Written yesterday – posted after I woke up and checked it for typos, boring bits and casual racism. The bit about American spelling needed a bit of alteration in regard to that last one. 

If people re stupid enough, or desperate enough, to climb into  recycling bin, they probably won’t take much notice of this sticker.

“That’s ironic.” said Julia, as I rescued a book from the bag we were emptying into a book bin in the car park at Sainsbury’s. It was a book on the subject of clearing your desk. Mine, in case you aren’t aware, is six inches deep in piles of rammel, and is going to be a big job when the decluttering process finally works its way round here.

I would take a picture to show you, but my battery just ran out and the spares are concealed in the piles of stuff on my desk. I suppose that is ironic too.

So is my rescue of another book – How to Win Friends and Influence People. It turns out that I have four copies (two of my own and two inherited from my father).  Four copies of a book about making friends. I’m not sure that if you remove my WP friends, that I actually have four friends. I’m not good at keeping in touch.

We gave the charity shops a rest today and took clothes and six bags of books to the bins in the supermarket car park. The book bin is nearly always full and to get all the books in, I had to put my arm all the way in and push them down the sides. That worked well until I released the hatch at the wrong moment. The “wrong moment” in this case being while I still had half a hand in the bin. For such a simple thing, just a pivoted chute, it makes a very efficient nipper of fingers.  Fortunately, there was no serious damage, though the fingers were a bit sore for the rest of the afternoon.

I’ve just flicked through the book I rescued. It turns out to be more about office politics and procedure than about decluttering. It will be back in the bag tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, something very unsettling happened. I was ordering something off the internet nd it had a space for “Language”. It was showing “English” with an American flag next to it, so I opened it up to look for “English” with a Union Jack. There wasn’t one. I’m seriously concerned that the Americans are launching an attack on not only the language, but ownership of the language.  First WP changed its spellchecking, then my email account (which is provided by British Telecom) did the same then Pizza Hut. I was writing them a stiffly worded protest about the quality of their pizza bases when I noticed the spellchecker was going mad. So I wrote them another complaint bout the use of American spellings on UK websites. English spellings of English words are under attack all over the place at the moment, and now it seems to have been annexed by the USA.

Use it by all means, alter it, let it grow, perhaps learn to spell it properly, but don’t try to claim ownership.  Next thing we know we will all be getting a note from Microsoft telling us that it will now cost us £9.99  month to use English on our computers.

Finally, as I close down and go to bed, I would like to report a victory over the Dunelm ordering system. I ordered the footstools (as I have decided to call them – see previous post for details of my ottomans/ottomen dilemma) and they will be delivered on Thursday. So will the bed, the mattresses nd the microwave. However, it’s a slightly Pyrrhic victory, as it’s coming by a different courier to the rest of the Dunelm order and they won’t give me a delivery time. Despite my best efforts it’s looking like I may be in for a whole day of useless waiting.

Stop Press: Just had an email from Currys – the microwave is on its way. I’m hoping they get the details right, because it is ordered for delivery tomorrow afternoon.

Ah well!