one and have been signed off. It’s a good result. Three monthly checks would have been very annoying, probably more annoying than the operation. The visits would be made even worse by the chaotic nature of the parking and the unhelpful maps and (incorrect and contradictory) information on the website.

It rained as I left and, being in shirt sleeves, I got soaked in the 200 yards walking (slowly) to the car. I then had to find the exit, drive past it and do a three point turn to face the correct angle to get out. Still, it could have been worse. It’s always good to get away from hospital without having to take your trousers off.

Holiday Day 3

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The holiday progresses and the title becomes ever more ironic as I fail to notice I am on holiday.

Today I rise just before the alarm, spend some time sitting on the bed staring into space (it was not a restful night) and scurry about getting ready for taking Julia to work. She has made breakfast and I eat whilst watching Shappi Khorsandi on the news. She has now added neurodiversity to her portfolio of subjects.

By coincidence, I was reading about adult ADHD a few days ago. It seems to be the latest fashionable condition. I have most of the symptoms, but seem to have missed out on the hyperactivity. I also, as you may recall, have most of the symptoms of Long Covid. And autism. I also have trouble with numbers when they are in long lists or balance sheets. They waver about and I find myself looking into a void of untrustworthy, moving numbers. I could probably make a case for having some sort of condition there. It’s not Dyscalculia because I can cope with calculations, I just panic when faced with balance sheets and other lists of numbers, including things like lists of key dates for coins. This is a disadvantage when you work in a coin shop.

I also, to be honest, exhibit many signs of cyberchondria.

Drawing back to boring reality for a moment, I was going to tell you that I took Julia to work, rediscovered my ability to navigate round Nottingham (which I lost during lockdown) and arrived back home at 8.58. Loss of navigational skills is, by the way, an early sign of dementia.

I then sat down at the computer, read and answered comments and at 9.15 started to write. BY 9.42 I was well underway with a massive digression about mental health (I’d meant this to be a blow by blow account of my morning) when there was a knock on the door. It was my delivery from yesterday.

My conclusion, when considering the subject of mental health conditions is that we all have plenty of symptoms but we don’t need to get a diagnosis unless we want to write a book about it and drum up some sales.

It’s 9.58 now and I have blogged, digressed and opened a parcel to find it contains the correct order. That will do for now, as I have a list of things to do and am about to do more of them.

To select photographs I searched for “tree” and picked a couple out.

Drowned Tree at Clumber Park

Holiday Day 2 Part 2

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The Trees of Sherwood Forest

More Trees of Sherwood Forest

Sunday Sunbeams in Sherwood Forest

Those are links to three posts I did about Sherwood Forest. Some of them seem to be in galleries, so must date from the time I struggled with the new editor. Looking at them I wonder if it my be worth trying again. I just wish they would leave it alone and would keep it simple. I’m here to write, not to become computer literate to keep up with constantly changing systems. My brain is not wired like that.

However, I haven’t come here to complain about WP and modern life.

I just came here to add some links to blogs about Sherwood Forest. I’m sure there must be more, but I have probably omitted the word “Sherwood” from the titles.

Julia is not happy with me. We have, as I may have mentioned once or twice, been married 33 years. Two nights ago she dreamed that I was conduct an affair with another women. This is clearly not a likely scenario as I am a man of great fidelity. I am also lazy, bad at lying and, to be frank, look more like a tramp than a paramour.

What she really took offence a was the fact that I described her as s “squeaky guinea pig”. I pointed out that it was her dream and she couldn’t blame me for what I did in her dream. It clearly irked her though, as she kept going back to it.

It would have been better if I hadn’t added, after holding this conversation half a dozen times, that if I were to describe her as anything in the pet line it would be a hamster because although they are small and squeaky, they are also cutely rotund. I won’t make that mistake again.

And I definitely won’t do my impression of a hamster using my fingers to form cheek pouches.

I thought I’d add some pictures of her looking glamorous to try and dig myself out of this one.

Julia – looking sophisticated in Bakewell