There is no good excuse for this, I did not suffer a traumatic accident in which my typing fingers were amputated whilst cleaning the sharp end of my running lawn mower. Nor have I lost my marbles, gone cuckoo, deteriorated into a psychotic deranged & demented, crazy off my rocker simpleton in which it might be said that I was one extension short of a full switch board or even one sausage short of a Full English, God forbid!
Neither did God strike me down in anger after my encounter with the Jeovah Witnesses in November!
No. The truth is I just couldn't be bothered or simply lacked the inclination to even start one. As I said there is no good excuse but should I proffer one then I might suggest that it is possible that I just had too many things going on.
In the 101 days since the last blog we took a break to Prague booking out 6 nights for ourselves and we booked ourselves a further 8 nights out for some respite between guests. There have been 77 nights where we have had guests staying in at least one of our guest beds which means there were just 10 nights without any bookings at all. AND THIS isn't even our peek season yet.
My trouble is, as I have often suggested, that I try to do too many things, biting off more than I can chew and something has to give. Sadly the Blog has been that thing.
I'm probably just slowing down through old age, for sure I feel like I'm drifting apart from modern day living, none more so evident than in relation to technology. The phones just seem to get smaller and smaller whilst the dexterity of my fingers gets less & less.
Everything that causes me grief now days has an 'E' prefix.....
E Banking, brilliant idea, no need to go to the bank I can empty my flimsy bank balance in seconds from my own armchair. Except that in forcing everyone to go electronic means that they can say that the town branches don't have enough business and so they keep closing them. This means I have to drive to towns that are further & further afield so I can bank a cheque because many of my clients don't 'do' bank transfers.
AND....... My usual angst at remembering bloody passwords, which as soon as you cock up on a phone security interrogation they freeze your card and tell you that you'll have to go into a branch to be identified and have your security info re-set. Which is, I remind them, a royal pain in the arse because you've closed all my ******* local branches you dipshits!
E Passports, seemed a good idea so when ours were up graded I chose to foolishly put my faith in the 'E' queue at passport control at Stanstead airport returning from Prague.
Like a lamb to slaughter.... Immediately I realised that the people going through the old fashioned way were already free and away. No matter I was now stuck in the 'E' queue and slowly shuffled towards these automatons. I'd have said soulless automatons but in fairness have you seen the humans who check your passports! I often wonder if anything could make them crack a smile and I would love to test them out by approaching them in full clown get up, oversized coat, huge red curly wig, big red nose, full face make up and shoes to match. You know that before I could honk my horn I'd be flat on the floor with 6 of her majesty's finest sitting on me.
And yet, here I am at the 'E Passport' control machine stuck behind a barrier that won't open, a scanner that I think isn't reading my passport and a tv monitor flashing some red hazard warning at me. Oh and an aggressive queue behind me looking particularly hostile. Is there anyone manning these machines? No, bugger all. Even the Supermarkets have a trained person floating around the self scan tills and yet the multimillion pound Stanstead aiport.... diddly squit! I'm stuck here on my own, without any instructions on how to use these blithering 'E' machines I might add. There is nothing to tell me what the red flashy thing means and no human to assist me. About now being dressed as a clown seems the better option.
Of course Alison had just sauntered through and thank god that she had as now I had an ally on the other side 'In England'. "Alison!" I shouted and having caught her eye I turned so the angry crowd behind me could clearly hear every word.... "It won't scan my passport" I proclaimed, "and let me in [to England] and there is no instruction on what I should do now, go find some help". The angry crowd were not appeased.
Alison found some idle guys over at the manned passport control who flippantly told her to tell me to go back past the queue (that's right the angry crowd queue) and take a left then another left and there's a guy there who will check my passport manually. I walked quickly past the angry mob, head held down in the subservient position, making no eye contact I mumbled my apologies as I squeezed back upstream.
Science is not my strong point, I am still frequently in awe of the fact that when my supermarket shopping trolley is totally full having had products simply dumped into it willy nilly & then everything is put squarely and neatly into bags invariably you'll be left with a bag that won't fit back into the trolley.Why is that?
Also why after I have opened a piece of cling filmed cheese, cut a huge chunk off it and I attempt to re-wrap the now smaller piece with the same cling film there is no longer enough cling film to cover it all. How can this be?!!
More & more I struggle to understand this mad world...
When I first heard that there was to be a 'Bedroom Tax' I thought they were taxing a little bit of nookie. I have to admit I was intrigued as to how they were planning to monitor it!
And then the body starts to play you up. The other day I sat on the edge of the bed to put my socks on, which I have to do these days. How is it that a gymnast can stand on a beam on tippy toe and do a forward somersault whereas if I simply try to put a sock on whilst standing up I end up hoping around like Tigger on a pogo stick? Anyway I slumped down onto the side of the bed to put my sock on to the accompaniment of a devastatingly loud crack. Damn, I momentarily thought, I've broken a bed strut, only to immediately realise that the crack had come from my bloody hip!
So there you have it, over three months without a blog and I come back even more of a cantankerous crotchety old grouch! And the worrying thing for Alison is that I rather enjoy it.
