Life and pondering the merits of a NO REFUND CULTURE
Crumptales
Crumptales: Taking flight
May 25th
I have lost count of the number of flights that I taken in my life. For the last ten years I have spent loads of time on planes travelling all over the place for work – I have been to some amazing places as a result.
I was actually quite late to taking flight. The first time I went on a plane I was about ten on a family holiday to Greece (up until then we had always been on holiday to France in the car – three children in the back of a BMW – you can imagine the bickering that went on. Poor Mum and Dad!)
There are two great stories from that first flight…
STORY ONE: My sister Elaine (about nine years old at the time) and I boarded the flight with huge excitement and settled into our seats. We were fascinated by all the magazines, safety information card and I remember wanting to keep the sick bag as a memento. As the plane was at the start of the runway about to take off, Elaine turns to me and said really loudly “I thought airhostesses were meant to be pretty”.
A second later there was a loud cough from behind us. We both turn to look through the gap between the seats to see an airhostess in the jump seat glaring back at us! We then look at Mum who is across the aisle and giving us the famous death stare. Oh Lordy.
As if that wasn’t enough…
STORY TWO: Involves just little ten year old me. Half way through the flight I need to go to the loo. I had been watching everyone intently during the flight to try and work out the queuing protocol. So I had this sussed and I asked Mum for permission and she said “off you go then”. I waited for my turn in line.
On entering the cubicle I was totally fascinated by all the little compartments for the tissues, loo roll, bin etc. I even had a squirt of the hand cream. While settling down on the loo seat I spied this long red cord, that looked like a bathroom light pull. I was looking at it thinking “I wonder what that does?” So as any curious self-respecting ten year old sat on the loo would do I gave the cord a good hard yank. Disappointingly nothing happened for at least 15 seconds, but then all hell broke loose.
There was a pounding hand on the toilet door and cries of “are you OK in there?” I was frozen solid unable to move or speak. About five seconds later the door was flung open and there stood before me was none other than the ‘ugly’ airhostess, with about five passengers standing behind her all trying to get a view of the ‘emergency’ taking place. I still couldn’t speak at this point and the airhostess kindly closed the door with a sneer on her face.
I think I stayed in the loo for only a minute or so more – it felt like hours though. I finally plucked up the courage and exited the cubicle (having had another squirt of hand cream for good measure). It was the walk of shame back to my seat – everyone was looking at me and sniggering – I was so mortified. Elaine thought that the whole thing was hilarious and spent the rest of the flight carping at me – making that tuneful “wah, wah, wah, warrrrrrhhhh!” noise.
Anyway, I wasn’t put off flying and as a university student I actually worked at Gatwick airport during my ‘holidays’ as a passenger service agent or a PSA as were known (EVERYTHING to do with airports has a three letter acronym). So while flying is not always as eventful as that first flight, I do find the whole thing interesting having experienced airports from both sides of the fence.
This post has made me remember loads of hilarious working at the airport stories. I’m gonna write these up in the future. My prompts for these future posts are:
- Stage fright / first plane boarding announcement
- Two Americans / four tickets
- Waving in a flight
- The sweaty lady / foundation issue
- Italians / boarding by seat row number (or not!)
- The Adams Family goes on holiday to Bulgaria
- The Rastafarian and the hat
- Friend / carbon copy tickets / rude word / dismissal
- Old Indian lady / her patient six hour wait
- Family on the wrong coach with the England cricket team
PS: The ugly airhostess actually wasn’t that ugly – she just had really bad pink, blue AND orange eye shadow caked on her lids
PPS: Let’s not discuss my carbon footprint on the flying front – that would be too terrifying to consider
Crumptales: I feel sorry for houseplants
May 10th
…I really do. They have such terrible lives of neglect and suffering. Nearly all my friends, family and work buddies are hopeless at looking after them. Now I am no Alan Titchmarch, but I am able to keep a plant alive and it is really simple. Here are my (insightful!) top tips:
- Plants need light (some want direct light and some don’t). So that means (Hena) that a plant is not going to thrive in a room where the curtains are permanently closed
- Plants need water. Not loads of water (or tea dregs – you know who you are!) where they end up having their poor roots suffocate. Plants roots (other than aquatic plants) need air in the soil so that can actually draw up water
- Plants need food. Not all the time but every so often. Baby Bio is my plant food of choice
My favourite houseplant is the Peace Lilly (Spathiphyllum wallisii). Here is my pride and joy (I’ve had it for more than 10 years):
It is ace and easy to look after and blesses you every so often with lovely white flowers. The great thing about this plant is that it is really hard to kill. So when you get back to work, after two weeks of annual leave, and your Peace Lilly hasn’t been watered (by people that promised they would) and the leaves are actually lying on the desk – you simply give it a water and hey presto a day later the leaves are all perky and healthy looking.
It’s a fighter – it needs to be ‘cause it’s a tough world out there.
Stress monkey management
May 4th
The genes we inherit help determine whether we have a cool head or a short fuse, scientists have found, according to The Daily Mail. Now I haven’t looked into this study in any great detail (I haven’t hunted out the original scientific paper), but I am a bit sceptical, based on stuff I have read in the past. The bottom line is that it is highly unlikely that a single gene could be assigned this attribute.
It does make sense that the way we react to a given stimulus might (among a load of factors) be down to how much our bodies releases neurotransmitters such as serotonin or dopamine (which ultimately comes from our genes), and maybe we end up a bit predisposed based on our genetic make-up. But at the end of the day I think that we choose how we react to a stimulus and most of the time this, I believe, is about conditioning and habits formed over time. Therefore it is possible, to relearn how you react to a given situation.
Now I’m not saying that it is easy to break an old habit like getting really angry and fly off the handle. But based on the fact that there are loads of studies that show that being angry is bad for your health it has got to be worth doing.People that know me well will know that at times I can be a stress monkey and can let things get on top of me. I do know how to channel this negative energy and not end up in stress hell – but I sometimes fail to enact the necessary thinking (because that is all I have to do) to deal with stress properly – which in turn has a rolling stone effect and just makes me feel more stressed.
Us humans are complicated wotsits, we spend too much on negative stuff and forget how fortunate we are. So this post is for you Crump. Remember it.
Crumptales: Seeing your names in lights, OK, raspberries…
Apr 20th
It’s my birthday today. I have had two consecutive weekends of birthday fun. So today, the day that 36 years ago I arrived in the world, I am having a fun night in with Chad. We have had a ‘Chad Special’ meal (yummy chicken with gorgonzola and Parma ham) and we are watching Desperate Housewives as I type. Heaven.
Yesterday we had gang fun at Charlotte and Brendon’s. I got to feed my godson, who is having solid food shovelled into his mouth for two weeks now. It was brilliant fun. He was spitting out the veg (carrot and broccoli) but has miraculously learnt how to swallow the sweet apple and pear option – sweet tooth (well gums) – good boy. Anyway the little angel was put to bed and the grown-ups drank bear / wine and had a lovely Thai take-out. Fun, fun, fun.
The highlight of the evening was (apart from hanging out with my best friends) my birthday cake. Charlotte made it, it was delicious, and most importantly it had my name spelt out in raspberries – how fabulous. Thanks Charlotte.
The cake itself nearly included essence of lottiedigits. Not heard of it? Well let me explain. The Lotts was making the cake and was using a tea towel over the bowl to prevent the cake mix being splashed out by the electric whisk. The towel then got caught in the whisk and pulled it into the metal blades followed by the Lott’s hand which ended up mangled in with the whisk. After a bit of screaming good old Bren ran in the kitchen and hit the eject button to release the whiskie bits, towel and fingers.
Thank goodness that the cake mix was fine – otherwise Lotts would have been most annoyed.
Crumptales: Tripping the light, not so, fantastic
Apr 18th
Last Easter weekend I reported the glue incident in relation to my DIYing. There was a further incident that weekend that involved me nearly electrocuting myself!
I have one of those handy gadgets to detect if there in any electrical wires behind a wall. I spent six hours last Saturday putting up this nifty metal sheeting on the kitchen wall. It was a real fiddle but I managed it (although during the last half an hour the fiddle factor went through the roof – as did my blood pressure). Before commencing this I ran this gadget (not sure what the proper name for it is) over the wall where I was working to check for metal and wires. There was a wire so I avoided drilling there. Simple hey!
Anyway I was packing up my tool boxes feeling very pleased with myself and then we decided to put up this magnetic knife strip on the wall. I totally forgot to do the gadget check. Chad was holding the hoover as I drilled through the tiles. Hole one no issue, hole two was a whole other story. As the drill went in there was a MASSIVE flash of light from the hole and all the lights at the back of the house went out. Chad and I just stared at each other for a few seconds in total shock. I had drilled straight through a wire. I was SO depressed for hours after this incident – I hate it when I am a muppet.
Anyway we spent most of this week walking around in the dark, but our electrician, Nico, came yesterday and fixed it all. He told us that the new consumer electrical unit that we had put in a month or so ago (as part of doing up the bathroom and kitchen) had saved my life!!! The old 1960’s one that we had in before wouldn’t have tripped so quickly and your truly might have been a gonna. How scary is that.
I live to tell the tale – result. Anyone need some DIY doing!!!
Crumptales: No-one puts baby in the corner
Mar 18th
I mentioned in a recent post that Tiggy and Sophie are returned; back from the cattery after the completion of the building work. It is great to have them back home – they are so entertaining and adorable. Nothing beats the sound of a happy purring cat to lift my spirits and make me feel content about life.
What is so lovely about them is their predictability, interspersed with acts of randomness, that really delights. Following the predictability path Sophie and Tiggy reacted to coming back home in exactly the same way that they have done previously following their mini breaks at the full board luxury lodgings provided care of the Animal Medical Centre of Cricklewood.
Tiggy, aka Fat Mama, falls straight back into family life – trying to hunt out the junk food she loves and chilling on the sofa. Sophie, aka Pensive Daughter, was, well her usual pensive self. She has been hiding a lot under the bed or behind the sofa and then dashes out for attention and then runs off again. She also barely ate a thing for two days – just to make us worry and get some pay back for sending her away for nearly three weeks. She is such a funny thing – she loves attention, especially diving in and shoving Tigs out of the way (which often results in Sophie getting a whack on the head from her mother).
Despite being so bold Sophie will sometime have a freak out and end up deciding that she needs to hide again. No-one puts baby in the corner – she puts herself there.
Crumptales: Moral panic on plastic
Mar 15th
Just had my internal eco-warrier ‘tut tutting’ about the fact that my ‘tortoise that cared too much’ post mentioned that I brought my shopping home in plastic bags.
Now first of all I did use the evil plastic bag because I ended up buying more than I expected – five rolls of kitchen roll (recycled!) takes up lots of space (and I walked so I couldn’t just chuck it in the boot of the car!). I did also use my Envirosax bag – which I love – but I only have one and normally this meets my plastic bag replacement needs (Chad does the main food shop and he ALWAYS uses his bags for life).
I actually bought Chad an Envirosax bag for Valentine’s Day from a cool gift shop in Crouch End – so we actually have matching bags!!! I know passion is alive and well in my relationship.
Anyway I did use the bad plastic ones that live forever and strangle the tortoise’s aquatic cousins, turtles, in the Pacific Ocean, and there will probably be a time when I will use the naughty plastic bags again. Anyway, I am sure that Envirosax will save the day and pacify my inner-ecowarrier as I use it more and more.
Crumptales: The tortoise that cared too much
Mar 15th
Now the building work is almost complete (just one more day to go) we brought Tiggy and Sophie, our beloved moggies, home from the cattery on Saturday. We had to do a monster clean to get rid of all the post-building work grime (so that the babies didn’t end up coated in dust). So on Friday night after work the marigolds went on and we cleaned for six solid hours. We had to clean EVERYTHING that we own. It was hideous.
Prior to the cleaning commencing I had to nip to Somerfield (the not so super, supermarket that is walking distance from the house) to buy said marigolds, kitchen roll and other cleaning necessities. It was a real toss-up between going to the ‘Field’ or jumping in the car and going to Sainsburys. The reason for the conundrum being that I absolutely loath the Somerfield experience. In theory it shouldn’t be that bad – it has a good selection of stock (they even have Yarden’s humus which is my number one favourite snack item), it’s quite spacious, it’s clean but there is just something so depressing about it. Friday’s experience just reaffirmed why I should have jumped in the car.
I walk to Somerfield, pick up a basket and start gathering up my supplies. I then proceed to the check-out which they need to rename ‘get frustrated on your way out’. I was in a queue of about 15 people, shuffling at snail speed through the sweet-racked maze created to control us. There were two people on the tills and I notice for every one person that this chap served, the women on the till next door managed to serve at least two and a half people. Now having worked on a till in M&S in my youth, I can be a bit uptight in the till queuing scenario (I was a speed demon on the till). So I start obsessing about why the differential in speed between the two cashiers – I had plenty of time to do this as it took me 20 minutes to get to the starting line. I couldn’t work out what was going on but found out as I approached the tortoise (not the hare) with morbid trepidation.
Now I know that I like good customer service but Mr Tortoise took this to a whole new level…
He picked the first item out of my basket, looked at it for about two seconds, then looked me in the eye, smiled then said ‘do you want this?’, I said ‘yes please’, he then turned the item around to find the barcode, looked at me, smiled, scanned the code, then placed the item in the bag. This happened for EVERY single item in my basket. It was unbelievable. I managed to stay cool, although my response to the question ‘do you want this?’ declined from the aforementioned ‘yes please’, to ‘yes’ to ‘a nod’ deteriorating to me just grimacing at him.
I nearly ran out of the building with my shopping yelling ‘free, free at last, thank god I’m free’, although in reality I walked home with plastic bags digging into my hands and grumbled away to myself. Bless the tortoise – he cared a lot, just too blinkin’ much.
Crumptales: Oh crap
Mar 3rd
We are ‘doing’ the bathroom at the moment. We are a few days in and when I got home from work last night all the HORRIBLE old suite was all gone. ‘Hurrah’ I thought, no more shell scallop-edged sink and loo and we promptly went around to stay at Nadia and Gareth’s home to stay the night (as there was no loo etc. at Chateau Cricklewood).
Dave the builder (good chap and really pleased to recommend him if you need a builder) called this morning to say that the new throne that we have purchased and due for installation today won’t fit. Aaaagggghhh!!!
So I come home from work and there it is: the annoying ugly toilet is back in position – gutted. We are meeting up with Dave first thing tomorrow morning to work out a plan of action. I know that I have lived with the shell monstrosity for 18 months but it was gone yesterday and like a bad smell it has returned.
Don’t panic – I am sure this dire situation can be resolved.
Crumptales: Bridezilla in waiting?
Feb 26th
Chad and I decided to get ‘civilised’ last February when we went away for a long Valentine’s weekend away in Copenhagen. So after of year of not doing much about it we have decided to seize the moment and 29 August this year is the day. We have a venue, a great place in Hampstead, and we have got the ball rolling on all the other bits. I am now really excited about it.
I have been to so many weddings in my life, I reckon approaching at least one hundred. Being the son of a vicar (and having once dated a hairdresser) I have been invited to many. I have also been a sounding board for many a future bride or groom over the years. So now it is quite weird making decisions (and having to think about paying) for our own.
Hopefully neither of us will turn into Bridezilla – the scaly green monster with no perspective that terrorises those around them in pursuit of the day perfect. Watch this space…
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