27 Aug 2010
Posted in Life, Rants at 2:18 pm by alby
The flat roof of my place has been a pain in the proverbial for some time. I think it started when some kids found a way to sit on it to natter. Alternatively it could simply have been wear and tear. I’ve been at the place for 8 years or so and the roof hasn’t been maintained at all in that time. So now it leaks – quite a bit.
I spoke to a company to come and estimate me a repair job. They dutifully did and wrote me a detailed plan and costing for the job.
I phone them up and said please do come and sort it.
The woman on the other end of the phone said. “Oh you need to sign the form that came with the letter and send it in.”
Can I find the letter? Well what do you think?
So my roof is still leaking.
Got to R’s place yesterday after work to discover a minor flappage ongoing as water was now dripping into her bedroom. Thankfully small amounts though considering how heavy and persistent the rain was yesterday.
She phoned the landlords who said it wasn’t urgent. Oh really?! Not urgent that there’s potentially a hole in the roof letting in water. I suppose you could argue that it’s unlikely to ever rain in the UK so there’s no hurry.
Oh wait a minute….No you can’t!
Grr.
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20 Aug 2010
Posted in Work at 2:12 pm by alby
GP referral from this morning:
Thank you for seeing this lady. Unfortunately I haven’t made a note of the reason for my referral so profuse apologies but I wonder if you would be willing to see her on a routine basis.
I have tried to ring her this evening but her phone is switched off and unfortunately I am about to go on holiday.
I will try and get some more information about the referral when I return if she hasn’t been seen. If you would put her on the waiting list, that would be great though.”
Wow.
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18 Aug 2010
Posted in Rants, Work at 4:28 pm by alby
At work we occasionally (sometimes often) have to use interpreters with our patients.
The commonest languages (Gujurati, Punjabi etc) are supported by a partner organisation. They’re very good.
For those languages that they don’t cover we use the local city council’s interpreting service. The interpreters again are usually very good.
With both sets of staff we have to fill in a form for them to take back to the office. This lets the office know that they turned up on time and did their job well etc.
Now the council staff have a set of questions including this one:
Are you aware of the council’s interpreting service?
This might be a good question if you were asking it to a random person with no need of an interpreting service.
However, I’ve just spent any amount of time up to an hour or so with a patient and one of your interpreters! So what do you think I’m going to answer to that stupid question? It’s one of your interpreters who’s handing me the form with the question on it!
If anyone can think of anything witty and erudite that won’t get me sacked that I can write in answer to that next time I’ll be much obliged.
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11 Aug 2010
Posted in Travel at 4:15 pm by alby
We went on holiday not so long back. We’d bought loads of camping gear which only just managed to fit in the car – a roof box or trailer (or both) needed next time I reckon.
We’d done a run-through of using the stuff in Derbyshire but this time we headed into the depths of the New Forest in Hampshire. Campsite was called Hollands Wood. Nice place with clear rules and decent facilities (in the main).
We arrived and were told the rules. The main one of note was “no camping closer than 6m from other campers”. Now groups could obviously all gather together but they wanted to give strangers some space. We spent a good while driving around trying to live within the rule. Eventually we found ourselves a pretty nice spot at the furthest end of the site. It was away from the main road, near a huge field and had unfeasibly hard ground.
After setting up and scouting around a bit we headed out to the local village. We were probably away for an hour or 2. On our return there was a tent being put up about 2m away from us. We decided to be nice and let them get on with it.
Later we looked again and their tent had grown immensely. It was huge. And the nearest bit pretty much was up to our guy ropes. Never mind they might still be pleasant enough and it was at the back of us rather than in our face.
Well the night was fun. Woken by fireworks and a “scared of fireworks” child at 9pm (it’d been a long day with an early start ok!) The rest of the late evening was spent listening to the woman in the next tent struggling with her 3 boys and dog. The conversation was the sort you always love to overhear.
“Stop doing that, he doesn’t like it…I said stop doing it…STOP IT NOW OR I’LL %*%&ING SMACK YA!”
Repeat ad absurdum.
The management were on the case sharp enough though and they asked them to shift. They did but only to their 6m limit. I wasn’t expecting a massive change but the extra distance improved things loads.
The field was a godsend for N. Loads of kids around all playing together. Friends were made and lost as people left on different days. Logs crossing ditches were crossed and occasionally fallen off. Generally there were plenty of smiles with occasional tears. Fantastic fun all round. And days were long.
In the week we went to a few places and did the tourist thing.
Highlights were “Bucklers Hard” (snigger) where the ice-cream was gorgeous and I got a free sample which was as large as the ice-cream I eventually bought. A local kids’ theme park was rather good too. Not many scary rides and it cost a lot but did give me a chance to go on some rides with N including her first proper roller-coaster. So scared but yet so determined to stick it out. Grand. And there were horses and cows on site. Wild New Forest (and Shetland) ponies just coming and going as they pleased. And lots of people with dogs but no piles of dog poo anywhere that we saw.
Lowlight was Bournemouth. Actually Boscombe as we failed to get to Bournemouth because of the frankly ludicrous amounts of traffic. Anyway Dorset county council please sort out your road signing.
At one point we saw a sign to somewhere called “Qinetiq”. No idea what it is (and I can’t be bothered to google it neither) but it was an obvious sign. Later we saw a sign to Boscombe beach. 20 mins later after driving for ages we saw a sign to “Qinetiq”. We’d gone in a huge circle with no sign of the sea, no directions to get us there and no hint that they wanted anyone to spend any time out of their cars. Once we ended up there we weren’t in the best of moods so it didn’t end up as a day to celebrate.
We tried again later in the week in the vain hope of finding decent fish and chips. More misery this time as we arrived late after more avoiding traffic jams. There is no fish and chip place in Boscombe (at least not on the beach). This is ludicrous!
There was a kiosk. They do fish and chips! Woo! Actually they heated us up a “cod portion” and some fast food fries. Was horrible food. Made all the worse by the stress of getting there to “enjoy” it.
Oh and part of my plastic fork came off. I think I ate it.
And the weather was excellent. We had about 20mins of rain one day, but it was very light. In fact we thought we’d get through the lot without much disruption. Unfortunately on our last morning we woke to heavy rain. It slackened a bit but then tipped it down more as we neared fully decamped. So we had a sodden tent to cart home. Any other time the rain wouldn’t have been an issue. Ah well.
Photos may well be along at some point.
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Posted in Life, Self-indulgence at 3:50 pm by alby
I had my toe hacked at yesterday.
Fun fun fun.
I went on a hike way back in Dec 2007 in South Africa. It was excellent but pretty hard work to say the least. The relevant point is that the second half of it was marred by large amounts of toe pain.
Since then my left big toe has played me up with ingrowing nail and random shooting pains. I’ve seen a local podiatrist who’s dealt with it on and off for a while but he strongly advised me to get it properly seen to.
Which needed a nail op.
I had it yesterday. Was great fun. Injections x4 as the first set of local anasthetics didn’t fully work. This has happened to me before at the dentists. Is it possible to be less susceptible to these meds? And then they hacked off a thin strip of my big toe nail before killing that part of the nail bed in the hope that it won’t grow back.
So I couldn’t drive home. And I can’t wear shoes with closed toes. This should be fun as it’s against work policy to have open toed shoes. They say 5-6 weeks healing. And no swimming pools or swimming in the sea. Well that’s one activity for my upcoming hols done in.
At least it’s not so sore this aft.
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