Month: April 2017

The general enquiry number of the cooperative bank has four choices none of which involve speaking to a human being. some clever company has come along and said that you can save 20% of your operator charges by automating the system. What they have said is that you annoy 50% of your customers by having such a system in the first place. It annoys me that none of the four alternatives given about...

Well, we can't expect every day to be good and this one was rather fragmented. I took Françoise to catch the direct bus to Bristol for a specialist appointment at Southmead hospital because the indirect one takes an extra half hour which is tedious. I then went to complete the garden job we started yesterday and had the pleasure of tidying up a front garden and having the customer praise me for...

We went for talk this evening by someone who runs a firm that builds ponds.  We discussed how to get rid of pond weed, how to prune water lilies which you do by cutting them out at the root, throwing most away and planting one or two good specimens. The best thing for reviving goldfish is to put them in an aquarium with copious quantities of salt. All the usual things that you want to know. How...

So, Theresa May, our Prime Minister, wants to have a snap election. Quite how this will unite the party or catalyse the Brexit plans I do not know. I think the papers will have quite a field day. I went to see Reg, the chap with one leg, for whom we do gardening. When we arrived he showed signs of bruising and he had evidently fallen out of bed the night before and was unable to get up. He tried...

This morning I went to help at the Methodist church by assisting in the kitchen with preparing lunch. There are about six of us and we managed to serve three main courses and about six sweet courses to about 60 people. This is very good for people who live on their own or for various reasons cannot cook their own lunch. I arrived at about 11 o'clock and hung my coat up as I normally do and went...

Mells in Somerset has an annual Easter bank holiday Daffodil Festival. In fact there are very few daffodils to be seen; it's more like a spring festival. The festivities have all the charm of a village event. There was a competition where teddy bears were parachuted from the church tower supported by plastic supermarket bags. The aim was to throw them in such a way that they landed on a square....