Tag Archives: IKEA

Death by a Thousand Cuts

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The Lake at Clumber Park

As I told you last night, the solicitor handling my conveyancing has been irritating me in a number of ways.

What I didn’t tell you was that we had a miserable journey home last night. First we came to an accident on a minor road and had to turn back because the police had closed the road. Not much of a problem for us, more a problem for the people in the accident. I hope they are well. This led to a detour along some narrow, potholed back roads. It ended up at a level crossing, where we queued. We had caught the same set of trains last week at a different crossing. There had been seven trains, taking about fifteen minutes to clear. This was Helpston – one to avoid if you can.  One rail forum says – “The level crossing at Helpston is notoriously busy. Six lines cross it – East Coast Mainline and the Cross Country route between Birmingham and Stansted Airport as well as a lot of freight. I believe it is closed for 45 mins in every hour.”

I don’t think it’s closed that much, but it’s bad when you catch it wrong. Yesterday there were 12 trains going through and a delay of about 20 minutes. I’ve never used that road before, and probably never will again. Where do all those trains come from?

Dead trees at Clumber park – the ground subsided into an old mine, the water flowed from then lake and the trees drowned.

If you read down to the bottom of the Helpston link there is an interesting bit about deodands, which were only, it seems, abolished in 1846. I thought they’d gone centuries before, but I did know that Trial by Combat lasted until the 19th century, so should have known better. Trial by Combat was abolished 1819 for those of you who are interested.

As a result of this delay and several slow lorries on the trip back, we ran into rush hour traffic on reaching Nottingham.

The builder has submitted his quote.Finally. It has taken ages and Tolstoy, in that time could have produced 10,000 classic words of timeless prose. He has produced one long sentence on his phone. It ends with a figure that resembles the national debt of one of our smaller nations. And it doesn’t say when he can start or whether it includes the 20% VAT. These things are all done, I swear, to irritate me.

Walkers in Clumber Park

I made another IKEA order last night. I went to the order page after filling my basket. New bed, two mattresses, 2 office cabinets, two display cabinets, bedding. My eyes were watering. My heart was fluttering. My aversion to spending money was under severe pressure. I pressed the button and it told me that they couldn’t give me a delivery date and I should try later. This gave me time to think about the office cabinets. They had some poor reviews, were supposedly difficult to put together and  would cost £50 a cabinet to use the assembly service. I decided to cancel them. It felt good. Then I decided to look at Dunelm.

The bed was nicer and the mattresses appear to be better value for money. IKEA lost the order. Dunelm will be delivering next week. Irritatingly, Dunelm won’t deliver the bedding at the same time. In fact they won’t deliver some of it at all, you have to go and pick it up. The final cut in tis story so far – the Dunelm ordering system is still trying to use the wrong address as my delivery address. Fortunately I spotted it this time.

More leaves on the floor

Delivery from IKEA is £45. Dunelm is £9.95.

I emptied my basket and let IKEA run free.

Then I had a call from the builder to see if I had had his quote. Two weeks to write it then gives me a couple of hours to accept it.

And there it is, my day of a thousand cuts. Nothing big enough to kill me but every one designed to weaken and annoy.

Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford

Me, Boasting

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St Edmund’s Chapel, Hunstanton

Here’s the minutes from the Numismatic Society meeting last week. I will quote them so you can’t avoid seeing them. It’s an exaggeration, but as somebody else is saying it I am happy to let it stand.

May be an image of text

Yes, I used it before, but didn’t mention it’s the wolf from the legend of Saint Edmund, King of east Anglia, killed by the Danes in 869. 

I can’t get into the image to edit is, so apologies for the typos. Also apologies for the length, I would, of course have cut it down to just the nice bits about me if I could.

We went to IKEA this afternoon. It was nearly as crowded as last time, despite the schools being back, but we did manage to get a decent parking spot. As we were looking I noticed a couple take a mother and baby spot, even though they clearly had no child. She had turquoise hair and he had tattoos and a singlet. Yes, I know it’s bad to make assumptions, but I’ve never met anyone wearing a singlet (apart from in a sporting context) who didn’t also breathe through his mouth. Parking restrictions mean nothing for these people.

We then went for lunch as I chattered on in a generally reactionary, elderly way. They only do one size of meatball portion now, so as I secured a table Julia added a couple of strawberry slices to round things off. It was a pleasant meal and fell in that middle ground between not being expensive, but not being exactly cheap either. Considering that they have always plastered the place with signs telling you that their low level of service is to keep the meals cheap, they never seem cheap enough. There aren’t so many signs like this these days, they have gone over to lecturing about food waste now. It’s strange how the Swedes have a reputation for loving freedom and being easy-going yet their biggest furniture business lectures you all the time. It was the same in the toilets – lots of signs about water use.  It’s all greenwashing, or virtue signalling, or whatever the latest word is. It’s not the water or the food waste that’s the problem – it’s the building and heating of massive buildings, moving stuff round the world and tempting teens of thousands of people to use cars every day, but they won’t stop that.

Cliffs at Hunstanton. Famous for (a) being striped and (b) facing west even though they are on the East Coast. 

After lunch, we walked round checking on furniture we will need for the move. We need a proper spare bed instead of the bunks the kids used, a new three piece suite (we currently have four chairs – all second hand) and a few other bits and pieces. I bought a special tool for unscrewing lids. I will report on it later.

Altogether, quite an eventful day.

More September 2018 pictures today.

A married man and a day off

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We’re having a day off today, the first we’ve managed for while. Naturally my thoughts turned to a lie in, leisurely breakfast and some light shopping. Julia is working this evening, so the trip to Stoke on Trent will have to wait until we can organise a full day. That’s Julia’s annual treat – touring factory shops. It’s an annual event for me too, though I find it falls short of treat status.

Hopefully we will have several more days off before Christmas because it’s been busy recently, and with Julia working weekends it’s easy to let the week slip by without taking time off. My workload is such that Julia says it will be difficult to tell the difference when I retire. I dispute this, but am willing to admit that I’m not going to win any prizes for industry.

Anyway, my plans all came to nothing. I woke early by accident, and as I was wondering what to do about this undesirable state of affairs, I was hit by the jobs list. Seems she’s been planning it for a while. Mostly standard stuff, and I did my normal nodding dog routine until…

“Your books in the living room need sorting out, and taking to the charity shop.”

She’s always had this unreasonable prejudice about me stacking books on the floor. To her, it’s an eyesore. To me it’s a logical place to put books, and it doesn’t involve a trip to IKEA for a bookcase calle Billy. ( I’m in total agreement with the Lancashire Hotpots on the subject of IKEA. Follow this link to find out what they think).

This quickly turned nasty.

“But me no buts, you pusillanimous worm. If you don’t have shelf space you can’t keep them.”

(She didn’t actually use those words, but you could tell she was thinking them).

So I’m working slowly and stacking carefully. With any luck I’ll get away with a few dozen books, particularly if I cook a large lunch.

I do so love these rare days off…