Asda's Revised Bit

We arrived home Thursday evening & I popped around to see my neighbour.
'Hello brown lady [Skeggy weather does tan you very well], you've got a letter from Asda'
'Oh have I, what's it say?'
'They're moving HH back a bit'.

I went home to rummage through the pile of mail - 2 whole weeks away & NOTHING specifically addressed to me - just how I like it.

We guessed which one was from Asda, hmm, Nottingham postmark? I read the 1 page, so where's the rest of it?
Quote - 'I have enclosed the relevant section of the revised design and access statement for your reference'.

Back I went to my neighbour.
'Oh is that all you've got? there are 2 more pages'.
'Yes, I think Asda's trying to save some money'
She fetched them for me to scan & print.

ORIGINAL PLAN

REVISED PLAN [with my tree!]

I'm beginning to think I'm losing my touch! Years of being a non-entity, shoved to the back & being ignored & now someone has actually listened to what I [we] had to say, I'm starting to blush.

Now if I was a sceptic, I'd strongly suspect that this minor adjustment was already up Asda's sleeve ready for the expected complaints, so they could follow up with a 'VOILA, look what we've done for you, aren't we going to be good neighbours?'
But I'm not that sceptical, so I'll accept the revised design in the spirit of goodwill that it was obviously intended to be.

Although my first suggestion of shoving Heanor Haulage's proposed workshop further away [I think I recall saying 'as far as Heanor'] came to nothing, my second, less demanding, idea of pushing it up a bit towards the railway lines is now on the latest revised plans. Moving it up also has the desired effect of moving it further away from the pavement because of the angle of the building to the street, so now we'll have 2800mm instead of 1700mm between us & HH for landscaping, I do wish they wouldn't use millimetres, anything bigger than card making & I convert it into feet & inches - well I try, so is it 3 inches or 3 feet? Oh nearly 3 metres, well that's about 9 feet in 'old money'.

AND! most important of all, there is now room for a TREE straight across from us - it's been drawn in & I fully expect to see it planted - right! ...

Spam, Spam, Spam

Why is it that each & every day I receive crappy emails from crappy people, selling - crap?

If I want to buy 'genuine' fake watches/bags/jewellery, I'll buy from EBay [China]
I don't want 'dayglo' white teeth.
I don't want to play bingo.
I don't want to be thinner, well that may be a fib but I'm not paying anyone for a box of placebo's & being told 'you may lose weight even faster if you follow a calorie controlled diet'.
I don't need a credit card.
I haven't got a poor credit rating.
I haven't been 'previously refused credit'.
I haven't had an accident. I personally know of someone who moronically got involved with one of these 'let's fleece the insurance company because you broke a finger nail' & 'we'll get you the compensation you don't deserve'. What a waste of time!
I don't want my face lifting, I like it where it is.
I NEED all my old jewellery.

'Life cover isn't for you, it's for your family' - I'm sorry, but if I can't have it, I'm not paying for it. It's almost as bad as the TV adverts with well known faces telling you to 'leave something for your loved ones when you're gone' - gone where? Shopping? I need my money when I go shopping.

'Massive Organ' in the subject line is wasted on me as I'm not musical.
Likewise -
'Satisfy her today' - being of a grumpy disposition, I'm not likely to want to satisfy anyone.
'Hung like a horse' - whatever did the poor horse do to get hung? - this subject line is sure to be ignored as I can't read about animal cruelty!
'Daily column' - I see all the news I want on the Internet so no, I won't read your daily column.
'Enlarge your device' - any bigger & my device, the MWg zinc ii won't fit in my pocket.
'The longer your tool is' - now this is tempting as the zinc ii stylus is very short, I might click on that one.
'Enlarging your male tool' - I've got my own set of screwdrivers, the grumpy old man has got some really big tools if I need anything hitting or wrenching, rather than screwing.
What's 'Pfizer'? I've got 88% off the price whatever it is so it can't be much good, now let me see - click - Oh, it's viagra, why didn't they say so? I didn't even realise you had to pay for it.

Even though I have received all the above mail with their crappy offers, there was no need for me to see them as they all arrived in my online junk folder, I just went through them for this post. Nothing spammy ever arrives onto my computer, laptop or zinc ii. This is because I use one of my google mail accounts whenever I sign up anywhere [dodgy or not] online, google has a very good junk filter without too much 'training' needed. I have several different sky.com addresses for family, shopping & important 'stuff'. As luck would have it, google processes sky.com mail so by the time I've downloaded it with Incredimail [yes, I know it's supposed to be spyware but I like it], it's already been de-spammed.

My hotmail address IS receiving some spam in the inbox, so their filters aren't quite so good as google's, only junking the obvious phishing scams, but to be fair, there are several idiots out there using my hotmail address as their own & signing me up for all manner of stupid things, mostly games & ahem, dating. I did get a free years' use of XoftSpy SE, thanks to one Colin Wright erroneously using my email address during registration, so I got his license.

So, to spammers everywhere, for all of your wonderful offers to enrich my life - thanks but no thanks ...

Heanor Haulage Playing With Cranes Again

I received a text this morning from my friend & neighbour - Quote -

How big a crane do they need to work behind us? This one must be 150 ft tall, and they've been working from 'stupid o'clock', even at the weekend. Shouting & yawping at one another "I can't 'ear ya". Then have the cheek to park it behind us at night, sooooo Attractive!'

I text back that she should phone Environmental Health & I asked for permission to quote her in my blog.

Now I may be barking up the wrong tree here but if they're shouting 'what? I can't 'ear ya', many times as my neighbour confirmed they were in her following text, then I fear it may have been directed at me [yes, I am full of self-importance] & I'm sad to say, well, how can I put this? 'I can't hear you!'. If on the other hand they were shouting 'what? I can't 'ear ya,' because they genuinely couldn't hear each other then isn't it obvious to all that they were making one hell of a racket!

So, what is Heanor Haulage doing with yet another crane at the back of our houses? They don't seem to be achieving anything except annoying the local residents. If their past form is anything to go by, they'll be PLAYING!! with the crane for another couple of weeks, so plenty more filming and blogging opportunities when I get back home.

I hope when Heanor Haulage move the part of their operations that include playing with cranes that they set up shop well away from where people live ...

Yet More Great British Moaning

I don't want anyone thinking that I blame immigration for all our problems, so I've continued my moaning in this post [having judged my last one long & tedious enough, so left off where I did].

No, a lot of our problems are home grown. I'm referring to the indigenous, bone-idle layabouts that WON'T go to work, then moan about immigrants taking all 'their' jobs. I was astonished to learn [this is old news now] that young, fit, 'on the dole' people were offered temporary work at well above the minimum wage. Once they found out that it involved getting up before 10.00am & it would be manual labour [boxing cauliflowers on farms], they stated - on tv - that they'd sooner 'sign on'.

There's something sadly wrong with the benefits system if someone able-bodied is offered a manual job & they're allowed to turn it down without loss of benefit. In my opinion, they should have been told 'on yer bike'.

During my on-off employment at Aristoc [I was a 'casual'], my 'bestest friend in the whole wide world' & I decided to see if we were entitled to go 'on the dole' for a couple of months, we'd not bothered before, but were persuaded by some other temps that had been working with us on this particular occasion [1995].

Off we went to the Social Security office. We got booklets to fill in & were given appointments.

'Are we sure we want to do this?'
'Yes, look we might not even gerrowt, so stop worrying'
'But we're NOT actively seeking employment'
'What're you on about now?'
'Look, it says here that we've got to be looking for work & we're not'
'We'll bluff'
''But we can't tell lies without looking guilty'
'Be brave'.

We were incredibly brave. We found out that we were indeed entitled to full benefits & had been during our usual 2-3 months off each year for most of the previous 8 years.

We, ahem - fibbed & 'signed on'.
It was the most agonising & tortuous 3 months [then] of our lives. I had to 'sign on' one Friday, my friend the following Friday, so in effect we went every week to support each other [what wimps!]. We hated it. They inconsiderately kept trying to find us jobs & we had to answer questions about where we'd been LOOKING for work.

YIKES! They want me to go to the 'Job Club', starting in 3 weeks, was my visibly shaken friends' response to one of these torture sessions.
'That's it, I'm packing this in, I can't sleep for worrying'
I agreed with her, we weren't cut out for it [fibbing]. Fortunately Aristoc phoned us the following week to tell us that we were once again 'vital but casual' members of their reprocessing staff'.

So why don't others feel the same sense of shame as we did? I don't mean people genuinely between jobs, or the ones, through no fault of their own, who have been made redundant [been there, done that, still didn't sign on, decided to have a 'gap year']. We felt that we were taking money that we shouldn't as we could afford not to but we were ENTITLED! It was also very obvious at the Social Security office that as we were newbies, they seemed more determined to 'get us back to work'. Whereas the habitual benefit collector just 'signed on' ...

United Queendom & Other Great British Moans

We've had our Queen so long now - and long may she live - that I think we should qualify for a change of name.

We live in an age of sexual equality - as long as his shirt is ironed - so I think it's wholly appropriate for the name change.

I have read somewhere that on becoming a Queen our monarch became an honorary man. If this is true then why isn't she a King? And anyway what woman in their right mind would want to be a honorary man? The only benefit I can see in being a man is being able to go to a public toilet without having to pull your knickers down & 'hover' - hopefully - somewhere above the loo - but somehow I don't think an honoraryship provides you with the equipment for that.

I'm first & foremost English [only British on pain of death] & spend many irritating moments filling in online forms & get to the bit about the country & it never says England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales, it's nearly always UK, sometimes, but very rarely GB.
What's the difference between UK & GB, you may ask? Well now, pay attention as you'll be tested on it later -

Great Britain is the kingdoms of England & Scotland & the Principality of Wales.
Britain is England & Wales [therefore, Scotland must be the Great bit].
United Kingdom is England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland.
UK is actually short for United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland.
The British Isles includes all the above plus Eire [Southern Ireland], Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Hebrides, Orkneys, Shetlands, Isles of Scilly, Lundy Island, Channel Islands & lots of other small islands.

United Kingdom & Great Britain are NOT England as is a common mistake made by people the world over, it's just that England is the biggest bit. We don't all live in London & speak like the Queen or with a cockney accent as portrayed in films where the well-spoken English chap is the baddy & the cockneys are lovable rogues.

In fact we have several languages, never mind dialects in the UK [UQ] & I for one think it's important to preserve them. It has been reported that in a few decades we'll all be talking in some sort of gangsta-rap, I hope this is an exaggeration. I love listening to regional dialects & accents & hope they'll never be lost.

Back to filling in online forms - IF, in a fit of pique, I tick USA instead of UK, I notice that they invariably get a further option for their appropriate State, so I'm starting to feel a bit short changed.
Yes, we live on a small but not insignificant island, and we're all fiercely protective of our individual country identities, identities that we're fast losing because of mass immigration of people who don't want to integrate & be British, they mainly come to use our benefit system & National Health service. But I'm not getting into that here or I'll be accused of being a racist & I'm not. It's just that if I were to go & live in another country, I'd expect to learn & use the language, pay my way & taxes & obey the laws of my adoptive country. Then if I wasn't happy I'd simply come back home.

Now where was I before I got on my soapbox? Oh yes. Most people in this country have only experienced the reign of our Queen, me included [I'm not that old]. So if we have to be a United country, I vote we become UNITED QUEENDOM. Hmm, maybe not, it does sound a bit gay now I think about it ...

Trouble At t'Mill

Well! You could knock me down with a feather! A ruddy great fire at the bottom of our street, fire engines from several towns, 35 firemen and I slept through it! PMB Pallet Express only have to go brrrrrm and my eyes pop open. This can only mean that -

a. the firemen were whispering
or
b. My grump radar only picks up noises that are guaranteed to annoy me.

The first I knew of the fire at the Mill pub was when I was woken at 7.45-ish by my neighbours talking in the street. I decided that as they were obviously making enough noise to wake the dead that they must need me awake. I jumped athletically out of bed - ok, stop laughing - then shuffled my way to the bathroom [more like it]. When I flushed the loo it made a most peculiar noise. I went downstairs to fill my brand new 'glow in the dark' kettle [bought yesterday] with what can only be described as sludge. Still I didn't twig that our water had been diverted to put out a fire, my fuddled brain is not entirely at fault though, as we used to regularly have to run our water to get rid of the brown tinge.

My neighbour - knowing my morning dimness - text me to put me in the picture re-sludgy water, she'd most probably heard our pipes bumping and gurgling, so judged that I was up. She even - bless her - came around a little later with bottled water that my other neighbour had fetched. By this time I'd successfully packed a disgruntled 'I want a wee NOW!' cat ready to go to the manor/tin hut, so I thanked her and said that we'd already made do with the sludge - well it was early and I certainly wasn't awake enough to taste the difference.

I don't know if the Mill pub [aka The Midland] was a fire of convenience, it's certainly not for me to speculate here, but I had heard that it had been bought at auction in May with a view to turning it into flats without planning permission given, and apparently it's difficult to get a change of use from a pub. But that's all hearsay and rumour. Thankfully as it was empty, no-one was hurt and that's the main thing ...

Ouch!

Well it was bound to happen, I am careless at the best of times, but OUCH!

I was preparing to clean the fish tank - which if you weren't paying attention earlier, is in the bottom of a coffee table with a glass top - I'd removed the top in preparation of searching for more baby fish before the cleaning, leant the top against a nest of tables & got on my knees to peer in. Of course the top fell over onto my leg, it's hexagonal in shape & one of the corners cut me.

Don't panic! - Oh you weren't going to, jolly good - it wasn't much, I went off into the kitchen to get something to mop up the one drop of blood, went back & carried on fishing, all the while muttering about bleeding to death & who'd care, just trying to elicit some sort of sympathy.
My grumpy old man was sat in the same room with his back towards me writing his bets out, he was chuntering about having lost a bet.

'You could die here & not be noticed'
'Now where's that bet gone?
'I could bleed to death'
'It was here a minute ago'
'EXCUSE ME! I'm bleeding!'

Eventually my muttering penetrated through, did I get any sympathy? No, all he did was move the glass top before telling me off for leaving it there in the first place. Hmm, it's stopped bleeding now, I think I'll poke it a bit. I may limp for the rest of the day & find me a big plaster to wear ...

Aha! Found The Missing Sentence

I've been cruising t'interweb again [crumbly version of surfing the Internet], looking for my most favourite subject [at the moment] of Asda in Langley Mill & I came across the missing sentence - the one that said 'Planners are expected to make a decision on July 15th'. Only it's in an earlier edition of the Derby Evening Telegraph - 4th June, rather than the one I saw on 13th July. Now I've pointed it out, I wonder how long it'll take for this sentence to disappear [I like being paranoid, it keeps me calm].

Oh by the way Asda, even though you've successfully removed the phantom 'Asda in Hucknall' from your website map, you've forgotten to erase it from the pdf download, so you'd better get your rubber out again.

While I'm in a Asda-ish mood I think I'll have another little dig -

Saint Asda

Do Asda ever do anything for themselves? I mean, don't they want to make a profit or are they just doing everything for our benefit?

'We want to kick-start a regeneration scheme' along with 'Creating jobs' & 'Bringing benefits to shoppers'

I think they need to find some more quotes as they're starting to read like a broken keyboard [well you can't say 'sound like a broken record', can you?].

Why don't they say it like it is? I'd be far more inclined to believe Asda if they said 'We want to build an Asda store here so you'll shop with us, we'll offer you good value & quality, plus as an added bonus, it'll give Tesco a "right drubbing"'.
See, look how much better that was, I'm sold on the idea already. :))

Lets face it, t'Interweb isn't doing Asda any favours. In the olden days booklets could be dished out in the area they wished to build a new store, quoting 'positive regeneration - for wherever' and everyone would be suitably impressed. But in these days of high-speed news & batty old women with far, far too much time on their hands, it's starting to be noticeable [that is the correct spelling of noticable, I don't like it but I stand corrected] that every one of Asda's proposed stores has the same 'Look how wonderful we are' quotes.

This can only mean that -

a. Asda always picks grotty areas to build their stores, ensuring that there's little or no objection [annoyingly this is probably true]
or
b. It's high time they got someone else to write their little booklets -
Ahem! I'm quite cheap and just look how annoying I can be left to my own devices ...

Tired

Y-a-w-n ... I'm so tired.

Not only do PMB Pallet Express - in Heanor Haulage's oh so fine, sound-proofed state of the art warehouses [yeh, right] - prevent me from going to bed before midnight because of their constant brrrrrrm, clatter [as the DIESEL forklift truck goes over a hump], brrrrrrm. They've decided that it's a good idea to wake me at 2.29 am to repeat the exercise for half an hour or so. I suppose this does have one benefit, it means that I'm so tired that I didn't wake up for their 5.15 am performance. So PMB, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for letting me have a lie-in ...

Gustatory Rhinitis?

A-a-a-choooooo, A-a-a-a-achooooooooooooo, A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-achoooooooooooooooooo!

That's me most mornings, I rarely miss one these days. I usually - well bugger me, just writing about it has started me off [actually the caravan temperature has just plummeted because of heavy rain].

I know it seems unlikely but the above statement is entirely genuine, I'd just got out my little notebook in which I jotted this post [in real joined up writing] while sitting in the sunshine this morning, plumbed my zinc ii into the laptop to share t'interweb, arrived at this page & started sneezing.

Now where was I? Oh yes, I usually sneeze up to a dozen times, not your lady-like little atishoo, nope, these seem to come from my toes and work their way up and out, quite often with [sniff, blow] an interesting kick with my right foot, along with yards of ... umm, wet stuff.

I've had a couple of theories regarding the cause of this snottyness. Allergies being one -

YES! at last I've got an allergy! Ahem, you'll have to excuse this little moment of insanity, it's just a vestige left over from my early years when I seemed to be surrounded by whey-faced little individuals stating that they couldn't eat this or drink that, or go near such and such because of an allergy.

I wanted an allergy of my own! I have, in my dim and distant past been known to borrow my mums allergies at my most despondant non-allergic moments. Until one of my very impressed peers asked me what would happen if I had Penicillin by mistake and I replied 'Oh, I think I'll probably die'. Whereupon every attempt was made to find some Penicillin to experiment with - fortunately we didn't really know what we were looking for but managed to emulate a fair allergic reaction by rubbing in some Ralgex that we'd found, which was quite impressive as we didn't then know what Ralgex was.

Another time I was caught by my mum with an entire box of elastoplast stuck on different parts of my anatomy -
'What are you doing?'
'Experimenting' - couldn't she tell? I was wearing my new green school laboratory overall!
'Experimenting what?'
'I'm just checking to see if I'm allergic to plasters like you'
'Well you're not'
'But I might be'
She yanked them all off - nastily, I might add, leaving behind another very near impression of an allergy [and one or two bald patches].

Right, back to my sneezing - the second theory being a certain delicateness of my nose to anything maloderous - this conclusion was drawn because my sneezing bouts took on a regular pattern - I'd have breakfast, go upstairs and clean my teeth, do my other, ahem, regular ablutions, then - shudder, nose turns into a tap and the sneezes start. Several times my neighbour has shouted 'Bless You' through the wall if she happened to be on her way to or from their bathroom.

My grumpy old man read that some people sneeze when they think about sex. He invariably shouts 'Are you sneezing?' and I'll shout back 'Forget it'.

As I've already mentioned, I also start sneezing if the room temperature drops suddenly, this can be fairly embarrassing down the chiller aisles at Morrisons. My grumpy old man finds me by following the sneezes [he's always chin-wagging with other crumblies several aisles away].

Anyway, this morning I had my sultana & apple Oatibix, ten minutes later, I felt bloated and sick, then the sneezes started which were fairly painful as my stomach was too full.

Hmm, I'll check on t'interweb - google search - 'sneezing after breakfast' - ooooh, there's more than me with the problem and it's got a name - Gustatory Rhinitis and for other people it happens with every meal, especially with spicy foods [hmm, yes chilli with me]. I read a bit more, apparently - and they can't possibly mean me - it can be caused by overeating.

Aha, the light bulb flickers. For some reason when I have cereals, I'm greedy, I can eat more than the grumpy old man, whereas with toast, one slice is enough.

Tomorrow, I will be experimenting to see how much I can eat before I sneeze, what fun ...