What's Doing

It’s moving day and I have the keys to our new house in my pocket. Which doesn’t stop me from being in trouble – as usual.

Besides the heinous crime of going to work to pay the rent on our new home today instead of being knee deep in boxes I find that I am responsible for my dear lady wife’s complete lack of nutritional input. Allow me to explain.

I got up with JFGP this morning, allowing SWMBO a precious extra half an hour or so in bed. I even took her a cup of tea to ease her into the day whilst I fed and played with the young boy. We left Reeve mansions and I drove us to Manly where we had to go the bank to get a cheque and then onto the real estate agent to sign the lease and pick up the keys to our new dwelling. Sadly I got my times wrong and we had to wait forty five minutes for the bank to open. We repaired to a nearby cafe where I had a flat white and my wife had her choice of the comestibles on offer. She had a latte.

Fast forward several hours and when I spoke to her she hadn’t had a chance to have lunch, but it was my fault that she hadn’t had any breakfast and was therefore perishing of starvation at the other end of the line.

I’m not even going to tell you about the lightweight jogging buggy I had to buy at the weekend. Because that wasn’t a luxury. Oh no. It was a necessity for any self respecting northen beaches dwelling young family. Apparently.

Some things are constant, wherever you are and bad customer service needs to be added to the traditional death and taxes. I got stuck on the platform at Wynyard station on Monday evening for about forty five minutes. Now I know why.

For those who can’t, or won’t, read the Sydney Morning Herald there were an unprecedented number of sick train drivers and a power fault. Combined they managed to bring chaos to the Sydney rail system and not a single train was on time. Which was nice.

I’ve had a few other customer service howlers over the last few days as well.

• The nice people at Optus have the worst customer service telephone system I have ever had the misfortune to use. On average I had to speak to three people before I got to talk to the person I needed, and this was over the course of four phone calls which should really only have been two. Of course, each new person I spoke to had no idea who I was or knew any of my details so I had to repeat myself ad nauseum.
• The nice people at direct line took next year’s car insurance directly from my credit card without authorisation. This despite the fact that I had sold the car and left the country. They have promised me a refund. I’m not holding my breath.
• At least I wasn’t as long on hold with them as I was with Demon Internet, who had charged me for ADSL use in November, despite having discontinued the service in September just before we left the country. When I finally got through the representative said that there was a note on my file saying that I was due a refund for over payment already. It hadn’t stopped them continuing my direct debit though. They too have promised my money back.

Sheesh. I’m not linking to any of the web sites for these organisations because frankly they don’t deserve it, and if I don’t get my money back I am going to be even more grumpy.

Whilst I’m sharing with the team, the other day I noticed that the Christmas decorations are up at Greenwood Plaza. That has to be at least a month early. Bah humbug.

On the plus side we do get to move into our new house next Monday. Which means that I may have a fat pipe at home by the end of the month. Then I can really go to town with the uploading of the photographs.

Bugger. Not only am I missing Ben Folds playing in London next month, but today I found out that Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook are getting back on stage together.

If I was still in the old smoke I would be there, front and centre singing along slightly out of key. Oh well, I’ll have to console myself with a walk along Manly beach instead.

You may not have noticed, but there’s an election for president of the world next week. I think this quote sums up my feelings rather nicely;

Many of us believe that what’s best for America need not also be what’s worst for the rest of the world.

There is, as yet, no documentary evidence but JFGP yesterday officially became a toddler. The record so far is about fifteen steps unaided. It will come as a surprise to no-one that the sure fire way of getting him to "walk" involves holding out a piece of food.

I’ll post a picture when I or SWMBO are quick enough on the draw to get a photo of the little man in motion.