Here we can all be heard for a little while. Part 3

Lambyr

Hello. Not been around for a while, so I apologise for the following rant. I've just had enough this week. I'll PENGUIN the last bit.

Monday: Had to pop to the bank. Left car in car park for thirty minutes and came back to find some *beep* had keyed it, along with at least six other cars. What a wonderfully fulfilling life they must lead. Contacted 101 who could only have been less disinterested if they'd actually started singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" down the phone to me.

We'll ignore the CCTV cameras looking right at my car that might have identified the perpetrator because it's clearly too much to ask. I'm sure there are really important things for the police to be doing, like hassling folk who feed pigeons or something.

Got home. Laptop hard drive has clearly decided it is time to die. Not a big deal, I suppose, but still £30ish.

Tuesday: Phone line died. !!!!!! gone. BT reckon they'll have it fixed tomorrow - although their fault tracking service is a mixture of more contradictory and conflicting gibberish than a drunk Boris Johnson could come up with.

Course, no phone line = no internet. I've had to use my mobile as a portable hotspot. No Netflix, no Amazon, no YouTube, haven't even dared risk Spotify because my data allowance is only 4GB and I reckon normally I use five times that amount each day.

Wednesday: Microwave just died on me. Yeah, I kinda need that. So yay, expenses. And of course, try and put an order through on line using phone's data. That Verified by Visa thing decides to block the transaction and the stupid little window refreshed before I had chance to jot down the number to call. Lloyds use an automated phone thing to verify transactions - yeah, no phone line, doesn't work. Phoned Lloyds customer services who had no idea which number to call.

Got fed up. Cancelled debit card. Used a different card. Went straight through (on Verified by blooming Visa, no less).

Thursday: Mobile company decides to waste my time offering me an upgrade, only to then say although I'd passed the credit check, the phone they were offering at £21 a month was in a higher tier but I could have two phones at £19 a month. How the heck does that work, then? I could pay £38 a month to them for two phones but not £21 a month for one phone? Why would I even want two phones? I'm not a drug dealer.

Idiots.

Decide to cook something in new microwave. Makes a headache inducing high pitched whine when I use convection. Great. That's faulty.

PENGUINY BIT

So the long and short of all of this is that I'm sick of it. I'm sick of things breaking down. I'm sick of the absurdity of other people's stupid little rules. I'm sick of monopolies like Openreach and BT who couldn't even care less I have a disabled woman in the house and kinda need a phone for emergencies.

I'm sick of not being able to plan to do something nice for myself because any money I put aside inevitably goes towards paying for the endless procession of crap that keeps malfunctioning. A motherboard, a hard drive (two now), the fricking shed, the soundbar for the TV, a pair of headphones, a door frame, a clock, a mattress, a fence panel, the plumbing - and that's just what immediately leaps to mind this year. All broke, all stuff I need, all stuff I had to pay to replace or fix.

And what do I get out of it? Nothing, except to be stuck on a rock hurtling around a sun and surrounded by a gaggle of incompetents, racists, sexists, bigots and a bunch of other people that I can't escape from while having to live by their silly rules.

Oh, but hey, at least Harry is getting married. Given the bombardment of push notifications, I assume I'm supposed to care. There must be something wrong with me. I'd be happier to read a seventeen-thousand-word essay on the composition of camel dung than I care to read another one hundred word "article" about what bloody socks he'll be wearing.

Rant over.

jobbingmusician

Oh, Lambyr, you do have my sympathies. Every bloody thing breaks at the same time, and life is REALLY sh*tty sometimes. Hugs!

(And I agree with the penguin, even though (penguin) I am a bit of a monarchist because I really respect the Queen, and believe that the royals probably really do generate more wealth for this country than they cost. But it did make me take a sharp intake of breath when someone posted on FB that the wedding would cost - can't remember how much, but a hell of a lot - and K & C council didn't fireproof their cladding cos it would have cost a hell of a little......(end penguin)

Lambyr

PENGUIN Reply

I have no strong feelings about the Royal Family one way or the other. I just really don't care what they do and sometimes feel like I'm living in bizarro land when I come across articles about how people are buying something or other because Prince George had it for school dinner. I recently learned how to use Adobe Premiere Pro in an afternoon but I'll never understand human behaviour... should probably hand back those psychology qualifications!

But yeah. When you look at how much money is wasted on things and how much money we need to put other things right, it's frustrating. Still, I don't know, maybe makers of cheap tat will be able to flog a million celebratory biscuit tins to recoup some of the costs?

END

Torry_Quine

Lambyr That's not good. How's E's mum?

I'm not coping again. Loon got a good report from the consultant. This week though his boss told him they want to end his contract so they can advertise his job! If he won't agree and sign a relief contract they will terminate on medical grounds. I'm getting legal advice.

surveyqueenuk

Royal penguin (that's an actual species!)


I'm sick of the Royal Wedding already. I'm particularly sick of all the pregnancy speculation and the invariable gushing if/when they do replicate. For crying out loud, there are little kids who already exist, not even five minutes away from Kensington Palace, who aren't getting enough to eat. Nobody gives a rat's !!! about them. And yes, JM, I feel that Grenfell Tower casts a dark shadow over the whole thing too.

There's that conspiracy theory that every time the British public shows signs of unrest, a major event with a "feelgood factor" seems to be announced. Maybe this is true but I'm not sure that a major event in a capital city with lots of Important People in attendance is wise in today's climate...

END PENGUIN

Lambyr, forgive me for being nosy and you don't have to answer this but I notice that the burden of paying for things seems to fall on your shoulders. I mean obviously the hard drives and motherboards are for your sole benefit but a shed, microwave, door frame, fence panel and plumbing are clearly not. Is your mother unable to contribute financially to these things? Are you both getting all the benefits you might be entitled to?

System

Work have signed the Time To Change pledge (to support those with MH problems) and it had an email address to contact the so i did a scary thing and emailed them with my expereinces. Not sure i will hear anything back but i thought i should try and do my bit

Lambyr

Torry_Quine wrote: »

Lambyr That's not good. How's E's mum?

I'm not coping again. Loon got a good report from the consultant. This week though his boss told him they want to end his contract so they can advertise his job! If he won't agree and sign a relief contract they will terminate on medical grounds. I'm getting legal advice.

Doing well at the moment. The first operation was successful but there were some minor complications with a balloon (or something) so a couple more operations were needed. Took a while but she's back on softish solid foods, and she's needed to visit a speech therapist. She's started radiotherapy too. E says the side effects so far haven't been too bad.

Sorry to hear about the problems you've been having. Glad to hear the consultant's report is good, though.

surveyqueenuk wrote: »

Lambyr, forgive me for being nosy and you don't have to answer this but I notice that the burden of paying for things seems to fall on your shoulders. I mean obviously the hard drives and motherboards are for your sole benefit but a shed, microwave, door frame, fence panel and plumbing are clearly not. Is your mother unable to contribute financially to these things? Are you both getting all the benefits you might be entitled to?

Yep, we get all the benefits we're entitled to. In fairness to my mum, she pays out for the fuel (though I pick the tarriff), water rates, home insurance and most of the groceries except things that aren't specifically for me alone (like Tesco knock-off Red Bull! ). She also has a bit of debt that is slowly being chipped away at (had to put some rather major electrical work on a credit card). We split the cost of Sky (on a deal, of course). And my mum did also help quite a lot towards financing my car (since I didn't have my job then), although that's all paid off now.

I pay for the phone line and Internet - which to be fair, isn't exclusively for me but trying to explain how Netflix comes on the telly to someone who can't work the microwave oven is asking a lot!

Other than that, to be fair, I don't pay out for that much. Dog insurance, boiler cover, my half of the Sky, and stuff that's basically mine like my mobile, software subscriptions, debts and that jazz.

Mum contributes a bit when stuff breaks down but I clearly have it fairly easy without having to pay for rent or fuel costs so I've always just taken care of stuff and things. Just annoyingly all the stuff and things seem to have chosen 2017 as the year to go bang.

onomatopoeia99

Hugs Torry, can't offer any advice, just sympathy and best wishes.

One of the things about houses is how everything seems to go wrong at once, some months the credit card bill seems to be an endless litany of stuff that needs fixing, so totally understand the whole "if it's not one thing it's another" feeling Lambyr, and also how utterly lost I end up if I don't have a working internet connection these days. I've had a 24/7 connection at home for getting on for 18 years, initally on dialup then ISDN before ADSL came along, my life is structured around it so if it vanishes my reaction is "now what do I do?" :rotfl: (watch stuff on the freeview recorder rather than streaming sense8 on netflix would probably be the answer).

Regarding The Wedding, I'm indifferent. Happy for the couple as I would be for anyone, but most of it passes me by. I get my news from Today on Radio 4 and it's just one item in a three hour news program, they still cover everything else (though Nicholas Witchell's voice has been heard more often in recent days). I appreciate that the tabloid press and tabloid TV and tabloid internet have probably gone overboard as usual, but they are catering to their market , which I'm not part of.

Am bumbling along OK, having sleep problems the last few weeks for no reason I can determine, I'm not even stressed about anything at the moment. Need to ask my friend if she's got her DBT sessions yet, as when I saw her last month it was plain she is depending on it coming through soon and I'm quite seriously considering just giving her the money to pay for 10 sessions privately if she doesn't hear anything by Christmas.

Pyxis

I am unashamedly monarchist.

I have spent a lifetime hearing and reading all sorts of things about the monarchy, both as an institution and about the individuals, good things, bad things, neutral things and mediocre things.

To cut a very long story short, I feel they are worth every penny, for all sorts of reasons, which I won't go into here.

Suffice to say, that their sense of duty overrides most personal considerations; it is only in very recent times that the younger members have, effectively, insisted on bringing up their children themselves. Even the Queen put her duty before her right to have a normal family life.

I just would add that for all the 'wealth' and 'privilege', they are in a velvet-lined prison, with gruelling work schedules which would floor a lot of people. They could abdicate their responsibilities and live very comfortably on their private incomes, but they don't. They put up with all the dross the media throws at them, because their duty to the country comes first.

Very few people would last a month in their shoes, believe me, with their every move, every facial expression, every action, every piece of clothing and every word scrutinised, recorded and re-reported over and over, even years later.

Just as with the referendum, there is a paucity of reporting of information about the really good stuff they do; instead, most reporting is critical and often scathing, so it's no wonder people get a skewed opinion.

It makes me very cross, and very sad, because imo they are one huge asset..........

A lifetime of contact with Prime Ministers. world leaders, top businesses and all sorts of other people, even us 'ordinary' ones, makes them very experienced indeed in both national and global affairs, and a strongly stabilising influence.



Ok, I shall shut up now, but in view of the horrible threads that have popped up in the last few days about Harry and Meghan, I had to let it out somewhere.

Thanks for listening. :A

seven-day-weekend

Pyxis wrote: »

I am unashamedly monarchist.

I have spent a lifetime hearing and reading all sorts of things about the monarchy, both as an institution and about the individuals, good things, bad things, neutral things and mediocre things.

To cut a very long story short, I feel they are worth every penny, for all sorts of reasons, which I won't go into here.

Suffice to say, that their sense of duty overrides most personal considerations; it is only in very recent times that the younger members have, effectively, insisted on bringing up their children themselves. Even the Queen put her duty before her right to have a normal family life.

I just would add that for all the 'wealth' and 'privilege', they are in a velvet-lined prison, with gruelling work schedules which would floor a lot of people. They could abdicate their responsibilities and live very comfortably on their private incomes, but they don't. They put up with all the dross the media throws at them, because their duty to the country comes first.

Very few people would last a month in their shoes, believe me, with their every move, every facial expression, every action, every piece of clothing and every word scrutinised, recorded and re-reported over and over, even years later.

Just as with the referendum, there is a paucity of reporting of information about the really good stuff they do; instead, most reporting is critical and often scathing, so it's no wonder people get a skewed opinion.

It makes me very cross, and very sad, because imo they are one huge asset..........

A lifetime of contact with Prime Ministers. world leaders, top businesses and all sorts of other people, even us 'ordinary' ones, makes them very experienced indeed in both national and global affairs, and a strongly stabilising influence.



Ok, I shall shut up now, but in view of the horrible threads that have popped up in the last few days about Harry and Meghan, I had to let it out somewhere.

Thanks for listening. :A

Well said, totally agree xx