Last night I heard that Gloucester is running out of drinking water. Excuse me, we live in the UK. We have a decent (ish) infrastructure. Is it beyond the wit of man to just get stuff where it needs to go?
It also puzzles me why people are blaming the government for the flooding. Politicians are not - as far as I know - in charge of the weather. Okay, the response and defences etc is down to ‘those in charge’ but some people will use any excuse to bash the government, mostly the very same people who are too lazy to get off their arses and vote on election days.
Since spraining my ankle and breaking this teeny tiny (but incredibly painful) bone in my foot, I have been forced into “sensible footwear”. This is very irritating on a number of counts not least being I have a cupboard full of gorgeous shoes and can’t wear any of them. I tried on a relatively low pair of pink kitten heels, made it downstairs to the front door before having to admit defeat. I know you are meant to suffer for beauty and style but crippling myself and limping is really not an option (when did I get so sensible?).
The doctor recommended I wear trainers but I am really not a trainers sort of girl, I do have a pretty pair of Campers but they really only can be worn with jeans (cripple does not equal “lost all sense of style”, and look the sensible girl seems to have disappeared!).
So it’s been sandals virtually all the way for June and July. Under normal circumstances, sandals in June and July is a perfectly reasonable concept but this year of course we have had the summer monsoons so I am in danger of developing trench foot and remembering my trench mouth of last year, it’s not an experience I want to repeat. Actually though, I have realised that it’s better to wear sandals in the rain as the water sort of just drains out of the sides and although you’re guaranteed getting wet feet at least they all dry off together instead of your tootsies slopping around in normal shoes which just refuse to dry out. I put this theory to someone yesterday but they thought I was barking.
How can there be so much and did it have to decide to fall just as I happened to be outside earlier?
Just driven down from London to the deep, dark countryside and there were so many floods. Quite unpleasant. Also makes you realise how crap London’s drains are as we must have passed about half a dozen that had just given up and were pumping water (and other ‘interesting’ things) back on to the street.
But…
Laptop - irrepairable. They weren’t going to send it back to me so I could retrieve stuff from my hard drive (yes I know it should all be backed up but it isn’t so shoot me), I have however persuaded them that that would be completely unacceptable so they are returning the darned thing to me then I have to take it to the store and get a replacement (although currently thinking refund because I am mightily pissed off).
PDA - decided to reset itself. This means that I have virtually no contact details for anyone until I get my laptop back, can resync and then decide how to back that up (methinks pen and paper as I am increasingly technophobic).
Mobile - in for repairs so having to use an old handset which has about as much battery life as…well something with not much battery life. Also, in copying some of the numbers from my (currently being repaired) handset to the SIM, some gremlin got in and they haven’t transferred properly. Phone will be reset when I get it back so sync-ing my PDA and laptop becomes even more important.
Finally - well I hope this is finally because I’m not entirely sure how muh more I can take - my car looks as though it is a right off. This is because last night my lovely little soft top car was used as a stopping device by a drunk, banned driver who had stolen a car in Streatham and was being pursued by the police. I phoned the insurance people this morning and she was completely flummoxed by the story. I must admit I was very confused by it all at the time. The noise of the crash woke me up but I didn’t really know what was going on and just thought my car alarm had decided to go off. I had to look about three times (it was 3.10am) to work out what was going on: why my car was at least 6 inches up on the pavement; why it looked like someone had parked a car in the side of my little jalopy; and why there was a police car parked sideways into another car. In a way thank goodness it was a police chase because at least they were there and I wasn’t tempted to go down and get myself into a potentially dangerous situation with a drunk car thief (apparently he’s also banned until 2008 and a well-known drug addict - so an all-round nice chap!). They were very nice and told me to go and have a cup of tea and they’d come and see me when back up arrived to whisk nasty criminal man away. A 12 year old policewoman who was about 4 foot 6 came in and took my details and then they all said I should go to bed (one thing that did strike me was that there were about 8 police people dealing with this incident which was slightly surprising considering I thought they were all supposed to be finding car bombs). Well you try going to bed and going to sleep when you have no idea exactly what the damage is to your car (no way of telling at this point because of all the notes they had to make - probably made doubly long because the pursuing police car had hit a car on the other side of the road). I know it’s only a piece of metal but I am rather attached to it. Eventually (about 5am) the recovery vehicle came and removed the stolen car which was rather embedded in my car. Had another nice chat with the police: they borrowed my dustpan and brush to remove the rather enormous amount of glass on the road; they also told me I couldn’t drive the car as two of the tyres were now illegal and there’s a chance the front axel has gone. This is not to mention the horrible damage to the bodywork (the passenger door looks like it’s been attacked with a very large can opener). As it’s old it’s probably not going to survive although I live in hope. A slightly irksome point is that I spent £250 getting it serviced on Thursday - the irony.
I’m lucky in that I don’t use my car every day and there is public transport but it’s a bugger for those journeys which are much easier by car than tube (my house to Knightsbridge which is a regular Monday night trip; my house to Tulse Hill which is a regular Thursday night trip; shopping; taking my wretched laptop back when its eventually returned; going to visit my parents). It’s also been really handy with my bad ankle/foot. Plus of course the monsoon like weather means I am going to get wet.
They say things come in threes - I’m really hoping this has just been a blip rather than having to work myself up to another three.
BUGGER!!
Has to go in to have the audio card fixed as it’s being a temperamental beast. V annoying especially as I finish work this work so potentially no internet access until the technical bods get it sorted. I had planned to do loads of computer related stuff during my week off (TEFL, general Africa research, looking for work etc) , going to have to see if I can fire up the old Mac although dealing with dial up could really push me over the edge!
As an aside, it’s freezing. I’ve had to turn the heating on and have even been driven to wearing my fluffy socks as my toes turned a rather startling shade of blue.
Why does it always rain on bank holiday weekends? Oh well, my garden’s enjoying it and it’s a good excuse not to mow the lawn (probably should have done it before the rain set in though as it’s starting to look like a jungle).
Among other annoyances:
My iron blew up this morning (and tripped the electricity - a small moment of panic). Because it’s Sunday I have to wait until 11 o’clock to get myself down to Argos to buy another one - grrr.
My Norton is playing silly buggers and keeps having ‘unexpected errors’, it’s become such a pain that what is unexpected is if it runs smoothly. In fact my laptop in general is being annoying and seems to have a bug in its audio card thingy - I think I’m going to have to take it in to be repaired - grrr.
Why can’t I change my ipod from Mac compatible to PC compatible without losing all my songs - grrr.
Went to the cinema yesterday. Probably a mistake to go on a Saturday afternoon and expect to actually be able to watch a film without hoardes of teenagers behaving like 5 year olds. No, actually that’s doing a disservice to 5 year olds. Beats me why you would pay to go to the cinema, spend half the time answering your mobile then reporting back on the conversation to your mates; spend quite a lot of time going up and down the aisles on various girly toilet trips; and buy an enormous box of popcorn and proceed to throw most of it on the floor, at other people etc. One of them was even playing with their PSP - multi-tasking or just having the attention span of a gnat? Makes me sound like a grumpy old person but it really was doing my head in. I actually took my life in my hands (well risked getting stabbed given this was the deeper darker regions of SW London) and asked them to be quiet. Made me feel ancient but had the required effect (well for about 20 minutes until there was another call on the mobile).
Okay, rant over.
Las episode of Lost tonight - v excited and at least I can watch in the peace and quiet of my living room with no popcorn and mobile phone switched off!
