Spring Sprung and Smart Meter No Go

(Monday)We were out earlier than usual this morning. Alfie can't wait to get out the door, he barely give me time to eat a bowl of breakfast cereal and drink a cup of tea. It was bright and sunny, but stlll chilly.

(Tuesday) I was surprised that there was ice on the car's windscreen this morning. I soon got rid of it with a spray of antifreeze. I had a good time with the drama students at Camphill. They are really good at remembering their lines. I had to stand in and speak for some of those who weren't available to rehearse.

(Thursday) Taking out Alfie for his early-morning walk (more like trot.) around Eaglestone Park, and we have been out well before 6.30. I don't know what the local residents think when they hear Alfie's barking as we leave the house. The trees are well and truly coming into leaf, intact the whole place is greening up well, so I think it's very clear to me that spring has sprung.

I'm clearing out more of Carol's stuff and have another two bags to take to Barnardo's in Oldbrook. The job is going slowly, but I'm getting there. Still not entirely sure what my situation is regarding accommodation, because I can't afford to stay in this house. I think I need to find a smaller home with one bedroom and with an enclosed garden for Alfie's safety. Infact, it needs to be dog friendly.

I've seen more birds on the feeding station. Although the lounge window is difficult to see through because the double glazing has got damp inside it and it's not possible to clean off. Whoever put in the double glazing in this house had absolutely no concept of the idea of how it works and the seal which is supposed to create a vacuum has been broken and this is what is causing the damp inside the air space between the two layers of glass. It looks really horrible, but there is very little I can do about it, and as a result it's difficult to get a clear view through the glass. It's a great shame, because it means I don't get a decent view of the bird station. It's the same with the window in my bedroom. That is really dirty and damp, meaning you don't get a clear view out.

I was expecting to have a smart meter installed tomorrow. This was after I got a telephone call from the company called Boost, who are part of OVO, around six weeks ago. We have been with Utility Warehouse in all the time we've lived at this house, but Carol was reluctant to change to a different supplier for our electricity and gas. We had a supplier come out around 2 years ago to install a smart meter, but when they inspected the cupboard (which is on the front outside wall of the house, facing the road.) they decided that it wouldn't be possible, basically because the gas meter is in the bin cupboard (outside) whilst the electricity meter is on the inside. If the new smart meter was to be installed they would need to drill a hole in the wall because they would need the cable to be installed in the smart meter. When Boost originally rang me, I told them there would be a problem, but they wouldn't have it. But the installers came TODAY! I had only just got in from doing some shopping. It was well I came back when I did otherwise they wouldn't have been able to inspect the cupboard. I never got any sort of communication from Boost to remind me which day they were supposed to visit, either a letter, an email or even a text message. I had to find their telephone number on line and then ring to confirm the day and time. It seems crazy that they couldn't communicate and then come a day too early! So, I will have to continue topping up the gas and electricity with the keys and card although it won't be in  smart meter which would make it easier as you can pay in a variety of way, via an app, or on line as well as with key and card, which you top up at a local shop.

Later. 3.25 p.m. It's really warm and sunny a few more birds flitting on and off the bird feeding station. I will have to fill the peanut feeder up. It's very low on food. I think the blue tits like this particular food. The other newer feeders don't seem to be so busy, or busy at all as I don't think any birds have visited them.

Later still. I was watching 'Money For Nothing' on BBC1. I had made a lovely cup of tea (actually a mug, but never mind) and had one of my own chocolate chip cookies to munch on. I was around five minutes into the programme (one of my favourite daytime shows.) when there was a knock on the front door. I was not best pleased that I had to get up to answer the door, but when I got there I discovered a man trying to encourage me to have a smart meter installed. What is going on here? He knew that I am on a pay-as-you-go tariff. I explained that I'd had engineers here this morning inspecting things with the idea of installing a smart meter and that they said it couldn't be done (see the above.)  He told me that I should get a lower tarriff because I couldn't have a smart meter installed. Whether this is going to happen I don't know, but this is beginning to get about as annoying as the constant phone calls telling me I can claim PPI. Which is crazy, because I have never had a loan on which PPI would have been paid.

(Friday) I've been attempting to get up in the morning a good deal later. I think it was habit to be up and about before 6 a.m. because that's what time I got up when Carol was going to work as a science teacher at Milton Keynes Academy. We would always start our day at around 5.45 with a cup of tea and watch BBC Breakfast. We'd then have a bowl of breakfast cereal and then Carol would go off to the Academy by around 7.15 a.m. She was always there about an hour before everyone else. Typical of Carol, working hard and usually sorting out other people's problems for them and not really getting any sort of reward or acknowledgement. So, this morning, I was more than keen to not get up quite so early, even though Alfie wasn't too pleased. So we went out at around 7.45. A lovely bright and sunny spring morning. It's certainly a good deal warmer than it has of late. The clocks move forward an hour on Sunday, so it will be light even earlier by this time next week.

Blinking Brexit

You just can't get away from it. Britain leaving the EU. Or Brexit for short. I hate the term. I actually voted to 'Remain,' but I can't think why. I spent ages on deciding the pros and cons of voting to either Remain or Leave, but I can honestly say that, if we were to have another referendum, I think I'd vote leave. I just hate all the unnecessary bureaucracy created by a virtually faceless load of pen-pushers in Strasberg or wherever the organisation is based. Did we really know what we were voting for during that referendum in 2016? I doubt it very much. The politicians didn't know how difficult it was going to be to disassociate ourselves from this 'thing.'

We should never have had this crazy referendum in the first place. It was only because of the rise of UKIP, the party who wanted us to leave the E.U. that David Cameron ran scared and had the thing in the first place. Surely, being a member of something, such as a club or trade union, you don't always agree with everything the organisation you're a member of does. But you have the power to influence things, as Britain did as an E.U. member. You can work to change it, for good or bad. Just leaving because you don't like it isn't really the answer. The joke is, that now UKIP has virtually disappeared from the political scene. 

I really object to having laws and regulations foisted on us by an unelected body such as the EU parliament and those laws being above our parliament. We've currently got to give our consent if we want to have emails sent under something called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as from 25th May 2018. I'm getting endless emails to make sure I tick the relevant box to make sure companies which I've already signed up to, have my permission to continue to email me. It doesn't make sense when I've already made it clear I've given my sense when I signed up to these emails however long ago it was. Just another layer of bureaucracy. But what really gets me is that I bet this doesn't stop all the junk mail I get or the endless telephone calls trying to get me to claim PPI (which I've never had.) Even though I've signed up to the preference service which is supposed to prevent these calls, so I bet this new EU regulation will have about as much clout as a chocolate hammer.

So, we have to go through all this rigmarole about a Hard and a Soft Brexit (whatever they mean. Can someone explain, please? I'm totally confused.) It has never ever been explained to me how the E.U. works or what we got from being members. Where does the money we pay in go? What do we get? Do we get Nectar points?

I can see why people voted to leave. The British are a proud nation. We fought two World Wars. We got through The Blitz, Dunkirk and countless battles. We're an island. We like to make our own rules and regulations. We don't like being dominated by faceless bureaucrats.

Do we really, honestly spend £350 million a day on funding this organisation? Or was it weeks? I don't know, but the leave campaign had it emblazoned on the side of their bus, and it was going to fund the N.H.S. Was this just a reason to get people to vote leave? I think it was a week. Surely it was a week. I can't believe we'd pay that much a day. But Boris Johnson said it was an 'underestimate.'

Politicians on both sides of the referendum argument, remain and leave, made absolutely no attempt to explain what the E.U. was about. I can see that, when it was originally set up back in the 1950's, as the Common Market, and when it was just 6 nations, it was an attempt to get countries to cooperate and hopefully prevent another war in Europe. Cooperation being the operative word here. We had joined under the Harold Wilson government in the 1970s and then, for some strange reason we had a referendum, in 1975 I think it was, to ask 'The People' if they wanted us to be members. A rather back-to-front idea, putting the cart before the horse, to have a vote AFTER we joined. But the E.U., as it's now called, isn't the same organisation it was at that time. We now have a single currency, The Euro (which Britain didn't sign up to) and far more regulations and laws.

Why is there such a problem with refugees and immigrants in this country? We've always had immigrants and been tolerant of refugees. Just look at our history, going back centuries. We've welcomed people from different ethnic groups, such as the Huguenots  who fled persecution and then set up the silk weaving industry in London. The idea of having 'open borders,' meaning you can cross into the other E.U. countries without having to bother with endless paperwork, passports, making trading easier because you all have the same structures for such things as health and safety or weights and measures and even (heaven forbid) currency makes a lot of sense. If we could all agree on how to deal with refugees, then that problem might have been resolved, and not put pressure on one or two nations within the E.U. (ie: France and Britain, with all the problems caused by refugees at the Channel ports between France and Britain.) then the E.U. might have been a worthwhile organisation to be a member of. But it seems the different countries with the E.U. can't even agree on that. A shame. It would really make being a member worthwhile.

Why on earth, when they were setting up the 2016 EU Referendum, didn't they set a target, a sort of percentage of one way or other, to remain or leave, of, say 10% or even 20%, to which would be agreed as the winning amount of votes and then decide whether Britain remained or left the E.U. As it trend out, the result was 51.89% to leave and 48.11% to remain, a really tiny percentage to leave. Hardly enough to decide to leave. Surely it should have been a higher percentage to leave. A crazy mistake on the part of our politicians who put the country through this incredibly messy situation as regards the negotiations to extricate ourselves from the E.U. Then you learn that there were25,359 blank or invalid votes. What were those people who wasted their votes thinking? Just wasted. Either way, if they had used their votes sensibly then the results might have been completely different. 

Alfie Has A Bath and Other Matters

I'm stuck for something to write in my blog post. Goodness, you say, how come? You always manage to come up with something, even if it's a load of gibberish. But here goes, a blank screen and I am at least typing something. 

As soon as I lay finger to keyboard, the letterbox rattles and the sound of something heavy lands on the doormat. I rush to see what it is. A photography magazine which I thought I'd cancelled arrives. Carol has a letter and I get two envelopes which look inviting. One from Radio Times trying to tempt me to buy several copies for £26 and the other about PPI. The fact is, I have never had PPI. These people are trying every avenue they can think of to get you to sign up. Not content with bludgeoning you to death (almost) with radio and television advertising as well as keeping on telephoning to tell you to 'check whether you've ever had a loan' or whatever (I haven't so why bother?). They just won't let go of this. I even had someone ring on my mobile while I was waiting at the hospital when Carol went to have her Pic line put in at the beginning of her chemotherapy treatment. This young man (well, I assume he was young) just would not let go. Quite aggressive, in fact. I don't know how they got hold of my mobile number. I rarely give it out, basically because I can never remember it. I know our landline number. It really is an infringement of my privacy to have these phone calls which are totally uninvited. Then you get those crazy telephone calls which, when you pick up the receiver, are nothing. No voice comes on the line. Just a sort of burrrrrrrrrrrr sound. Empty space. Silence. What on earth is the point of them? Is someone on the other end? It's, frankly, quite scary. A machine, a computer, ringing people, using a sort of database of telephone numbers, on the off-chance that someone will answer and give over some more information, get you to sign up to whatever it is they're offering or claiming to offer.  Could be an alien from outer space. Fanciful, but who knows.?What percentage of the cash you are promised will they make out of this? Makes you wonder.

A good deal less windy today. A few intervals of sunshine, but now, as I write this, it's gone over-cast and I reckon quite chilly outside.

I'll write this by adding something as I think of what to write as the day progresses. Then I'll post it when there's sufficient to make it worth finishing.

Carol had a bath and I helped her have a hair wash. We didn't let the bath water out, so we plonked Alfie in as he has been in need of a good wash for some time. Not when it was cold when the weather was bad, with snow and ice. He was a good boy and let me put shampoo on and give him a good lathering-up. He must have rolled in something exceptionally smelly because he's niffed quite considerably since well before Christmas. Getting him out of the bath, after I'd rinsed him well, was quite a problems as I get myself wet when he shakes, but after some while I managed to brush his coat and then he began charging around the house. He now looks a bit like one of those bottle brushes, with is coast all fluffed up, but it should dry completely as the afternoon progresses. I'm glad we managed the operation without too much trouble. He still has a nasty knotted bit underneath which can only be removed with a pair of scissors, but the worst has been removed. The bath-water turned a dark and dingy colour as I washed him, so it must have removed most of the dirt from his coat.

Alfie doesn't like being brushed. But he will sit on my knee and let me do it. He makes a real fuss, growling and making a silly noise. He's a real contradiction, because he still stays on my knee. If he didn't like it, why doesn't he jump off? It's some time since he had his bath and he's virtually dry, and certainly smelling sweeter.

Carol had an appointment at the pain clinic within the Macmillan Unit at Milton Keynes Hospital at 2.30 this afternoon (Friday.) The doctor had prescribed a patch which has replaced two of her pain management medications. She has to change it every three days. It is taking some time for it to kick in. If necessary the strength can be increased and the doctor has managed (!) to get our surgery to add it to Carol's repeat prescription list so these patches should be easier to re-order (fingers crossed, some hope etc etc. Let's just wait and see what happens when I have to do a repeat order.

Unfortunately Carol missed an appointment yesterday to have her PICC line checked. The oncology department rang yesterday afternoon to tell her that she had missed this, but they managed to re-arrange it to coincide with this afternoon's appointment. It was written in the book she has which has all her appointments written but this  was shown in some sort of secret code (I'm being a little bit ironic here, of course.) so I wouldn't have known what the appointment was for so we would neither of us have been any the wiser, so couldn't remind Carol that it was coming up. But things were checked when we got to the Macmillan Unit and there were no problems.