Tag Archives: solicitors

Creaking and Complaining

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Two nights ago I made a special effort to get plenty of sleep, because it’s good for me. When I woke up I felt like I was paralysed. My normal creaky, slightly painful bad back (partly caused by our mattress – which will soon be replaced) ws locked solid, as were my neck and shoulders. Even lifting my arms was painful. It took me over and hour to get up and I spent most of the day in a chair with two hot water bottles. By the late afternoon I was much recovered and went to be early again, with the intention of not staying in bed so long. Six hours seems optimal. Eight hours tends to cause more problems than it solves.

We are having a new mattress delivered to the bungalow next week,so that will be an end to another of life’s little annoyances.

However, after a night of cold draughts, resulting in me grasping the bedding firmly and pulling it around me, I woke up with both hands aching. It’s only a minor ache in each joint, but there are 27 joints in a human hand and I can tell you where most of them are. It’s not actually painful, but if I ever need to write a passage about a robot spending a century underwater and then rising to the surface to flex his cold and corroded fingers I feel that I have done the research.

A creaking gate -both a metaphor and a way of stopping livestock escaping. 

Then I tried ordering some more bits for the bungalow. After half an hour and a “chat” with customer services, it turns out that although I am paying for the delivery I have no say over which day it is delivered. That isn’t, as I told them, a lot of use when I am two hours away from the delivery address.

Then the documents arrived from the solicitor – cost over £1,000. Typo on the first page, typo on one of the tax pages. Only small errors (though there may be more to the trained eye) but at that price there should be no errors.

So, after light at the end of the tunnel, another couple of days to add to my thousand cuts. But it’s moving.

And I have worked out a way to outwit the  delivery system at Dunelm. I will just have to see if it works next week.

Photos are random punctuation. I think I have some pictures of rust and creaking gates . . .

Snowy Detail

Here We Go Again

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Nasturtiums Wilford Mencap Gardens

A few days ago I told you that the solicitor wanted more documents. Well, today she excelled herself. After the 18 day delay, she now leapt into action within hours, to deny that she had ever had copies of my bank statements. I, of course, have no proof one way or the other, though I do know that if the boot were on the other foot there are laws to say when a communication is delivered, even when it hasn’t. This is part of the unlevel playing field on which we operate. What she can’t deny is that she received the other email I sent that day, and that email mentioned the statements being sent. Why she then left it for 18 days when she knows we are on a deadline, I don’t know. You would have thought she would have followed up a lot sooner. As it was, I had to prompt her.

Maple Leaves

However, even better, having had my bank statements, which show exactly what she said she wanted to see, she now needs more information. It seems that she finds the presence of a regular, monthly, modest payment to need explanation.

I get a regular payment every four weeks too. That one is provided by an organisation that is known to sell arms to dictators, isn’t keen on freedom of speech, and is headed up by a lawyer with a love of free gifts. (Do you remember that I had to sign a form to show I wasn’t likely to be taking bribes?) One of the previous heads was even worse. But it seems it’s OK for me to take my pension off the government. It’s my work pension that appears suspicious. Because that’s what it is – past retirement age + regular modest monthly payments = pension to me, you and most people. To a lawyer, it seems suspicious. Of course, if you were looking to increase your billable minutes on this job, you’d find everything suspicious.

OFuchsias

Well, I can’t show her up-to-date pension documents as they are all lost in a box somewhere. I’m not exactly sure where. She can see the 2023 letters, as they were still in Julia’s filing cabinet. The current ones are in a folder, in a box, in a pile, in a bungalow, in a city far, far away . . .

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

I looked for pictures of vampires and leeches but had to make do with these..

Same Again – Confessions of a Procrastinator

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Fresh from claiming that today was going to be different, I spent most of it in front of TV and ordered a McDonald’s delivery. I am hanging my head in shame as I type.

Well, not quite. Twenty four hours ago I was hanging my head as I typed. Now I am just typing, having slept in my chair, woken up and decided to go to bed.

This afternoon I had a text from the people who run the “app” that checks ID on the phone. I use quotes round the word app (if it deserves to be called a word) to show my disdain for the modern world.

In days past we “discovered” far off lands (much to the surprise of the people who were already there) using a compass and a sextant. We learnt how to fly and to dive to the bottom of the sea using spanners and a lack of fear. We even got to the moon with less computing power than the average teen uses in their mobile phone. But apparently we can’t catch a bus, order takeaway food or prove our identity without an app. And that, if you really want to know what I think, is what’s wrong with the world.

To sort out the ID problem I used email to ask the solicitor what was wrong with the ID details I have provided, and why they had allowed the people to contact me again after I instructed them to stop it.

While I was on email I noticed another email from the solicitors. This one tells me that I have ben spotted on a list of bankruptcies and they would lik to check it isn’t me. They are really trying hard to find fault, which, of course, they will do if they are being paid to do it. I don’t understand why they need to check this, as the money has already been paid. It clearly isn’t me. The man in question has two forenames and a double-barrelled, and lives several hundred miles away. But because we are both called Simon (a name that was in the top ten from 1955-75) and Wilson (the 7th or 9th most popular name in the country depending on who you believe) the solicitor obviously saw something else he could charge for.

It’s not too onerous to solve the problem, I just need to write a note and sign it – ‘The above entry does not relate to me, signed………..’

Well, if it’s that simple, how can you really call it  a security check? A more cynical man might be tempted to suggest it was just a way to inflate the bill.

If someone asks me at work  to find information on Thomas George Smith of Nottingham, they aren’t going to be impressed by my carefully researched life of Thomas Alfred Warren-Smith of Carlisle. And that is the extent of the match – a common first name and a common last name, three others that don’t match and two addresses 200 miles apart.

I am struggling not to be sarcastic.

Spring is Here! Probably.

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It’s been a bit cold today, which is the story of our spring – one false start after another. Despite everything, the blossom is out now. The sun made a bit of an effort today and the world looks like a sunny fairyland. Most of it, to be fair, happened on Sunday. The day may have been dreary but the blossom had an inexorable drive to open. This makes things easy – I can merely re-use pictures of blossom from previous years.

I sorted things out this morning, using my desk space at work. It’s small and cramped, but it’s larger and less chaotic than my home equivalent. I’m tempted to drop the solicitor a few lines af advice regarding the quality of their website, and the dreadful design of their forms but have noticed before that people don’t often appreciate my attempts to help.  Anyway, why give them something for free. When did you last hear of a solicitor doing something without expecting payment?

There are quizzes on TV tonight and I particularly like to see if I can beat the contestants on various things. I don’t understand all the questions on University Challenge, but I do like it when I can show my mastery of a subject compared to the gilded youth of the student body (though some are nearly as old as I am). They couldn’t, for instance, identify the voice of Elvis Costello last week, which was noted on Twitter by  number of people. It’s nice to feel superior.

On the other hand, when they ask questions on physics or enzymes I don’t actually understand the questions . . .

Blossom at Wilford