What Next?

(Thursday)I'm determined to keep this blog going. It's not always possible to write something and post it every day, but I do try. Just waffle on and hope for the best. If you follow my meanderings then you will know that a lot of what I talk about on here is mundane, but most of life is mundane. Someone said of drama that's it's life with the dull bits taken out. But on here, it's the boring bits, sort of, warts and all. It was Alfred Hitchcock who said that, and he should know as he was such a brilliant film director and made some really awesome films.

It's another warm and sunny morning. Alfie was insistent that I take him out, staring at me as he sat on the sofa next to me.

Someone thinks it's necessary to make a lovely screeching noise, a drill, grinder or whatever, right outside my window. It's really horrible. People that do D.I.Y. can be so focussed on what they're doing that they never seem to realise that it can be an irritation to others. Usually this sort of noise, or hammering endlessly, sawing, such as the individual was was constructing a garden shed.

(Friday) I had another letter from Television Licensing informing me that if I didn't set up my Direct Debit I was likely to get prosecuted for not having a television licence. This is really crazy, because I was paying the thing by Direct Debit and all was going smoothly. I made sure that this was in place well before I moved into Dexter House. I certainly didn't want to be illegal. Well, who would be? Then they wrote to me to tell me I didn't need to have a full television licence, as this is a sheltered housing project. I was never told this when I moved in. I was told by Barbara, the S.H.O (Sheltered Housing Officer.) that I only needed to pay £7.50 a year for the licence (I presume because it is sheltered housing and there is one television ariel or something. I'm not sure exactly, but I assumed on moving in that my flat was a single household and thus requiring a separate television licence.) So, they cancelled my Direct Debit and refunded the money I had already paid from the point I moved in. I was told a few weeks ago by Barbara that I could pay the thing by postal order. Now, who on earth uses postal orders to pay for anything in this day and age? I haven't had one since I was probably 15 years old, well before I had my own bank account. I could also pay it with a cheque, which is another form of payment I haven't used for probably a year at least and then there was the chance of actually finding my cheque book. So, having read the latest missive from Television Licensing, I attempted to ring their callcentre and possibly pay the £7.50 via their website or even pay by giving my card details over the phone. Due to the coronavirus situation they were only operating a skeleton operation (sounds like something from a horror film, giving a sort of vaguely humorous impression to someone of my creative abilities, but let's go no further down that avenue at the moment.) I couldn't even get to speak to someone, so I mentioned this to Barbara, and she contacted someone in Milton Keynes Council and I have now written out a cheque because I managed by some sort of fluke to find my chequebook and have payed the £7.50, so mission accomplished, thank goodness.

The pigeon which sits outside the flat and makes that monotonous sound is making it's relentlessly boring sound as I write this. Pigeons in my opinion have to be the most boring birds known to man. Not just their idiotic, repetitive noise, not so much a song, but sounding, unlike anything remotely intelligent. Also, when they move around, sitting, or at least, standing on the ground and moving their head in a sort of nodding fashion, senseless and as exciting as a dull weekend in Bognor Regis. Why Bognor Regis I can't think. Just the way my mind operates. I don't think a pigeon has anything in it's head because it keeps on nodding it. I don't actually think it's ONE pigeon which comes and makes it's stupid noise outside my window, but several. It must be. One pigeon is very much the same as the next one. They don't have what you might call individual features. They all blend in one to another. I just wish at times that they would just go away and not come back.

Later. I've done my washing this morning.  Yes, I know, the excitement is far too much. I had it all ready and put in the machine to go at around 7.45, but I had forgotten to actually turn on the confounded machine, so when I went to check at around 8.30 the thing was not running so I had to turn the machine on and wait another 45 minutes or so to wait for everything to be washed.

(Saturday) Another day. It's 5.45a.m. I'm sitting here in the lounge, waiting to take Alfie out for his walk. That confounded pigeon is making it's pointless noise outside. The window is open as it has been infernally stuffy in the flat. It has been windy, and the window in the bathroom had to be closed because the draft which comes through makes the doors rattle. You really can't win. I have a shopping list made and it's ready to take with me when I go to Sainsbury's, hopefully before 6 o'clock.

Later. I've been to Sainsbury's this morning. I got there around 7.45.  Oh goodness gracious, some awful faces on other shoppers as we waited in the queue. Just lighten up a bit PLEASE! So gloomy and glum. The British people are a stoic nation. Just think how we got though two World Wars. I'm thinking of the comedy which came out of adversity. 'The Goons,' written  by the brilliant Spike Milligan, was a sort of reaction to his time in the army, blown up, probably accounts for his state of mind, some of the characters created as his way of getting back at authority, stupid, pompous officer class, this seen in another piece of comedy magic, 'Dad's Army,' with the self-important George Mainwaring, played by Arthur Lowe. This show based on Jimmy Perry's experiences in the Home Guard. It just makes me wonder what will be produced as a result of this pandemic. Shakespeare is supposed to have written some of his plays in the midst of the plague which was raging through Tudor London at the time, the Globe no doubt in lockdown, very much similar to today's situation.

Writing and Raining

The day began wet and over-cast. I could hear the rain rattling on the windows in the night. There is a fresh water-feature just outside the patio doors from the kitchen when I let the dogs out earlier ( meaning a puddle, which I didn't want either dog to get in and create paw-print all over the kitchen floor.)  and quite a torrent rushing down the road outside the house at the front, as seen from the window when I was washing up at the sink.

I've been doing quite a bit of writing this morning, as well as sorting out some of my earlier writing. I have been putting most of it into a ring-binder, but I had to buy a second one because the first was chocker-block full. I had to number the pages and use different coloured pens to make sure they don't get muddled up. I have got stuff in my pad of paper which I had forgotten I'd written and I'm quite pleased how it reads and will have to use for future stories.

I put a cheque in our bank account last week. I took it into the NatWest branch in the centre of Milton Keynes. How come it used to take no more than three working days for a cheque to clear? I have been to an A.T.M. to check to see whether the cash had cleared, and it still hasn't. I can't see why it takes longer for a cheque to clear, rather than shorter. Surely, with modern technology, computers and so on, it would take less time. What's the excuse? We rarely get cheques, and most things are paid through B.A.C.S., so any payment goes directly into our bank account, so it seems quite strange for it to take such a long time. Admittedly, there was a weekend in the middle, but that's still no reason for it to take so long to clear.

Faulty Technology

I do a number of 'on-line' surveys and get paid for doing them. Some you accrue points which can be used to convert into vouchers for a number of well-known retail outlets, or they can be converted into Amazon points. I have managed to get quite a few items from Amazon, books, a digital watch, an external hard-drive for the iMac, as well as managing to get a microwave, an electric iron and a mini DVD player as well as a Sony e-reader from Argos and Curry's. I had a cheque to pay into my Nationwide account come in the post on Saturday and decided to go into the city centre to pay it into the account. The branch has a couple of automated machines that allow you to pay in cash, cheques as well as the usual A.T.M. functions found on most other 'hole-in-the-wall' machines. I put in my cashcard and pressed the relevant keys in order to pay in the cheque. I put the cheque in the slot as indicated, to have it immediately rejected and spat out unceremoniously. I had thought that I had managed to put it in the slot in the correct way, as indicated by the illustration shown on screen. But again it was rejected. It grabbed the cheque in a very brisk fashion. Can't they programme a machine to at least have a few manners? Doesn't seem they can. I attempted this action several more times, much to the amusement of the lady who was waiting to use the thing behind me. I then decided, when the cheque was thown back at me for around the sixth time to give up on the whole process, and was about to queue up to use the traditional method of payment, through a human being behind a desk (the whole purpose, supposedly, of having the automated system would have been to cut down on having to queue.) I went to another machine the other end of the banking hall, and this one worked perfectly, without a single hitch. How can one machine be so difficult, and the other work perfectly? What particularly annoyed me was that none of the Nationwide staff who where nearby made any effort to help resolve the problem with the machine. I was always under the impression that their staff were quite helpful, so this has really changed my view of them.