Did I tell you I’d had a second acceptance? I’ve checked back on my posts and don’t seem to have done. It’s a good feeling and to a large extent I seem to have dismissed the jaded mood of the last couple of months. Am I really that simple that my entire mood can be lifted by two editors accepting poems? It seems so. I’m hoping that this moves on into the writing of cheerful poetry as the general tone of the last round of submissions was fairly depressing.
The car repair went smoothly and didn’t cost as much as I was expecting as the £130 seems to hve included VAT and fitting seems to have been cheap. maybe it was, as they said, just a case of clicking one out and clicking one back in again. It’s still not cheap at £130 and I am still annoyed. There is a lot of choice out there in cars and I feel that VW may just have been crossed off my mental list.
I have had two repairs on this car. One was for a part that wore out. It was a part of the system that sets off the engine warning lights. Years ago you didn’t have this system, so you never had to repair it. Same goes for the latest switch – years ago you just had a handbrake with a cable. I once snapped a cable. It was cheap to replace. It didn’t cost £130 for a cheap plastic switch that you didn’t need in the first place.
A cynic may say that car designers are simply designing in features which aren’t necessary and which generate work for car makers and mechanics.
Imagine a world where the government passes a law to say all writing instruments must be fitted with safety guards (because pens are dangerously pointed) and that this equipment must be tested every year. Suddenly Pen Safety Tester ill become a job, there will be qualifications to be gained, Continuing Professional Development course to be taken every year and failure certificates will be issued (leading to large bills for replacing cheap plastic parts. Soon a multi-million pound industry will have grown up around the provision of pen safety guards . . .
Far fetched? Is it?
Just wait until Dyson gets involved and develops a part with needs replacing regularly, just like those bloody hoover filters. The cost of writing will goo up, the size of pens will increase and Sir James Dyson will add another zero to his bank balance. I had the same Hoover for twenty years, reused the same bag for most of that time and was persuaded to replace it with a more modern version. The modern ones aren’t built so well and require more replacement parts – result – my floor is no cleaner but vacuum cleaner companies make a lot more money.
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