The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

michaels

GDB2222 wrote: »

Do you still have the old BT box?

Yes but even setting the virgin box as modem only the BT box still passes internet requests direct to the virgin box without applying any time of day filtering, it only applies the time of access rules if it routes the internet traffic - this was ideal before because it let the kids devices be on the lan but not on the internet.

LydiaJ

Yesterday I went with my brother, my kids and my dad to do a bit of measuring up the sheltered flat my dad's in the process of buying. We managed to meet the chap in the flat next door - lovely guy, probably about my dad's age and state of health, used to be a vet, widowed, Scottish and fond of whisky - has promised to invite my dad in for a wee dram when he moves in. When we caught him just outside the doors of his flat and my dad's he was with two friends who live elsewhere in the complex - two friendly women who told us all about the various clubs and activities they have going on, and expressed envy of his flat because one of them has a much smaller flat and neither of them has a view.

All of this, I hope, is making it easier for him to face such a drastic downsize. (From a 5-double-bedroom semi, where's he's lived since 1959, to a 1-single-bedroom flat.)

I foresee spending quite a bit of this summer, and many of my days off next term, helping with things. I think yesterday's discussions about what furniture to put where were quite productive.

GDB2222

michaels wrote: »

Yes but even setting the virgin box as modem only the BT box still passes internet requests direct to the virgin box without applying any time of day filtering, it only applies the time of access rules if it routes the internet traffic - this was ideal before because it let the kids devices be on the lan but not on the internet.

Some routers designate a particular connector as WLAN and only apply rules to that.

GDB2222

LydiaJ wrote: »

Yesterday I went with my brother, my kids and my dad to do a bit of measuring up the sheltered flat my dad's in the process of buying. We managed to meet the chap in the flat next door - lovely guy, probably about my dad's age and state of health, used to be a vet, widowed, Scottish and fond of whisky - has promised to invite my dad in for a wee dram when he moves in. When we caught him just outside the doors of his flat and my dad's he was with two friends who live elsewhere in the complex - two friendly women who told us all about the various clubs and activities they have going on, and expressed envy of his flat because one of them has a much smaller flat and neither of them has a view.

All of this, I hope, is making it easier for him to face such a drastic downsize. (From a 5-double-bedroom semi, where's he's lived since 1959, to a 1-single-bedroom flat.)

I foresee spending quite a bit of this summer, and many of my days off next term, helping with things. I think yesterday's discussions about what furniture to put where were quite productive.

It must be an awful wrench for him. I found having to dispose of MIL's houseful of perfectly serviceable furniture a real problem, even though I had no great emotional attachment to it. This is stuff he's chosen and lived with for 50 years. Not to mention leaving the home he's spent most of his life in.

LydiaJ

GDB2222 wrote: »

It must be an awful wrench for him. I found having to dispose of MIL's houseful of perfectly serviceable furniture a real problem, even though I had no great emotional attachment to it. This is stuff he's chosen and lived with for 50 years. Not to mention leaving the home he's spent most of his life in.

Yes, a huge wrench. It's even a wrench for me that my childhood home isn't going to be there in the background of my life and as a place to visit with my kids, and obviously the wrench for him is orders of magnitude bigger. But he knows it's time. Responsibility for the maintenance of a large house in poor repair is getting him down. Also, he's determined to move to somewhere where he'll get help and support before he becomes incapable of coping at all, or has to move as an emergency. Finally, he's adamant he doesn't want to spend another winter in his completely uninsulated and largely unheated house. The cold didn't bother him at all until he turned about 85, but he's been finding it harder and harder to deal with for the last 6 years or so. So this move is his choice - we're just trying to be supportive and encouraging. Yesterday he was beginning to talk about which pieces of furniture he finds particularly beautiful, and which are of particular significance to him, which seems a positive way of thinking about it.

GDB2222

I can see that this makes perfect sense. But since when has that mattered?

One thing that might just possibly help on a purely practical basis is if you take some of your dad's excess furniture, even if this means throwing away some of your own stuff! It means you'll have some heirlooms, too, but I know your DD finds it hard to part with stuff.

LydiaJ

GDB2222 wrote: »

I can see that this makes perfect sense. But since when has that mattered?

One thing that might just possibly help on a purely practical basis is if you take some of your dad's excess furniture, even if this means throwing away some of your own stuff! It means you'll have some heirlooms, too, but I know your DD finds it hard to part with stuff.

Yes, that's part of the plan. I'm having an antique bureau with secret drawers, and one of the glass-fronted bookcases, and maybe some other things too. I will be getting rid of a cheap and nasty desk and bookcase both of which are significantly broken, and DD seems to be OK about them going, I think. I have 3 brothers who may be able to accommodate some of his stuff as well, although one of them has recently put a lot of his own stuff in storage in order to let his house out while renting a much smaller house in the place where he'll be working for the next 2-3 years before coming back again, so I doubt he'll have space for much.

The thing about DD is that she feels attached to the stuff in his house as well as the stuff in ours. She understands that we cannot keep everything from both houses, so getting rid of the broken bookcase etc from our house in order to have space for the bookcase from his house will be hard, but will probably feel like a price worth paying.

zagubov

ivyleaf wrote: »

I think a big Sainsbury's near us is starting to do the self-scanning thing.

Pyxis The Lidl we used to go to is closed for refurb atm, but one has now opened at the opposite side of the town centre to us (hope that makes sense) and we tried it out recently. We had to scan our receipt or something, and then put the receipt in a machine and key in the car's registration number if I remember rightly. Was that what you found stressful? I thought it was a really awkward way to do things, and a lot of customers were having problems scanning their receipt in the first place!
In the one we'd been used to using, we just told the checkout assistant our car reg and they keyed it in, and that was that. I'm sure when it re-opens, it will have the new system. Grrr.

There are some Lidls where you have to have to tell the checkout staff your car reg no. so you get free parking. The one in Wallington does that, IIRC.

Pyxis

ivyleaf wrote: »

I think a big Sainsbury's near us is starting to do the self-scanning thing.

Pyxis The Lidl we used to go to is closed for refurb atm, but one has now opened at the opposite side of the town centre to us (hope that makes sense) and we tried it out recently. We had to scan our receipt or something, and then put the receipt in a machine and key in the car's registration number if I remember rightly. Was that what you found stressful? I thought it was a really awkward way to do things, and a lot of customers were having problems scanning their receipt in the first place!
In the one we'd been used to using, we just told the checkout assistant our car reg and they keyed it in, and that was that. I'm sure when it re-opens, it will have the new system. Grrr.

Both of those sound familiar, but I can't remember which. I had to do something at the till, but I think the receipt was involved, too. I spent the time going round the store worrying about it, not helped by the fact that the chap on the till couldn't find my car on the system. He did something eventually, but I was still worried I'd get a ticket.
I didn't even like the food I'd bought to try! :rotfl:

Also, suppose you go in for something, and they don't have it? You'd still have to buy something in order to get your car out of clink!

No, it was all too much! Why they can't have a ticket machine and reimburse you, like other supermarkets do, is beyond me! It's not like there are major shops near this Lidl, that people might take advantage of the car park. Weird.

GDB2222 wrote: »

It must be an awful wrench for him. I found having to dispose of MIL's houseful of perfectly serviceable furniture a real problem, even though I had no great emotional attachment to it. This is stuff he's chosen and lived with for 50 years. Not to mention leaving the home he's spent most of his life in.

I'm dreading reaching that stage. I can't even sort my house out to make it more habitable now! :eek:

I need a garage!
Or a conservatory!
Aargh!

LydiaJ

Pyxis wrote: »

I'm dreading reaching that stage. I can't even sort my house out to make it more habitable now! :eek:

I need a garage!
Or a conservatory!
Aargh!

At least he has enough money to buy the flat without selling his house just yet. So we can have a few months, at least, of overlap when he owns both properties. I'm encouraging him to focus on what he wants to take with him, and not to worry too much about what will happen to what he leaves behind. Once he's had plenty of time to change his mind and fetch things he's decided he wants after all and/or get rid of things he finds he doesn't need, then I think he should turn the rest of the house contents over to the four of us and let us deal with it. He's 91, and although he still has all his marbles, he can only do things, or think about things, terribly slowly these days, and he's prone to feeling overwhelmed in a way that he wasn't when he was younger. Time for us younger generation to take some of the load off him, IMO.

Meanwhile, I am trying to sort my own house out this summer. Today I finally put up some pictures in my bedroom (only had the house 6.5 years!), rehung my bedroom curtains so they're straight, and had Helpful Builder round to fit a new tap in my bathroom. This evening I need to start on the piles of clutter that will need to make way for the aforementioned antique bureau.