andyram

1 hour ago, Erichill16 said:

No winner, 0:0 draw. Very poor match but Derby may have upper hand.  Bet Wayne Rooney will be bellyaching about it.

 

Poor game. I have seen better football played on local park pitches. I have seen snippets of Rooney’s interview which stated we had battled well. I am not going to suggest we descended to the hoof it level of our hosts because our football has been dire all season. A draw a fair result. Both keepers made one decent save each. We were a width of a post away from a winner. Barnsley should have had a penalty. The horrible little man with the whistle, Keith Stroud, always likes to be centre of attention but seemed to forget himself today and had a fairly quiet game. Usually his errors are against us, but today’s decision to book a Barnsley player for diving in the box after a clear foul by our player was a rare one in our favour. On most occasions he can’t point to the spot quick enough!

 Those are ninety minutes of my life I won’t get back, but made palatable by the two pints of Stout I consumed.

 Anyway, moving away from a load of balls! Greetings to one and all. Not much to report today apart from frustration at DPD. They have been delivering to my shop for 2 and a half years. They are well aware that I don’t normally open until 10.30am and that I live 40 minutes drive from the shop. It is therefore no help to send me an alert at 7.30am stating my delivery will be arriving from 8.15. Result being the delivery rearranged for tomorrow.

Stay safe.

Andy

Evening all and I hope today finds you well.

Yes I did catch the Harry Hewitt and Megan interview although not by choice. Sarah decided to forego the football on Sky to watch it - come on, own up, who has pinched my wife?? Am I going to offer my thoughts on it? No! I won’t waste my time.

Amber has returned to school today. This morning seemed stressful. I think she had mixed feelings but was looking forward to seeing her friends again.  With Sarah at work, there was some time for quiet this morning although much of it was spent marking yet more dreadful assignments.

After lunch I headed up to the shop to collect the items sold over the weekend so that the could be packed and sent out. I arrived to find the place in chaos. Workmen are renovating some of the properties in the centre, creating two new holiday lets. They are also completing the renovations to the cafe in the yard. Their supplies of floorboards had just been dumped across the front of my shop door. When I enquired to the workmen how I was supposed to get in the shop I was greeted with a vacant smile and a shrug of the shoulders. They soon moved them when I climbed onto the pile and walked across so that I could unlock the shop and go in. 
 

I returned from the shop around 3pm. It proved to be a bad move with school traffic resulting in a much longer journey. I have not seen things this bad in twelve months (even when the schools were open).

Stay safe.

Andy

Evening all. Congratulations to Dom and Elsie. Also many happy returns to Jill.

Today we have had decent weather with some good spells of sunshine.  Three different walks were undertaken today (shhhhh don’t tell Boris). Actually all were related to collecting Sarah’s Avon books. No wonder my phone recorded over 15,000 steps today. The most achieved in a single day all year by a long way. No wonder the legs feel a bit tight now.

Night all.

Andy

9 hours ago, BoD said:

Morning all

 

It would appear that I have court case against my name raised by HMRC.  I could be going to jail.

I hope prisoners are allowed a model railway club.

I'm not too sure about the scalpels and soldering iron though.

 

Valerie has packed my bag already.

I will let you know what the cake is like there.

I had the same call this morning and there have been many such calls over the last few months - Amazon Prime, Tv license, HMRC, various banks and even NHS test and trace. All wanting you to press this number to confirm something or respond to a "strange activity" on your account. They pick things to throw doubt into your mind and, by selecting topical things, they try and make it sound real. No surprise it is HMRC at the moment as we reach the end of a financial year. That is how they catch people!

Since my personal mobile also doubles up as the business phone, I seem to get other nuisance calls - various previously unheard of companies wanting to take on my business electricity, phone service or broadband. Nowadays I put the phone down and block the number.

Stay safe, stay sane.

Andy

Evening all. My good wishes all round with supportive thoughts to those who are suffering whether it be tooth ache or post jab. Thank you to all who offered comments about the shortage of a certain part which is adding to the shortage of the Sony console. I had been aware of this issue via the news and it certainly is one of the issues impacting on supply.

Meanwhile the search continues yielding nothing but more frustration. Last night I checked a few sites from my iPad whilst partaking in a pre-bed drink. The usual out of stock messages dominated. Then I called up the Argos app. A couple of days ago I had managed to add the item to the trolley but got no further. The item had sat, faded out, in the trolley ever since - until last night when it appeared in full colour with the phrase "available for same day delivery" alongside. I clicked on it, got to the item page - but instead of the opportunity to complete purchase it had the "out of stock" message. Knowing how Argos have a habit of restocking items at silly times, I spent a while refreshing and checking but to no avail. The only result was less sleep than required and a day spent feeling very tired. Ironically, the situation has not changed and the item still remains in the trolley with the same delivery message followed by the out of stock alert at checkout. 

 This morning there was further frustration. The large toy supermarket - Smyths, was due to be restocking today. Laptop was on as soon as I got up and regularly refreshed with nothing happening. At 8.35 (precise time I know), I went to make breakfast - came back with tea and toast to find the whole allocation for the day had been on the site and sold out in less than ten minutes! 

 Internet sites are certainly not my friends. I also awoke to an alert from the shop site. A decent sized order which was very welcome. However, the order was made up of 5 x a specific GWR wagon from the 2019 set of releases. These have long since sold out and, so I thought, had been removed from the website. This has happened a few times recently where the site engine does not fully remove the item even when it has been deleted. Very annoying. Occasionally. it has been caused by me forgetting to update the inventory on some days. The result of this order being that I will have to disappoint the customer and refund. I have, this afternoon, undertaken a full stock take of current and pre-ordered wagon stock to make sure the inventory is up to date. The benefit was I found a couple of others that had slipped the net although, on this occasion, it was the website error and not me!

Stay safe and sane.

Andy

Evening all.  Another late check in with generic good wishes, congrats and commiserations as appropriate. Sadly, as outlined in earlier posts, the search for Sony’s much sought after games console again proved fruitless. I note the comments of some on here about “marketing”. I have been involved with buying consoles for over 30 years. There are always issues with supplies of any brand new games console. They simply cannot make enough for the demand. The pandemic has certainly made things worse in terms of supply and the ability for customers to order them.  The websites simply cannot cope with the traffic. It has produced a much more difficult situation, probably increased by some wanting them sooner than normal because of the lockdowns.  I usually hold off for at least six months to let the demand ease, usually not purchasing until May or a June. The lockdown and Sarah offering to buy it for Christmas has meant I am amongst those looking to purchase early. The chances are it could well be May and June before I do get my hands on one.

 Back to things which many more ER’s will relate to, I have heard from the advertising team of Hornby Magazine. As expected, they were full of apologies for their error and have refunded the price of the advert. They have managed to change it to the correct ad for the digital version of the magazine.  That is as much as they could have done. It is another cause of frustration however because it does reduce the publicity of the special offer.

 Back at home, Amber has started to make an effort to make up for her actions yesterday. She has accepted that she did the wrong thing. Home schooling was completed in good time and to a good standard. She has made a start on the tidying up too. Long may it continue.

Stay safe.

Andy

Evening all. Good to hear that @New Haven Neil has joined the jabbed club. In terms of needles - I did not look so could not comment on the size of the needle. I did not feel a thing - but the administering nurse looked quite attractive (although she was wearing a mask) so that helped to take my mind off things! I hope the side effects stay away.

Happy birthday to @Ian Abel

Good to see @grandadbob making an appearance - sorry that you are not feeling your best and I hope you feel better soon.

Here in a grey South Derbyshire it has not been an especially good day. Mainly things that would be classed as first world problems but, in the light of another disrupted night's sleep, take on even bigger meaning. It begin with a fruitless online search for an item this morning. Placed said item in trolley at Argos. Got to check out - then found listed as unavailable for both pick up at all local stores and home delivery. Then it appeared as available to collect in Long Eaton, but when I proceeded to payment screen it was back out of stock again. The same cycle was repeated 4-5 times over the hour before it booted me out completely. Amazon showed stock, but jumped straight to error screens too so no success.

 The tiredness, coupled with the internet frustration, meant it was difficult to concentrate on the marking workload and some fairly dire assignments which needed marking. 

 The mood was not helped by receiving my Hornby Magazine and discovering they had messed up my advert. Instead of repeating the one I ran in March, with details of my current special offer, they substituted it with the previous month's ad! Since the offer I was promoting ends at the start of April it is a costly error! They have apologised and promised to refund the cost of the advert, but it does not really compensate for four weeks lost promotion.

 This afternoon Amber seriously found her nine year old feet and overstepped the mark. We have a small park opposite our house which she likes to go on. I took her over for half an hour this morning as a break from her home schooling and my marking. This afternoon she wanted to go again. Both Sarah and I were too busy and said no. The little madam decided to answer back and say she was going to go over on her own. Then, when our backs were turned, went and did just that. Now, she is nine, so we may consider letting her over there for a short time on some days. We can keep a check on her out the front bedroom windows. The fact that she did it when we had said no was not the wisest move. When I collected her she found some of her electronics had vanished and will now need to be re-earned!

 As if all that was not enough - a certain Mr Rooney decides tonight's game at Cardiff is the perfect time to play the kids! Result - a 4-0 loss! 

Could be worse - at least Forest lost!

Stay safe.

Andy

edited to remove typos