Wols Riverbank Tales 5: Recapitulation

Wol2

Hee hee - thankfully Nargle the monsoon has fallen all over the country EXCEPT here....:beer:..PHEW!......although I obviously feel very sorry and sad for those whose homes have been flooded :sad:

Yep - although I'm still not completely "back to normal" about dealing with bad news/stressful events.....I too am conscious of my growing resilience...albeit still a tad too slow for my liking but I always was a bit impatient

Thanks for your sentiments and your response..:A...cheered me up to see this having just endured 3 hours of local government training tonight :eek:

xxx

taxi73

Sorry to have missed your birthday so belated birthday wishes xxxx
A right old mix of stuff there and sorry to hear about Bailey and the other bad stuff x

Karmacat

What Taxi said, Wol - sorry I've not been here, been offline, family holibob, computer virus, all sorts of carp - but sorted out my log in today for mse, finally, so here I am. Hope things have been going well for you in this gap since your last post.

Wol2

Hi Taxi....:hello:.............Hi KC :hello:

Things are ticking along here thanks lovely ladies. Hope all is going well with you both.

The Flood protection contract has run into a few "build problems" so I am still employed until end of this month and now earning money.:)

3 job applications made in July would "appear" to have been rejected.

The one confirmed rejection was for Flood Risk Officer with my local authority and I am gutted about not getting an interview.
My current boss has said that, given my current work and past experience, I should have satisfied all the essential criteria for this job; in which case Local Governnment are required to give me an interview...but they haven;t. We have our suspicions as to why that is. Needless to say I will be following this up. :cool:

The other two in Recruitment haven;t bothered to respond. :mad:

Free ebay listing this weekend so I must get going with the camera as, having researched things over the last week, I have a few items to list that should be quite profitable :T

Sadly Mr Alan Maggots - a heart-condition guinea pig - was PTS earlier this week .......but it was the right time for him and I'm actually OK with this. The main thing is, he had a good and happy extra 2 years with me which, given where he came from, he wouldn't have had if not taken in by Rescue and then rehomed/diagnosed./treated by me and my vets...so job well done. :cool:. Mental note - must ring vets and pay outstanding bill

His wifepig Rowan is now learning to live with the exuberant young boar Hathaway

Had a water meter installed this week so need to look at my dishwasher and washing machine settings. Also Numpty brought down an electricity meter and I have discovered that my biggest expense is on my ceiling lights in each room :eek:......

Outputs for August
a) Tax return to reclaim "on account" July payment approx £1500
b) Utilities metering/assessment/planning.......and knob tweaking ...ooooh eeer.....:eek:........ to reduce costs going forwards
c) Get the £2k owed to me by Southern Water for the monstrosity pumping station in my garden
d) Re-home the two additional boar guinea pigs that I have ended up with because, when their new daddy decided he didn;t want them, :mad: , I wasn;t prepared to set them free in a pub car park off the M25 .:A..so they came back with me.:cool:
e) Start applying for any and all jobs - don;t be picky, use networking, update linked-in, and ring recruitment companies and contacts Target minimum 12 jobs per month - this is calculated given an electronic application on the requisite websites takes me up to 10 hours to complete because I am not permitted to upload my Cv and have to put in everything from first principles including writing personal statements, e.g. how I satisfy the eligibility criteria and basically anything else that does the HR job for them :mad:
f) sort the "Boiler on the blink"...more often than not I now have no hot water in the morning and British Gas have visited twice under the service contract I have with them but failed to rectify this intermittent fault :mad:

The offset mortgage/bank overdraft is now FINALLY BELOW £60k...:j:j.....with an extra £100 cheque to pay in..and subsequently my invigilating expenses of another £200+...so will amend siggie shortly.

Numpty is coming back for a visit in October so I am already planning a few jobs for him and purchased a £24 pot of Hammerite exterior metallic white paint reduced to £10 in a local garden centre this week :money:

Baby steps are working - biggest priority atm is getting a job.....which also means hair dye retouch and cut for interviews and subsequently reclaiming the very messy house/garden/mt kilimanjironing (given out refuse collection has changed providers and is now a complete fiasco)

Busy weekend ahead then

Love to all

xxxx

beanielou

Good news on below 60 k.
Baby steps are always good

Karmacat

Hi Wol!

Are you *sure* your ceiling lights are your biggest expense? That sounds, um, different :rotfl::o Do you not like energy saving lightbulbs?

I fiddled about with the programmes on my beloved dishwasher - I'd been using the standard one, which took 2 hours, and on my sister's advice, I did the 10 minute pre-wash, and the 45 minute economic cycle. The only difference is that that doesn't get the staining on the coffee mugs off as well as it used to - and I can certainly live with that to save an hour dishwasher time almost every day!

For the washing machine, I took it down to 30 degrees, from 40. Again, no difference.

Sorry to hear about the little piggy ... and the job of Flood Risk Officer! Someone's definitely got an agenda in not interviewing you ...

Hope your weekend is going well

Nargleblast

Nice to see you are keeping busy and staying motivated, Wol. Re gas and electricity usage - I make a point of reading the meters every couple of weeks or so and inputting the readings online. That way we are less likely to receive an estimated bill. By doing this you can also get a feel for how much gas or electric you use per week, and aim to reduce it by trying simple things like playing with washing machine/dishwasher programmes, using the energy saving bulbs where possible, and making sure you switch off unnecessary appliances when not in use.

Keep plodding on with the job search, the right one is out there with your name on it.

Horace

Oh Wol you have been in the wars and I have been a bad friend. I still remember your party back in 2010 - that was ace.

Much has happened to me since too - I ditched London eejit as I found he was cheating on me. I sorted out my divorce at long last and moved house. I now live in a 2 bedroom house that my parents bought for me because they hated the thought of me living in a flat with drug dealers upstairs and down. The smell of dope was so bad that I ended up on anti depressants. I love my little house.

My business had to go onto the back burner and I ended up on the dole but I am now at college being retrained and getting a whole new set of IT qualifications.

Sorry to hear that the piggy wigs that I knew have passed over the rainbow bridge.

Nargleblast

Horace - nice to "see" you again. Pleased you have a nice house - I remember your tales of your flat, and once got a fit of the giggles when you posted about the upstairs "bints" clod hopping around and "peeing like a dray horse".....

Wol - hope you ok.

Horace

It is at least quiet here - although it can be noisy if the police helicopter decides to pay a visit. Mind you their last visitation allowed me to see the badgers in my garden:j Badgers have not been my favourite beasts as they have dug up my newly laid lawn and caused a whole heap of damage (despite my putting netting over the garden they managed to get underneath:mad:). Occasionally the chap next door but one gets arrested by the police but that family is the only blot on the landscape and funnily enough the only one in a council house all the others now being in private ownership.

I have elderly neighbours on one side who have adopted me as I have adopted them as their son lives in London and their daughter in Turkey. I caused much panic last week by not shifting my car because I was using the bus - they were all for calling the police out and breaking my front door down because I hadn't been seen. The neighbours the other side are not bad either and will at least clear the path for me during the winter and offer to go shopping and take my bin bags down.

Another group of friends keep encouraging me to go out with strange men (not in the least bit interested) and I was even less interested when I found out that the one chap they were keen to set me up with was married. I am happy as I am thanks very much.

Those clod hopping bints did a flit and then some ukranians moved in and were running a knocking shop for a while and they left to be replaced by two bints that really weren't pleasant. As long as the landlord was getting his money he really didn't care less. One of the last straws for me was when I had given him notice and I arrived home to find some lads on the doorstep and asked who they were there to see - they were there for a flat viewing and I discovered it was my flat so I sent them packing because I did not know that appointments had been made - turns out the landlord was letting people into my flat without my knowledge.:mad: Anyway I have gone from there and have been much happier since plus my heating bills are cheaper as I have gas central heating and cook with gas.

Wol, I hope you are ok.