How rude!

I took a phone call on Thursday evening. It was to the house phone, which is unusual, but my sister calls me on that so I always answer. I’d just dished up dinner which was a melange of pasta, sprouts, broccoli and haloumi in fresh pesto. I mention this because it is a meal that is best eaten hot.

I answered the phone. ‘Is that Mrs Rose?’ she asked. 

Obviously not and an instant indicator that this was a sales call. 

‘Yes it is,’ I replied, because even though she did not know how to pronounce my name I am the person she wanted to speak to. 

‘Have you got a minute?’ she asked. 

‘No, actually, I’ve just put out dinner.’ 

‘I understand you still have wooden fascia boards.’ 

‘I don’t want to buy anything thank you.’ 

‘This isn’t a sales call.’ 

‘You know,’ I said, handing Sally her bowl, ‘I’ve just served out our dinner and I’d like to eat it while it’s hot. Goodbye.’ 

As I put the phone down I heard her complain, ‘That’s a bit rude isn’t it!’

This must be the fourth call I’ve had from these people. I am not going to buy their product.    I’ve told them that three times. I sympathise with anyone who has to make a living cold-calling people. It’s a thankless task, but I have always been of the opinion that if I want a service or a product I will research my options and call the people I choose, to ask for a quote. I don’t appreciate companies calling me and refusing to take a polite ‘no’. 

I signed up to the mailing preference service some time ago when I got tired of unsolicited junk mail. I vaguely thought I’d done the telephone version (TPS) at the same time but I haven’t been sure. I’ve just checked and my number has been registered. 

This is what it says on the TPS website;

‘The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a central opt out register whereby individuals can register their wish not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing telephone calls. It is a legal requirement that companies do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS.’

According to the regulator of this legislation, the Information Commissioner’s Office:

Telesales calls

If you have received a live telesales call, and you are registered on the TPS, you can complain directly to the TPS in the first instance.

If you continue to receive telesales calls despite complaining to the TPS you should complain to us.

We may be able to help if:

• you have received a marketing call;
• you can identify the caller;
• the caller is based in the UK; and

• you have registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) or Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS); or

• you have a record showing you had previously informed the caller that you did not wish to receive its marketing calls. 

So the next time this company is rude enough to call me, despite me registering not to receive marketing calls, I will tell the that I will report them, and then I will report them. I’m almost looking forward to it.

Disappointment pending...

2012. I’m living in the future and it’s not at all what I had hoped for. Despite the lack of rocket pants, however, and the fairly constant low level anxiety, I remain relatively content. 

We’ve had a lovely holiday. Christmas was a family day (without my kids but with Mum, my sister Sue, Robin and Callum and, of course, Ian & the Queen). On the 29th we drove up to Scotland for Ian’s niece, Kirsty’s, wedding. This was jolly fun although I wasn’t convinced by the symbolism. They each lit a candle and once the words had been said, together lit a big central candle. How lovely! And then they, together, snuffed their individual candles. I’m beginning to think I’m spending far too much time worrying about symbolism. At a talk some time ago I suggested that the speaker stopped ‘arming’ their audience with information and began sharing information. These ideas do not endear me. I should shut up. 

Fran, John, Laura & Lady Godiva

New year’s eve was with Julia and Doug and a host of lovely fans. To describe it as a feast rather undersells the whole thing. The food was amazing (who would have thought that beetroot mousse would be so yummy) and the presentation was fabulous, both the food and the lovely handpainted 'tapestries' courtesy of Julia and Sally. The only problem now is that of finding anyone brave enough to try to host next year’s celebration. We can comfortably seat eight but there is no way I could find the money, time and kitchen space to produce such a banquet. Wow! Sheffield fandom will be subsisting on the leftovers for some time to come. Of course there will be a follow-on extravaganza in May when the wedding of the century takes place in the Daly-Spencer household.

Over the holidays I spent two mornings on the allotment disinterring large quantities of junk, watched three TV progs (the Big Fat Quiz of the Year (tick good), Dr Who (tick vg) and Sherlock Holmes (tick excellent)) and listened to a number of radio programmes. I failed to finish a book (any book) and bemoaned the dearth of blogs and cartoons although  I did spend an inordinate amount of time reading postings on ‘Do the Math’. More on this sometime soon. I ate too much of too rich food and drank far too much. And all the time that vague low level anxiety hovered. Maybe more on this sometime soonish too.

So, it is the evening of new year’s day. Despite my best intentions I did not clear and clean the house - we entertained instead. I did, however, put my resolutions into play. I didn’t, despite the temptations still hanging round the house, ingest any refined sugar and I only had a share of one bottle of really quite splendid Amarone whilst eating my frugal dinner. There have been rather more photos taken of me than usual, given the additional festivities, and it was difficult to ignore the somewhat ample girth displayed. So, sigh, the following resolutions:

I will not drink alcohol on my own and I’ll limit myself to a share of one bottle of wine

I will not eat or drink refined sugar (goodbye hot chocolate with cointreau)

I will live within my means (because I so haven’t this month)

Yeah, I know. Every new year I intend to do the same old things. Get thin, get rich, get organised. I’m still ample, poorish and messy. It’s a tradition. I’ll see if I can get to February before I give up this year.

  

Bah - humbug!

Christmas Eve – the wonder of a Father Ted evening and the horror of pre-Christmas advertising – too late to buy any of the things they advertise – beautiful fragrant people and far too many pre-sale ads. Now I remember why I don’t watch TV.  Even the joy of Father Ted isn’t worth the vile boredom and fatuous inanity of far too many adverts for worthless trash.  

Goodbye summer, goodbye.

Everyone I know has complained about this summer but it has been just perfect for me. It hardly rained at all, though that did necessitate some garden and allotment watering and my rain butts ran dry quite early. More importantly, it was often bright and sunny without being hot. In Sheffield anyway. Apparently Scotland didn’t suffer our drought. I acquired a gardener’s tan; my arms and neck are brown, my hands not so much and my legs are fish belly white. Lots of nettles and brambles on the allotment. Summer came to an abrupt end mid last week, the first week of October. It’s really quite cool and damp now.

Ian has been commenting for some time that there has been no blog update since August. I have excuses but I can’t remember them. It really seems too late now to write about our last weekend at the fringe with the kids although it was jolly good fun.

The biggest excitement since then has been getting Sally packed off to the University of Salford. There had been a slow but steady accumulation of stuff to go. Oxfam in Broomhill yielded a decent haul of pans, plates etc, a huge suitcase was purchased from one of the charity shops in Hamilton, I purchased yet another copy of Rose Elliot’s ‘Cheap and Easy’ and her father contributed yet another copy of the ‘Cranks Cookbook’.  She seems to have taken to student life with panache, only complaining a little about the mice already in residence in the kitchen. Unlike the radio silence from Jack I have a regular if perfunctory contact with Sally and already have an idea of who she spends her time with and what she’s doing. I’ve been away so much and so busy that I haven’t really had time to miss her. All I need is a week at home going nowhere to work up to being a bit lonely. I guess I’ll cope.

More sadly we are losing my colleague, Amanda, from work. She is so delightful that I forgive her for her slender and energetic youth. In the time that I have worked at the company I have always warned that times were too unstable to take new people on. In Mandy’s case she is probably better off for having spent the year with us but I will miss her terribly. She has decided, very sensibly, to get a visa and spend six months in Australia, working where she can. I’m hoping she keeps in touch without me having to join Facebook.

I’d write more but I have been stricken with a very time consuming affliction. I’m reading about all the Hugo winners over the years. I rather enjoyed Sam Jordison’s attempt to read and blog about past winners but he keeps going off on Booker winner tangents so that I’ve virtually given up on him. I’ve recently fallen into a Making Light dwam and having read 1002 comments on wearing seatbelts (no really!) I was looking for some light relief and ended up on the Tor site reading Jo Walton’s ‘Revisiting the Hugos’.  Starting in 1953 I have read each year and any linked reviews all the way to 1974. I was only peripherally aware of Jo until recently. I find her to be an excellent reviewer, in that I can pretty much trust her judgement to align with mine. She doesn’t like PK Dick for example. Earlier on today I finally unstacked Ian’s pile of banana boxes filled with SF paperbacks looking for two of the Simak books she wrote favourably about. They have teetered  there for over six years, though the comedy books made it to shelves with days of him moving in. I’ve located ‘Way Station’ but no sign was found of ‘City’.  I’ve got an audit tomorrow, a report writing day on Tuesday and training courses Wednesday and Thursday so on Friday I’m thinking of staying in bed all day and reading ‘Way Station’.

Incidentally, having watched a lot of seatbelt adverts, this is still the very best!    

Two weeks ago

Augh! It’s all fading away into the stiff mix of tapioca that is my brain.

The surprise in the Robin Ince free show at the Canon’s Gait was Jimeoin. Robin was manic as always, Helen Keen was charmingly enthusiastic about space (probably shouldn’t point out the Archdruid’s latest post) and Helen Arney sang her amazing songs but we’d seen them all before and expected nothing less than a good show from them. I’ve never see Jimeoin live before and I enjoyed his shtick. Being of an age where memory is (obviously) gradually fraying, listening to him talk about thinking and memory was wonderful but perhaps the thing that will stay with me longest is that universal constant for slow movement, the Speed of Cheese. Next year in Edinburgh…

The thing that stood out about Mitch Benn’s performance is how much less there is of him. It was amazingly distracting. I’d thought him rather cute when he was large and I didn’t quite get my head around him being suddenly much more conventionally attractive. To some extent I found the songs less mesmerising because of it. The balance has changed but that is not Mitch’s problem, it’s mine, and I’m sure I will readjust over the years. He is always on my must see list just because of his outstanding musical/satirical talent.

Andy Zaltzman. What can I say? He is embedded in my world, sometimes second hand, through the Bugle to the extent that I’m not sure what was in this show and what I’ve heard over the last year’s podcasts. I think the highlight of the show was that bad boy, Julian, heckling him with a business card. Sigh.

On another note, I am very much enjoying Ian’s downstairs bathroom book, Andy’s credit crunch book that was purchased last year. Andy is excellent.

We finished the day with Milton Jones who was, as always, wonderful and wonderfully weird. The first time I saw him was in the horribly hot and damp Caves. He’s playing the Assembly on the Mound now and deservedly so.

We added in two shows just because Julian wasn’t completely broken by all the stairs, uncomfortable seats and other horrors of the fringe. Both were at the Pleasance Courtyard and so a simple stagger from the convenient (after 6) parking.

I’ve liked David O’Doherty since the first time we saw him and his toy keyboard. Ian thought him a little too whimsical I think but agreed that this year was the best we’d seen him. I guess he’d grown a beard for his other (Arctic Explorer) show but it suited him. It made him look faintly grown up. Whimsicality and charm don’t usually do great things for Ian who prefers quick-fire jokes and wordplay, so I go to see Tim Vine with him and he comes to see David O’Doherty with me. Still, this year Ian seemed to have been mildly converted, perhaps by tales of awful illness. Scatological humour brings us all together.  

Rich Hall was fab. But crikey, I can’t remember the show other than it was great. How sad that an hour of brilliant performance can be reduced to a memory of hilarity with no detail at all. And the shows I saw yesterday are fading already as I try to recall two weeks ago. Sigh…  

(Links provided so that anyone who is interested can get a flavour of the comedians not provided by the rather poor 'reviews'.) Sorry.

What I did on my hols...

This post started in July and just never got any further and I’m starting to forget what I was writing about so I’m just going to do a very brief round-up whilst I still have some memory. The things that got in the way? Work, books, gardening; nothing exciting or worrying, just life.

So, in July we went on holiday, before the Fringe. I took the train down to Falmouth (a substantial journey) and Ian flew down to Exeter and joined me for the last leg of the train journey.

The holiday started with a visit to Christina Lake and Doug Bell in Falmouth. We’ve been meaning to visit them again for ages but it’s not a place to just drop in, it requires a bit of planning and time to travel. It’s always lovely to see them, such good fannish fans, and we seemed to spend the whole weekend gossiping and planning (and eating ice-cream, and drinking cocktails & nice wine and eating) and occasionally talking about books. They have a lovely house with a view of the harbour if you are high enough up. From the attic where we slept you can see a gorgeous panorama but it’s a ladder and a flight of stairs down to the bathroom, which certainly precludes drinking too much or the temptation to make it the main bedroom. I enjoy spending time with Chris and Doug enormously and then never stay in touch in the interim. I guess it’s because it is the gestalt that is so marvellous. Perhaps we ought to set up conference calls with all four of us from our three different locations calling in.

(Splendidly we also saw them in the first week at the Fringe as they were up visiting Doug’s parents in Penicuik. We met for a lovely and memorable lunch at the Missoni Hotel in Edinburgh, adding Lilian and Julian to the mix. Fab!)

We left, somewhat reluctantly, on Monday morning and headed for Bristol to stay at the Mercure, which is very nice and only quite expensive (Laterooms). We’d looked at cheaper options but Trip Advisor advised against. Most of my lovely (if hazy through time, not drink – really) memories from here revolve around meals. Who would have thought? We met Sue Hobson for dinner in the Glass Boat, a floating restaurant of Welsh Back, in view (and Wifi contact) from our room in the hotel. I can’t remember what we ate (although I remember it was lovely), just that we had a fine time chatting. It’s always good to see Sue.

We also met Clarrie and Tim (the celebrated first Harry Potter) Maguire for the splendid Mexican meal and an evening at their flat complete with a life size Lara Croft (of course). Clarrie, like me, is a Daniel Kitson fan. Ian took agin him when, after winning the Perrier, he forsook stand up for whimsical storytelling the next year. I’m just going to have to go see him on my own.

We did things other than eat. We went to Bath and visited the Roman Baths, and stayed a long time to justify the steep admission price. We went from there to the house of the celebrated astronomers, William and Caroline Herschel. The most interesting thing for me was the house itself, kept as far as possible as it would have been when the Herschels lived there.

We also explored Bristol’s St Nicholas Market, a hundred yards or so away from the hotel but that takes us back again to eating. The Source. Eggy bread. Mmm.

I guess other than the food and the chatting, what stood out in this Bristol visit was the plethora of gorillas. If we had had more time we would have sought them all out and captured them. There was a map with all their locations available. I have a vague impression they were to support Gary the Gorilla at the zoo. Personally I’m not keen on keeping gorillas in zoos but I really like having illustrated gorillas infesting a city, providing simian surprises in unexpected places.

From Bristol we caught a train up to Worcester to stay with Chris Donaldson and Paul Oldroyd. Annoyingly they have gafiated so we don’t get to see them automatically twice a year. Even more annoyingly they have retired and spend much of the year gallivanting around France and Spain with their overbred but delightful dog, Guinevere. I miss them.

Chris cooked all our meals and they were wonderful. If Ian hadn’t picked up a few sausages in Source it would have been a vegetarian couple of days for him, poor soul. Chris is one of the best vegetarian cooks I know, and not even veggie herself. Julian Headlong came over for the day on the Thursday so we left the boys at home and Chris and I took a bus into Worcester to go shopping. Window shopping for the most part. I bought a book and a soap from Lush. And a coffee at Costa.

I really enjoyed this final part of the holiday, again more for the sitting around chatting than for anything we actually did.

Compared to the Fringe this was a very low cost holiday, despite a fair amount of eating out and quite some distance travelled. We managed to find cheap deals on the trains and we only stayed in a hotel for two nights. And so much fun!

Fringe 2011

And so we come to Edinburgh again for the fringe. This year, though, we are taking it really easy. Apart from the EICC all venues have horrid uncomfortable seats and Julian can no longer take more than three shows a day. We’ve gone from a programme of five, sometimes six, shows a day because the pathetic sight of Julian in pain is not really fun.

So, Monday (2 for one day) we saw three shows. We took the train as a return is less than £4 at the moment, started with the wonderful Instant Sunshine, moved on to Ed Reardon; A writers burden (fab!) and finally saw Josh Widdicombe in a tiny stiflingly hot hut at the Pleasance. Josh is a young comedian who is both very personable and funny. He made the mistake in fixing on Julian following the inevitable question, ‘Where has everyone come from?’ I guess he thought Swindon was the potentially funniest place. Oops. It wasn’t quite as derailing as when Ian and I got into a question and answer session with John Bishop some years ago but there was always the potential. As Ian points out, a comedian isn’t really interested in hearing a participant’s life story, they want sound bites to be amusing with. I’ve seen much more seasoned performers than Josh flounder when faced with Julian’s answers (Otis Lee Crenshaw found it very difficult to adjust his song ‘Big [Julian]’ to a job maintaining analysers). I was very impressed with the way Josh dealt with Julian’s too much information. He was friendly, professional and managed to wring laughs out of Julian’s contribution without any nastiness emerging. Josh is a thoroughly bright and charming young comedian. I’ve got a bit of a crush.

Tuesday (2 for one) we drove over as we wouldn’t be out of our last show to make the last train. We had intended to go to see Robin Ince’s free show at Canon’s Gait. This free show is non-ticketed. Obviously, though, there needs to be some way of managing the audience so there are queue places allocated. We were too late to obtain a queue place (not a ticket) so we planned to try again on Thursday whilst we trudged up the horribly crowded Royal Mile, gruffly refusing leaflets and avoiding catching the eyes of the bright young things breathlessly inviting us to their shows.

We plunged, with relief, out of leaflet central and headed off to find Transreal, recently relocated. There are so few SF bookshops left these days. I’m sure I’ve said this before but since Andromeda died there is only Transreal where I can go to browse, to discuss books with a knowledgeable owner, to find new authors and books that I would never discover from Amazon. I’ve always had great suggestions from here and, again, I walked away with far more books than I intended to. I think of it as supporting a sanctuary because I could almost certainly get the books cheaper on Amazon but money is not the only consideration here. As Bob Waldrop and others point out, every time you make a buying decision you are changing the world.

Julian and I were only lured out of Transreal by Ian texting us from Under the Stairs to tell us that he had warm pitta bread and dips. Reluctantly we paid and entered the cool haven in the basement of one of the looming grey buildings on Merchant’s Street. We drank our Citrus Punch whilst we waited for our lunch and for June to join us. June is an Edinburgh resident and an accomplished Fringe goer. Although joining us for a few shows she experiences a very different Fringe from us, going to many free events as well. She had come from a Japanese tea ceremony and planned on looking for other shows after she left us.

The first show we saw was Cul-de-sac, a very strange play. It was very well acted and started out as mildly amusing. A new person, Tim, has moved into the cul-de-sac and meets his neighbour, Neville. As Tim is told about what is expected of him we hear of Tony for the first time, the man who, it slowly emerges, controls the neighbourhood. During the hour we see the slow breaking down of Tim by the social controls exerted by Tony, with able assistance in abuse by the doctor. As each episode became more sinister and disturbing fewer and fewer people laughed. Towards the end the absurdity was completely overwhelmed by the horror. It was a very strong piece, professionally performed and I didn’t like it at all. We wondered if it was an allegory for Britain under Blair, with all of us becoming creepily acquiescent and accepting of things that were patently wrong. June suggested that there should have been some sort of warning as there were definite triggers for people who have been abused. Julian says, ‘A cross between 1984 and The Stepford Wives’.

We retired to the Corvoisier Bar for a pint of tap water and some beer for the boys before heading for another sweaty venue, Above at the Pleasance. This was to see Isy Suttee’s show, ‘Pearl & Dave’. This was a lovely tale of unrequited love with songs. Images of loveliness include two girls letting off a penpal request attached to an ordinary balloon from the top of their climbing frame, an accountant with rows of friendship bracelets up his arms, a papier mache penguin called Roy, and a skype romantic dinner for two. At the end there were tears in my eyes. Most of the women leaving were sniffling slightly. Reviews have likened her to a young Victoria Wood but I tend to think this is because if a woman is funny and sings songs that are both funny and poignant there is no one else to compare her too. Isy is, I suggest, incomparable. You really wouldn’t hear her and think she was anyone else. And I completely agree with another reviewer, someone who doesn’t greet the gift of a five foot papier mache penguin, lovingly made for them by their lover over weeks, doesn’t deserve such devotion. I’ve got a bit of a crush.

We trooped down into the blessed coolness and headed for dinner at the Home Bistro. I love this place and the delightful Roland who was devastated yesterday when he didn’t have a place for us, and warmly welcoming today. The salad I had was lovely; pear, beetroot, feta and leaves with a great dressing. I had, of course, had no starter and a light main in order to keep a bit of space for the fabulous ice cream. The toffee was nice, the ginger was splendid and the marmalade was luscious.

Half way through the meal I got a call from Sally. Salford Uni had emailed her to say there would be an induction day on 25^th August. 25^th is the day the kids and I are travelling up to Scotland on Megabus for our traditional bank holiday weekend fringe binge. Transport tickets booked, show tickets booked, all arrangements made. Of course. I know it’s two weeks away still but most people I know have fairly busy diaries and are booked up at least a month in advance. It would have been useful had they asked us the pencil in the dates several months ago. Oh well. We agree to look at options on Wednesday morning.

At the point I thought we had already reached the highspot of the fringe with Isy. We looked around at the rest of the audience for the next show and worried that they looked quite a serious lot. I guessed that the show would be informative and worthy but probably a little light on laughs. I’ve read Mark Thomas and I’ve been impressed by his politics but I’d never seen him perform before. If I had I wouldn’t have been concerned. His two-hour show about extreme rambling, walking the Israeli wall, was astonishing. A serious subject with potential for bigotry, potential for dull preaching. This is not, of course, what we got. Mark is a consummate performer, a storyteller, a comedian able to wring helpless laughter out of an audience, whilst laying out the enormity of a wrong done to two nations, both Palestine and Israel. He took us on the walk, introduced us to some marvellous characters, crossed the wall backwards and forwards many times, led us to sympathy, anger and understanding. I really had not realised how good he was. I’ve got a bit of a crush.

So here we are, Wednesday morning, having a lazy day off and catching up on gazing at laptop screens. I’ve filled in my Biobank diet questionnaire (the second and both times I have been eating abnormally), caught up on the cartoons (XKCD, Freefall, Bug and Questionable Content) and gazed out at the unrelenting rain while fending off invitations to supermarket shopping. I’m hoping the boys will wander off soon and leave me to browse through my books. Or maybe just finish off ‘One Good Turn’.