"A Timex watch in a digital age........"

One of the reasons Alison and I work fairly well together is that despite being in a relationship for over 30 years we both bring different skill sets to the business. Alison has the financial acumen and understands the need for a business plan and indeed the worth of a good accountant. Her vision is 'big picture' and she brings in the common sense and the cold voice of reason and logic. She is also the one that turns a pipe-dream into 'making it actually happen'.

I on the other hand do a lot of the dreaming, probably too much dreaming if truth be told and I also provide huge reserves of pessimism to balance out Alison's can do approach.  I don't see it as a negative thing but more of a check and balance to our future. I just like to know that we have a contingency should we run into difficulties. I am not a big picture thinker, I am more of a tiny little detail thinker! If a fork is not 1" from the edge of the table and laying at 90 degrees to the same edge then I'll become quite agitated and break into a feverish sweat. I also bring to the party my brawn, my limited DIY skills and of course my ability to not get bored doing the cleaning and ironing.

The remain skills are pretty much shared.


So I knew I was being a fool to myself when I encroached on Alison's financial area and decided to find out why one of my credit cards had an issue. I had already checked with my financial guru who was surprised that I not only still had this card but that I was still using it albeit on rare occasions. She naturally was concerned that we were not receiving the statements for the card because as she thought it no longer existed she had not sent a change of our address to them.


Well being told that I had to phone the bank because they won't talk to her about it I made my first mistake in phoning them whilst Alison was out of the house. I was guru-less!

I started by phoning Barclay's, normally getting stuck at the automated voice I was proud of myself when I got past that stage. Then a human came on the line and I gave what I felt was a clear and concise appraisal of my problem. Having listened to my explanation he asked what card type was it and it was at this point I realised that it was not infact a Barclaycard but indeed an HSBC card. I sheepishly pointed this out to him and quietly thanked him for his time before hanging up.


OK let my try this again, I CAN DO THIS!  Having found the HSBC number I once again started a call to fix the problems with the card.

I can't stand doing these calls as they always ask me those damned stupid security check questions and as I rarely ever make any calls to the bank I can NEVER remember the stupid things. This time I didn't even get through the automated phone system with the computer throwing a wobbly because I didn't know the third digit of a security number that I made up around the dawn of time when I first opened the bloody account. It proceeded to kick me to a member of staff, they were now trying the human approach.

Oh Lord bless them for they know not what they are encountering.....

I am asked for another digit from my security number, I didn't even remember making up a security number and so I said "PASS" and waited for their next futile attempt to make sure that I was who I said I was.
"OK sir, when you first took out the card you were asked to give a favourite place" Was I indeed? Who aged over 12 years old has a favourite place for crying out loud! When I was a kid I guess it was The Zoo or the circus but I'm 50 something years old now and my favourite place is in my armchair with a nice cup of tea.
 I said "PASS".


The nice man explained that he had gone as far as he could and that he would have to pass me on to the next person. I guess the challenge was too much for him.

Man number two started off in good spirits, I could tell that he firmly believed that he could crack this nut a belief, as it turned out, that was misplaced. I explained about my lack of memory of passwords and numbers and he reassured me that we should be fine.
"What did you tell us was your favourite colour?" Argggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
"I'm sorry I have no idea that I ever told you that I had a favourite colour because the last time I had a favourite colour I WAS SIX YEARS OLD!"
He seemed a little taken aback at this and then he came up with a new wheeze. He asked for one of our other accounts details and then asked.......

 "Where did we spend the £40 on Friday just gone?"

Now you'd think that he had bowled a straight ball there but no and alas I hadn't a clue.
Frankly I was trying to work backwards through the week and I could barely remember what I did yesterday!
I struggled & strained to recall where we had gone. I went to the calender but no clues there. I shut my eyes to think but this just made the blankness a darker blanker place. I looked at the car in the yard in case she could magically tell me but nothing.
I even asked the cat but if she did know she was keeping it to herself.
Where the hell did we go, I asked myself, jeez it was just 4 days ago for goodness sakes!!!
  "Perhaps your wife could help?" he enquired, 
My heckles speedily rising I explained that the guru was out, 
"Maybe you could call her" he suggested.   
Grrrrrrrr....
Then I thought I knew where we had spent the £40 and I told him it was in Budgen's.




The next man was a woman, I got the feeling that all the stupid ones ended up in her hands. She patiently and, surprisingly without patronising me, explained that I had failed on every test they had chucked my way.
I realised that this was probably the last chance saloon and braced myself accordingly.....

"Can you tell me....." she said with slow clear deliberation in her voice....
"What the phone number is...."  I listened attentively,
"That we have as connected to all your accounts?"

You'd think that I would get that one wouldn't you and so at last with a clear heart and safe in the knowledge that I knew my own phone number I rattled it off to her.

I waited like a Peacock with it's feathers in full fan display strutting up and down, knowing that he's the business....

"I'm sorry," she qualified, "but that is incorrect".  Instantly my plumage drooped to the floor, I felt as if I had been just two spaces from winning on the snakes and ladder board only to land on that long slinky snake that takes you plummeting back down to the bottom again.

Bugger!

So now I'll have to visit a branch in a bigger town than our local ones to re-set all the security information on my account. They'll ask me for a favourite colour and place so I can have the privilege of forgetting them when in another 3 years time I'm asked once again.

I'm just not cut out for this world of telephone banking. The other day after our landline phone broke down I found that it had run out of guarantee. Well this was odd because I thought that we rented the phone because it was on my monthly bill.
I phoned up BT only to be told that the rental was for the old fashioned dial phone, you'll remember those they are often seen in museums. "Why am I being charged for one of those?" I asked the customer service operative. "Because you never told us that you were no longer using it" she replied.
I explained to her that I stopped using one of those at least 15 years ago and was under the impression that the rental was for all the phones that they have provided since, with the internet hubs etc. She told me that they are free and after a long battle I managed to get a refund for the last 5 years of rental.
Having checked on the internet and indeed BT's own site it is clear that there are probably thousands of people still paying this for a phone that is totally redundant.

I know that I should be better than this but I feel things are moving faster than I can keep up. I get the hang of Messenger then facebook pops up, I just about get the hang of facebook then everyone is Twittering, then they upgrade Facebook and I don't know where it all is. After many years with windows XP everyone else has had Vista, Windows 7 and now 8. People don't talk on the phone anymore they Skype. Why do people want to look at each other while they are on the phone? Go to any tourist attraction and you'll see idiots holding these massive Tablets up to take a photo, no straps to hold it safely and you'd be just as plainly obvious if you stuck a great big day-glo sign on your hat saying mug me I'm a tourist!

Last week I visited my daughter in Somerset and she saw that I had taken my Walkman cassette / Radio with me.  "Awwwwe, you still have a Walkman. How quaint, you do know that they went out in the eighties don't you?"  But it still works fine and I have all the old cassettes so why should I get rid of it?  Next she'll be telling me to get rid of the Betamax Video recorder!

I thought I was on top of all this sort of stuff but I am put in mind of a description by a computer whiz kid regarding Bruce Willis who plays an 'old school' New York Cop in the film Die Hard 4.

He tells the cop,
  

"You're a Timex watch in a digital age" 

 and that is just how I feel! 

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Time it was and what a time it was it was A time of innocence a time of confidences Long ago it must be, I have a photograph Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you. Paul Simon (Bookends)

We keep finding that in deciding to carryout one project a chain of actions is initiated requiring us to do several other tasks first.

Let me give you an example....

We wanted to paint our smaller bedroom in the main house.

This had an old Ikea bed in it which really needed upgrading to a new one so we decided to keep the old bed and put it into one of the very small rooms that are hidden away at the back of our house. It could then be a spare bed for occasions when we have a full house.


Pretty straight forward so far then.   Mmmm, unfortunately the 'box room' that this bed was intended to go into was full of many boxes that had been there since we moved in two years ago waiting to find their final destination.
For example all of my old photos (taken over the last 40 years) many of which I have been waiting to find time to organise and one day to scan into the computer.
The camping stuff, tents, sleeping bags and whatnot. It is true that Alison is very unlikely to agree to ever camp again and that the zip on the big tent is stuck open so we have to rely on the fly-sheet's zip to give us any privacy at all. The lilos date back to the 1980s and the garish patterns look like it too. My heart still tells me that I am "Bear" Grylls and that I am born to be wild whilst my body tells me that I'm more like Godfrey in Dad's Army and I'm born to nap!  So we keep the camp stuff then on the pretence that the kids will use it one day but in reality it is to keep me thinking I'm still young and able to 'live on the edge', Ha!

Then there is the general 'stuff', you know, the stuff that you don't know why you are keeping it but you just do and the place it all lives is in the attic along with the Christmas decorations and the stamp collections. Oh and the wedding dress of course. A word to the wise on the subject of the wedding dress, firstly DO NOT feel it necessary to enquire why your wife wishes to keep it.... she just does alright! Secondly, what ever you say DON'T point out that "You can't possibly still squeeze into it anyway".    Just let it be, consider it to be her equivalent to your camping stuff, a reminder of youthful times lost in the swamp of life.


So any way if we are to fit the old bed into this backroom then we need to move that stuff out which is why I got my builder to make a loft hatch into the main house's attic as it never had one before. That then meant the next part of the chain reaction was to move this stuff into the loft. Only we can't because the loft is very old and having never been used for storage in it's 250 year history there are no boards up there just 5 key roof rafters and all the rest only support the lathe and plaster ceilings below.

And so follows the next part of the chain which is to create a strong area in the loft by securing cross beams firmly to the strong rafters and then board across them. Then we can move all that stuff into the attic, only we can't because despite my boarding it would be too heavy to move it all, so we need to sort through it all first ideally losing some. Also there are some items that we need to be able to get our hands on without climbing into the attic (the entrance is in one of the guest rooms). This means freeing up the 2nd back room which is full of the children's hoard of crap.... sorry cherished possessions. So the 30 plus boxes of that stuff has to be done first.

And when this has all been accomplished then we can slap some paint on the wall of that small bedroom that we started the blog with some many hours ago!

The only way we could sort through all of our junk was to take it from the back room, place it in the living room and work through it a box at a time. With all of the boxes stacked up it looked for all the world that we had just moved in......

Box by box memories were opened and decisions made. Gosh we had some rubbish. I decided to tackle a large apple box full of envelopes of printed photos and their negatives dating back to the late 1970s. I sorted through some 60 packages, looking at every single photo to decide if it should stay or should it go?
     The net result was that I threw away 2,040 photographs!  If you know me at all you'll know this was a real breakthrough and I am quite proud of myself. That said I still have at least 3,000 slides to decide upon and at least a further 2,000 more photographic prints to sort through and that is not including the 7 apple boxes full of photo albums. I won't be throwing them away because they are full of the really special pictures.

Ok, ok, I think I may have an addiction or compulsive disorder now that I step back and look at this through a sane persons eyes. I know that I probably have a further 10,000 photos stored on my hard drives from the new digital age, cor this is getting scarey now.  Sadly all of these do not include the many deleted digital photos that I took. I know that my first digital camera turned the 'clock' or counter and as this reverted to zero after 10,000 photographs I can be sure that was how many times I pressed the button.


My goodness, I seriously need some professional counseling or something don't I? It is so clearly an addiction that I need to break now I look at it. You see I am constantly looking for that special picture... The one, but I never ever find it.

I will end this blog with some of those pictures that have got close to what I am striving for and please pray that I get over this 'problem', thank you.

And most important of all, the family..........

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And the little one said "roll over, roll over..." so they all rolled over and one fell out...

We've just been watching the 'Four in a bed' TV programme, a great learning tool for any B&B owner. For those that have not seen the programme the basic premise is that four sets of B&B owners stay in each others Bed and Breakfasts and then critic them all and finally after being told the room's respective costs they pay what they think the rooms were actually worth.  This bit often leads to much offence being taken, which is of course what makes it so entertaining. 

Each set of owners whilst staying at their competitions B&B strive to find the smallest thing to complain about so they can justify knocking a fiver off the bill and thus enhance their chances of winning the competition. Frankly it is all a little sad. Pillows will go flying as they hunt for a stray hair missed by the poor unfortunate that had cleaned the room. They search under the fitted sheets, under the bed and every inch of the duvet. they are so pleased when they find one that they cannot hide their glee and if they come across one that they consider a pube, well they are inconsolable with shock and horror... all for the cameras sake, of course, as to them this is the holy grail because they can record it on the feedback form and knock £10 off the bill.  As I said it is all a little sad but as a consequence of such childish behaviour quite amusing too.


At the end of the stay some pay more for the room as they felt it was worth more than they were being charged but the majority pay less in the jostle for position as the best B&B.

Strangely this practise has crept into the real world as quite a few guests insist on paying us a little more as they felt we were worth it, which is quite nice actually.

I say it is a learning tool as you so often see great ideas and best practise. Then at the other end of the spectrum you see some terrible ideas and even more so poor, poor management, a kind of how not to run a B&B training video.

Today's episode had a very nervous owner with all the others staying at her B&B and she carefully laid the breakfast table but one of them wanted some sugar and she had inadvertently forgotten to put any out on the table. Well that was no sin, just one of those silly little mistakes that happens and no one would have thought any more about it if she hadn't gone to the kitchen and started crying in distress on her husbands shoulder because she had made such a major devastating cock-up. No, the guests had no concern for the error but the awkwardness in the room as they all sat there in silence listening to the owner sobbing her heart out just the other side of the door for the next 3 minutes was simply painful.

It reminded me of the Monty Python Dirty fork scene in a restaurant in-which all the members of the staff are mortified when a diner happens to casually mention that his fork has a speck of dirt on it...


The whole set up involves three other B&B guests staying at your place and then giving critical (good and bad) feedback to you. So naturally my heart and soul is lifted when right at the beginning in one of their interviews to camera they state "I can't take being criticised".   Ohhhh goody, I think to myself with a wicked smirk.


We have had an email asking us if we would like to be on the programme but despite how I look I'm really not that stupid!





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