Good service

I really hate bad service in shops and restaurants. I think it's incredibly rude and unhelpful. Just because I'm having a bad day doesn't mean I take it out on my students. I'll often vote with my feet and never go back. A case in point, Frasers (or is a Z? See, I never go. It is dead to me. I am as stubborn as my grandfather sometimes.) in Belfast. I haven't darkened the door of that shop since the mid-late 90s after bad service. Obviously this ploy hasn't worked so well as it's still standing. But not because of my money. Ha.

Anyway, as the Christmas shopping season has hit, I, like many people, buy things online. Well this one idea (let's just say it was a 'keyring', they read this) I had for my nearest and dearest really required a conversation with someone. I called one company and the girl couldn't tell me the answers to my questions, and even though it was 4.15pm she said she couldn't let me know until tomorrow, therefore potentially missing the Christmas deadline delivery. It was so much that as her unhelpful nature when she spoke which was annoying.

I called another company and it couldn't have been more different. She knew the answers to most of my questions and promised to find out the ones she didn't know in five minutes. When she called me back they weren't quite as I hoped, I still felt a certain sense of comfort in ordering said 'keyring' with her. Ten minutes later she called me back to say that she'd messed up and delivery would be slightly more I didn't mind because she was so apologetic and polite about it.

When Christmas is all over with and the 'keyring' goes down a storm I'll maybe put a link on then incase you want to order a 'keyring'. Good people like this deserve to have their name known.

New home

I mentioned a while ago that I had moved to the big smoke. Travelling into school was becoming all too much for me. I worked out, not long after I moved, that it would take me four school weeks to travel as far as I was travelling in one day. So a move was definitely in order.

As is now tradition when I live somewhere else I put a few photos up. So here they are:

This is me doing the dishes for real.

But I am fake reading.

As well as fake sleeping.

Definitely a fake visit to the toilet.

I seem to never have seen this scarf before.

Proof

As if it were needed.

None of the things I said I need to blog about

I'm at home with the parents today, always good times. Today's started when we realised my dad's winter hat (an old ski hat of mine or David's) was the exact same colours of our hoover. No, really. If that's where it started you can only imagine how it went downhill from there. By the end of lunch we were all sitting modelling our winter hats which just seemed normal until we realised what we were doing.

Now my dad and I are writing Christmas cards. There's lots of 'what is his wife's name?...'Carol! Not Anne at all!'...'Where would I get the address for them?'...'There's another geek I better write to. Pants, pants, pants!' I promise that last one was from my dad and exactly as he said it!

Every so often we'll break into one of those round robin Christmas letters your acquaintances (took me forever to spell that right!) so loving send you...'We can hardly believe another year has passed...we have had a wonderful year... X continues to work hard at the office (and at the Golf Club!)...Whilst X has taken up the new hobby of soapmaking...the grandchildren continue to provide much amusement [insert witty grandchildren story here]...so friends as another year draws in, join with us in appreciating all this year has brought.'

Actually, you probably won't be surprised to learn we get a bit excited when those come in so I shouldn't mock.

The other day though, I got an insert way better than a Christmas letter. Oh yes! No really. It was a scanned in article from a local newspaper's around and about section. As my scanner is up in the big smoke I shall try to recreate it for you.

Rocky Mountain News Gazette Wed, November 12th, 2008

Community Eye

BEARLY VISIBLE

XXXX had a late night visitor when a bear came calling. "I thought this might be a good public service reminder to bring one's bird feeders, or at least place them out of reach" said XXXX. The family lives near Rocky Heights. "Hopefully, he/she is now hibernating."

See! Informative, newsy and funny! That's how they do round robin letters in Colorado my friends!

I need to mark

It's been a while and there's been a fair amount I have been up to but I am in the middle of marking Christmas tests which is particularly dull, uninspiring and makes me wonder what I have been teaching the last number of weeks because most seem to have forgotten it all.

At a later date I will detail here:

-my new living arrangements

-my day as a tour guide

-my exciting night last night

But for right now it's back to read about how Martin Luther was an English priest who went round different churches in England and put up a big poster to say what was wrong with them.

Close but it's not right.