I Don't Like Christmas...

I have a confession to make.  I have an opinion on something.  It's not a popular opinion.  It is mostly against the flow of most people's opinion on the subject.

I really don't like dinner parties.  I only EVER go to them for Sharon.

There, I said it.  I'm sorry if that offends, but it's how I feel.  Let me clear this up straight away , it's not that I don't like my friends or family or seeing them.  Or that I don't like their food. Far from it.  I LOVE my friends and family, and the time I spend with them is some of my favourite time spent.  They are also all good cooks. But why do I have to eat with them?  What's wrong with having your tea at home and then meeting for a couple of drinks in the pub?  Why do I have to go round to your house and eat there and then sit in your living room, watching your TV, or listening to your music, or making conversation, or whatever else people do to at these events?  It's not that I don't like your house or you, but I like my house more.  That's why I live there and not with you.  So we have two issues I have with dinner parties.

Firstly, eating at your house.

If I eat at my house or in a restaurant with Sharon and I am not that hungry and I leave some of it, then it's my choice and it's fine.  If I eat at your house and I don't really eat much you start asking what is wrong with me or, more worryingly, what is wrong with your food.  This puts pressure on me to eat everything put in front of me.  Me, pressure and eating do not go well together.  If you give me pressure and food, I don't really feel like eating the said food.  So, a dinner party at your house almost instantly means I am not hungry.  That is not a good start.  So I spend the meal making polite conversation and pushing my food around my plate (even if it is the best meal EVER) and try and make it look like I've eaten more that I actually have.  All the while I am nervously drinking the wine/beer you have graciously provided.  Result, I am pissed and my stomach feels poorly sick.  Or, quite often when I have eaten I like to just chill out and say or do nothing for a while afterwards and let my food digest.  Making conversation and effort isn't considered chilling out for me. So either way this is not a good night out for me as I then have to spend the rest of the evening (because you have to hang around for hours after eating and make yet more polite conversation.... why?) feeling pretty crappy stomach wise.

Secondly, being at your house.

You have a lovely house.  I like what you've done with the living room, etc. But it's your house.  Your house is just like my house only I'm not quite as comfortable.  Whereas my house, is my house.  I am comfortable there.  I could live there.  So I am somewhere that I am less comfortable than I am at home.  Basic maths shows you I will enjoy this less than being at home.  Again.  It's not your company.  I love being out and about with you and seeing you.  I just don't like being in other people's houses much.

What is wrong with everyone having tea at their own house and then meeting in the pub for a couple of pints?  If I'm leaving my house, why not go somewhere different from my house? We could go to a restaurant?  Actually, no.  I sometimes just like to go home after eating in a restaurant.  So, although it is preferable to a dinner party, I still may feel trapped there afterwards.  Unless it's just me and Sharon.  She has somehow broke through all my strange neuroses about this and my desire to be left alone for large amounts of the time and I LOVE eating out with her and generally being around her.  Whenever I say I would rather be home alone or eat alone or whatever alone. I mean, just me and her. I should marry that one.  So, for my comfort we could all eat at home and meet up for a drink, or me and Sharon could eat out and you meet us later. Maybe, if I'm in the mood.  Sometimes I may just like to go home. Sorted.  Errr, ok, probably not.

There are a couple of other people who have broken through my strangeness on this issue.  My Dad.  Every Saturday dinner I have bacon and eggs with him at his house and I enjoy it greatly.  Also my Mum and Nan.  Every Thursday I have tea at my Nan's with my Mum.  I also enjoy that.  I put this down to 2 reasons.  Firstly routine.  I have said it is about my comfort zone and there is nothing like a routine to give me a comfort zone.  Secondly, I can leave whenever I want.  Straight after eating if I want.  Not hanging around someone elses house making polite conversation all night.  I can go home.  Bliss.

So, you would think from all this that I would insist on dinner parties being at my house.  It's my food, usually cooked by me and I can eat what I want of it.  It's also my house and my comfort zone.  Nope.  I'm not a big fan of people coming round to my house either.  In general.  I have to make conversation and make an effort and find it difficult to relax.  If it's just me and Sharon and I'm not in the mood then I can sit not saying much all night and it's fine.  Can't do that with guests.  It's bad enough with planned ones, but the unplanned ones.... JESUS... GO AWAY!!!!  It can be my most favourite person in the world, but if they didn't tell me they were coming, then in that few seconds between them ringing the bell and me answering the door, my brain starts calculating if they can actually tell I am in or how much trouble I would get in for simply ignoring them because I am obviously in.  I am too nice and polite for either of those unfortunately and so answer the door and make polite conversation while hoping Sharon will do most of the entertaining and wondering how long is too long to take making them a cup of tea.  Is an hour too long?  Would it be wrong to finally show up with a brew for them as they are putting on their coat to leave.  I understand your dilema though.  If you ring and ask if you can come round, I will almost certainly say no, so you have to arrive unannouced.  My top tip would be to ring Sharon.  She gets her friends and family in the door all the time.  Anyone coming through me will struggle.

So yeah, the blog title.  That was just me trying to get your attention. I do, of course, LOVE Christmas.  I love giving and receiving presents.  I love seeing my friends and family.  I love the talking and the laughing and the eating and the drinking.  BUT, I have to go and eat meals at people's houses. And go and spend vast amounts of time at people's houses making polite conversation and pretending I find the Emmerdale Christmas special entertaining, when I really would just like to be on my couch, eating my food, drinking my beer, watching my Star Trek, on my TV.  Or the other thing that might happen is, because everyone is at home and bored for a week, they might decide to call round and see us unannouced.  NIGHTMARE!

I have issues.

Now, I realise  I may appear selfish here.  But we are all selfish in our own way.  I can't help feeling like this.  I just do.  It doesn't mean I don't enjoy your food or your company.  And because you are my friends and family and I love you and want to see you I will do all these things and will enjoy bits of it, sometimes all of it.  It's more about that I can sometimes, without warning, really not be in the mood. I may get into things later on.  I almost always don't want to go out anymore just before it's time to go out, but I push on through because I usually get into it.  That happens much much less with dinner parties or going to people's houses.  More importantly Sharon will enjoy all of it, all the time, and so I do it for her.  So please don't take offence and shun us because of me, because she loves coming to see you all and have you come to see us.  

I will be in the kicthen making you a brew.

Or, let's all eat at home and meet for a couple of pints in the pub afterwards.

Social Networking

As the title suggests, this is a blog about social networking.  Or at least, the small pocket of social networking that I take part in.  I engage in three aspects of social networking and they are as follows:

Blogging

This thing you are reading right now.  Unless you have already got bored and have stopped reading before this point, in which case you won't be reading my blog right now.  But that means you wouldn't have seen my statement that you were reading it right now.  The word we are all desperately searching for here is, anyway.  I very occasionally write random musings on this blog.  And occasionally one or two people seem to read it.  I don't necessarily write it to be read, it's just kind of nice to get my thoughts down in script sometimes. But it is nice that SOMEONE reads it. Otherwise it would be almost a fruitless exercise for me to keep it not very personal, if not fruitless to write it at all.  What is social networking without the social or indeed the networking? So when someone says they read it and enjoyed it or even requests I write another one (thanks Bev) I won't lie and say it doesn't please me.  I enjoy writing and this is a good place to write things.  The problem I have is what to write about?  I mean, I am currently writing a blog about writing a blog. Probably not for the first time.  I guess that is probably barrel scraping in blog land.  So, sometimes something will come to me, or something will happen (the fence saga), or I will get involved in something (running), or I will simply force it because I want to write and then I write a blog. It doesn't seem to be really acquiring any followers, but it serves me for what I want from it and that is somewhere to get my thoughts down in more than a 140 or 420 characters.

Facebooking

This is undoubtedly my biggest and most successful venture into the world of social networking. For about the past 3-4 years every chance I've had to get on a computer (which is a lot) I have been going on there updating my status and commenting on other people's.  And since I got my iPhone it is nearly always accessible to me.  I use Facebook for a few reasons.  Firstly to keep in touch with people I know/have known in the real world, but almost never, if ever, see.  It is nice to have rekindled some friendships, in an online fashion, and enhanced some friendships of people I rarely see, on there.  Secondly I use it to post photos and very occasionally videos of my life so people can see them.  Thirdly I use it to try and be funny.  I quite often think I could be taken as being rather annoying on there, and I'm sure to some people I am, but it is surprising to me how many people say to me when they see me in the real world how much they like the things I write on Facebook.  I'm sure part of it is the sheer volume of stuff I write, some of it is bound to appeal to someone, if only by the law of averages.  Having said that, it gives me great pleasure to write on there and I very much write things on there to be read and responded to.  I like getting into exchanges on there and I almost always go for the gag if I can.  Some people use it to be really quite serious, and I have the occasional rant myself, but Facebook for me and how I choose to use it mostly isn't like that.  That doesn't mean they are wrong and I am right. By no means. The serious posting people may find my constant irreverence annoying, and that is their choice.  It is also their choice to unfriend me if they don't like what I write and a number of people have.  I am completely fine with that.  I do it to people too sometimes.  If someone is filling my feed with stuff I don't find interesting, if it's a game I hide that (I'll come back to that), if it's their general status entries, they go.  So if you are still my friend on Facebook and you post on there you can be certain I read most of what you write and am almost always entertained by it one way or another.  Knowing the little things about people's lives is interesting in the extreme.  How would I possibly know that someone I haven't seen in years has just been to see her son in the school nativity play and he was a dancing shepherd without Facebook (a post today by someone)? Brilliant!  That to me is where the social side of it comes in.  And I completely use Facebook to be social.  Not the networking though. I don't use Facebook to make new friends with people I've never met.  It just doesn't lend itself to that for me.  It's just too open and personal for that.  Then there are the games.  Annoying fucking things that fill my feed.  Farmville... FUCK OFF! Again, if that is what people wish to take from Facebook then who am I to argue?  And now I can hide the games posts it doesn't interfere in my Facebooking or bother me in the slightest what games my friends engage in on there.  In the past I would have ditched someone for playing too many games and clogging my feed.  And then there are the people who post lots and lots of youtube videos of the the songs they think people should be listening to.....ARRGGGHHH!!!  STOP FILLING MY FEED!  One or two songs are fine.  I do that sometimes.  It's nice to share.  That is why we are on Facebook.  But 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 songs?  10 FUCKING SONGS!?  You've just completely filled my feed and I can't hide that without hiding you!  I may as well unfriend you and if you continue to do it, I will do just that. I seem to have taken a turn towards ranting.  Let me reel it back in and return to my point.  Facebook has many uses for many types of people.  Sharon uses Facebook mainly for inbox conversations, predominantly about netball I think and also for playing Bejewelled Blitz (which she is astonishingly good at).  She does not use it at all like I do, but she still gets something rewarding from it.  I like Facebook for this.  It is versatile and different people can all get what they want from it, whilst still being social with each other and living in harmony on there.  

Tweeting

My latest venture over the past year.  And what a year it has been.  Celebrities, new friends, spending sometimes frustratingly long amounts of time shortening things I want to say to 140 characters or less.  A whirlwind of a year.  Ok, I'm making it sound bigger and more exciting than it actually was.  It's not like I'm @theashes (a girl in America who happens to have chosen that name and got propelled into Twitter stardom recently during the cricket. She now has 14000 followers simply because she got angry at getting cricket tweets, but eventually took it as a bit of fun and was offered free flights to Australia to watch the ashes unfold with her very eyes).  But I have learned a lot about Twitter and what I want to take from it.  Again I go on there pretty much every chance I get. On a computer or on my iPhone. The first lesson to learn is, it is NOT Facebook.  Nor does it try to be (although people may claim Facebook is moulding itself more to be like Twitter in some of it's recent incarnations. But this isn't a blog about that). The second lesson is, you can't read everything that everyone writes and you will miss stuff.  A lot of stuff.  Lists quickly became handy, I have one with the few people on there I know in real life.  I don't want to miss their stuff as much as I can help.  When I first signed up I did what everyone else did, I followed @stephenfry and then set about following every celebrity whose work I liked.  And this was fine for a while, and when I occasionally got a reply from a celeb I was incredibly happy.  @simonpegg being about the biggest.  But I was missing the point (or the point I have found for myself on Twitter).  The point is the real people on there . Although I must confess to being rather chuffed to recently being followed by the lead singer of The Zutons and the brief exchange I had with KT Tunstall today.  Back to my point.  The point is the people you don't know or haven't heard of that also get what it's about and are very entertaining.  Sometimes mudanely, sometimes cleverly, sometimes outragously, but always entertainingly.  It's hard to find them because you don't know them and haven't heard of them, but they are out there and eventually you find one or two and they will lead you to more.  The people hovering around the 2000 followers mark are great to follow.  They are normal people who have got far purely by being entertaining on Twitter, and not because they are entertaining on the telly or the radio.  That is very much the point.  Sure, I still follow rafts of celebs, but not nearly as many as I did.  Some are on there purely for self promotion and I don't want to know about that.  Some are on their with their name, but it's their PR guy.  B-O-R-I-N-G-! Paul McCartney springs to mind.  It's the ones that are themselves and using twitter the same way as us mere mortals that are the ones to stick with, because they too have got the point.  It's not about constantly telling us about your latest book (although you'd be daft not to mention it occasionally if you did have a book out.  Just don't be @lord_sugar about it), it's about connecting to people.  Yes networking.  Social networking.  Twitter is probably the social networking site that most lives up to its remit.  To get the point of twitter is to be social and to network.  I am still only just finding my feet.  It's a long process, but it is worth it.  I still have very few followers and my main conversations are with people I know in the real world, but there are some people who I am starting to have conversations with who I have no idea who they are and that is great fun.  It's always nice to make a new friend.  Even if it is on an almost anonymous superficial level of randomly sharing a joke on the Internet.  In fact, I think that makes it all the more worthwhile.

Social Networking is also becoming remarkably powerful.  The sheer volume of people means it has a voice in the real world.  Get a few high profile celebs or a hell of a lot of people (amounts to the same thing) to make stand behind or against something and it has been seen to affect the media, and even the law and politics.  To ignore it or underestimate it's power would be a mistake in my mind.  And as more and more people are turning on to it, it's power can only increase.  Just as long as there is still a place for a picture of child screaming as though being murdered because they are sat on Father Christmas's knee or me to sneak onto Sharon's profile and write "I fucking love boobies!" as her status then all will be well.

Stupid Old Boiler

I haven't written a blog in quite a while.  I can never think of anything to write about. I either deem things too personal or too boring to write about. This week had a bit of excitment (and I was asked why I hadn't written a blog in ages and would I write a new one) so I thought I would put my thoughts down.  Shouldn't take too long, I may have a lot of thoughts, but they are usually just the same few going round and round my head.  Mostly the phrases "For fuck's sake!", "I'm horny", "I'm hungry" and "I want a beer" if we are completely honest.  But enough of that, on to the matter at hand.  Recently, the temperature in this great nation of ours has begun to drop.  That's fine by me.  It's November.  November is supposed to be cold.  When the Baby Jesus created England and November he decided that is the way it should be.  I'm not of these people who complains, on Facebook or Twitter or whatever, about the weather doing what the weather is supposed to do.  It gets colder towards the end of the year and warmer in the middle.  I'm not about to get into a debate on weather extremes or the great British summer.  Sufficed to say, it was warmer in June than it is now in November and that is how it's supposed to be.  If it's warm I work in an office with air conditioning and my car has the same. My car also has windows that go down and back up again.  At home I can open a window, or go outside and wear shorts and t-shirts whilst drinking a cold beer.  Warm is fine.  Cold is fine too.  I have some nice coats and jumpers I can wear.  I can have a nice hot cup of tea or coffee.  My office also has heating, as does my car.  As does my house.  When the house is cold I can set the timer on the boiler to turn the heating on and have the house nice and warm in time for getting up.  If I am cold in the moment I can have a hot shower or turn the heating on and the radiators warm the house.  I take it for granted.  It just works.  If I am cold I walk up to the boiler and press the on switch and..... oh.  What does that flashing red light mean?  Why aren't the radiators getting hot?  Why is the shower freezing cold?  That isn't what is supposed to happen! What do I do now?!  This is what happened to me on Wednesday night.  Now I'm not completely unpractical.  I am my father's son.  I have a good dose of common sense and can do some basic things around the house.  The pressure was down on the boiler recently which caused it to trip out.  Sharon's dad is a plumber and he showed me how easy it was to repressurize it.  The pressure again looked a little down this time, so I repressurized it again.  Didn't work.  I had already reset the system.  Being an IT bod I know the old switch it off/switch it back on trick. The warning light was different than the previous failure a few months ago.  The fault indicated last time, was that the pilot light wasn't igniting.  This time it is a fan/flue fault.  I know enough about boilers to know that you don't mess about with that stuff.  You get an engineer.  Some DIY jobs have a worst case scenario of a wall looking a bit shit after you'ved papered it and some have a worst case scenario of killing yourself and your loved ones by carbon monoxide posioning.  This was in the territory of the latter.  I rang Sharon's dad just in case it was something simple.  He suggested repressurizing a little more.  Didn't work.  I told him about the fan/flue warning light.  He said that you don't mess with that stuff, you get an engineer.

As it is a rented house my first port of call is always the landlady.  I rang the landlady and she had had a bit of a personal crisis that day, but was as helpful as she could be.  I offered to get it sorted if she just gave me the info I needed to do it.  She did. That was more than good enough for me.  As it was late Wednesday by this point, things had to wait until Thursday.  Me and Sharon curled up on the couch with the quilt and watched TV.  On Thursday I rang the boiler manufacturer who we may or may not have had a service contract with.  The landlady thought it may just have expired (sod's law).  As suspected, it had just expired.  They said they would send someone anyway for a fixed fee of £310.  That included call out, parts, labour and a further year's service cover where all future call outs, parts, labour, etc would be covered no extra cost.  Seemed reasonable, the landlady was going to take out more cover, and anyway, she was paying for it, not me, so I went for it.  Having said that, it was the option I would have gone for had it been mine.  That was a good enough assessment of whether I had made the right choice on someone else's behalf for me. They said they would send an engineer sometime between 8am and 6pm on Friday, so I shifted a few things around at work and managed to get the day working at home.  Friday morning came and, as promised, the engineer rang at 8am to give me a projected arrival time.  He said between 11am and 2pm.  At 12:30pm he arrived.  HORRRAAYYYY.  Not far away from warmth.  I made him a brew (In my Beatles cup no less.  Keep the engineer sweet and he will make my house all nice and warm) and left him prodding and poking the boiler in an engineery manner. After about an hour I heard a rumble and so put my hand on the living room radiator.  Warmth!  REAL FUCKING WARMTH!!!  I didn't realise how much I relied on being able to press a button or turn a tap for something as simple as warmth.  The engineer said it was a loose connection on the circuit board.  He also said if there were any similar problems in the future it probably meant that that circuit board needed replacing and he would make a note of that in his report.  The engineer left and I turned the heating up and set about enjoying being warm in my house somewhere other than in front of a fan heater or under a quilt or, in the case of Wednesday and Thursday night, both. I even took off my hoody and my upper body was covered merely by a t-shirt. Can. You. Imagine. The. Wonder? I was a happy man.  I am currently partaking in Movember, but over the past few days my lack of shaving, due to no hot water, has made my tache more of a beard.  I decided to have a shave and a shower.  Bliss.  I turned the hot tap on and got out my shaving things.  The water ran hot.  Ahhhhhhhh.  Nice hot... hang on, it's gone cold again.  I looked at the boiler. FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!!! The fan/flue fault light was illuminated once more and the boiler was doing cock all else.  The boiler was back to being just a rather large set of pipes and electronics that's only function is illuminating a few LEDs. I rang the boiler people back and told them it had tripped off again and that I wanted the engineer to come back and replace that circuit board.  They said they would contact the engineer and put me on hold.  After several minutes on hold they said the engineer was booked for the rest of the day, but they would send someone tomorrow.  Annoying, but not entirely unreasonable.  If they had said Monday I would have been more than a little upset and quite probably shouty and sweary.  That is how things stand now.  I am sat in my living room in front of a fan heater, typing this, sporting a beard and rather greasy hair.  Sharon has a couple of appointments that she can't cancel tomorrow, so I face the prospect of a day of cancelling what I had planned to wait for the engineer. A day not entirely unlike today.... only with the outcome of a working heating system one hopes.  

On the plus side, Friday night, for me and Sharon, won't be spent as Wednesday and Thursday night were. On the couch with a quilt and a fan heater.  No, tonight we are off out on the town to drink in nicely heated pubs in wonderful Bury with my even more wonderful cousin and his bird.

Up, up and eBay

A few weekends ago was a fun weekend.  It was my mate's stag weekend and we went camping/cycling/drinking in The Lakes.  To cut a long story short I ended up cycling on a fairly tricky mountain bike trail on a bike that wasn't mine.  Don't worry, I didn't steal a bike (or even hire one), I borrowed a friend's.  Now I'm not bi-cyclist technical, but this bike was a super-duper-go-fast-bounce-over-bumps-hard-wearing-all-round-good-bike bike.  Compared to my not-very-good-apollo-bought-on-sale-at-halfords-and-bit-twitchy-on-uneven-ground-bike bike it was a revelation.  A revelation that led me to want a new bike very quickly. On my return home, and recovery from the weekend of fun and games, I set about looking into achieving that...

I wasn't in any particular rush.  I spoke to my mate Rick about it.  He knows a lot about bikes, well, enough to blind a novice like me with big impressive words that make him sound like he knows a lot.  Anyway, I trust his judgement and am happy to take what he says as the way to go.  He said he had seen some very nice Boardman bikes in Halfords, that were a very good entry model to the sort of cycling we had done over the weekend.  That was good enough for me.  I looked at the said bikes in Halfords.  Hmmmmm, cheapest model £550.  A little (lot) more than I had in mind.  I wasn't sure Sharon would go for that.  Especially as I didn't think I would go for that.  I broached the subject of a new bike with Sharon and she wasn't unreceptive to it.  This was a start.  She suggested eBay, as her friend had bought a decent bike second hand.  I spoke to Rick who concurred with this.  He rhymed off 3 people who had successfully done likewise (one being my own cousin).  I decided to look on eBay, just to get an idea.  Low and behold, the EXACT bike Rick had recommend was on there, practically brand spanking new, for a decent price...... ending that day.  I had a dilemma.  Should I go for it and (quite rightly) incur the wrath of Sharon for spending a lot of money, without a discussion with her?  The answer was, of course, no.  But then again......?  No! I sent her various communications asking what she thought.  I wasn't expecting a quick answer as she struggles replying quickly because of the nature of her work, but I lived in hope.  As it turned out she replied very quickly indeed, giving me the all clear.  We were away. 

We are finally up to the point of this blog.  EBay and people's abuse thereof.  There was a "Buy It Now" price of £425 and the current bid was £383, reserve not met.  I bid £400 and then waited to see what happened as to whether I would pay the "Buy It Now" price.  My £400 hit the reserve and the "Buy It Now" disappeared.  I didn't know this happened.  I'm not an experienced eBayer. (What a strange world we live in now.  A world with strange verbs and nouns.  eBaying (v) To participate in a transaction on eBay.  eBayer (n) One who eBays.  The same can be done with Facebooking, texting, etc.  And don't even get me started on Twitter and Tweeting etc. Or the fact that some words have a lowercase first letter, but upper case second letter eBay, iPhone...)  So anyway, I was a bit angry with myself for not researching a bit better.  I would have paid the £425, but not more, if I'd really thought about it.  Now I was in a bidding war.  Stress.  I wanted this bike, but not enough to pay more and I'd now maybe let it slip from my grasp.  As I didn't know if I would be around to watch when the auction ended I decided to up my max bid to £415.  I was currently winning with my £400 bid, but I didn't know if that would last.  Then I thought better of it and decided to go for a max bid of £425.  That was the "Buy It Now" price I would have been willing to pay, so why not have that as my top bid.  Bidding done I went about my day and on getting home from work checked how things were going.  I was up to my £415 bid.  Soon after I was up to my £425 bid.  With 2 hours to go.  That was it, I was probably going to lose.  True blue.  About an hour before it finished it leaped up to £435 with 26 bids.  That was it.  I was quite angry with myself for letting it pass me by.  I put it down to experience and started looking for another bike on ebay. 

Then I got an email.

Bid retraction.  I was, once again, winning.  With my original bid of £400.  HORRAYY!!!  I said as much on Facebook.  Someone pointed out that bid retractions can mean that the seller is getting someone to bid and push the price up and they realise they have gone too far.  So I started to do a little digging.  It had dropped to my £400 bid and there were now only 12 bids.  14 bids by someone and then they lose interest completely and retract.  That seems strange.  Fortunately I had already looked at the bid list and worked out the eBay replacement name that was missing from the bid list.  As I was watching it jumped up to my £415 bid.  Then straight away to my £425 bid.  2 new bids.  What?! From the person who had retracted their 14 bids. But they hadn't  bid enough of a bid to win, just enough to get me back up to my maximum bid.  They were obviously testing my limit and then pushing me back up to it.  I looked at the bidding history for that bidder and they had recently bid on 5 other items by that one seller, in the last hour of the auction.  And on any expensive (£50+) items that seller had sold, that bidder had always bid a number of times...... but had never won.  Coincidence?  I think not.

The auction ended and I won.  I wanted the bike and it was at the price I was happy to pay, otherwise I wouldn't have bidded it, so I paid it.  It left me feeling a little "played" though.  It grated at me.  I wasn't feeling pure joy over my new bike, because it represented that I'd been had.  I don't like to lose, but I did want the bike.  It wasn't about the money.  I didn't really care about the £25, but I didn't want them to get away with it.  Especially not as they seem to do it a lot and so would continue to do it to other people.  I wasn't gong to make life difficult for myself though, just to get some money back.  It may drag things on with me getting the bike, or worse.  So I decided to wait until I had got my bike, then I would give them negative feedback detailing what I had witnessed and, more importantly, send a report to ebay.

About 9 days after I paid for my bike it FINALLY arrived.  I assembled it and all seemed well.  I say well, the front brake seemed a bit clicky, but I eventually fixed that by tightening a bolt  And the brakes seem a bit lax.  They need adjusting, or bleeding, or more oil, or something.  That's this weekend's job.  And he didn't send me the code for the lock, but a quick email and rearranging the numbers he gave me into the correct order (moron) solved that one.

So the time had come to report him.  And report him I did.   Both to eBay and via negative feedback.  I had done extensive research and posted examples of his "shill bidding", as I now know it's called.  That's where we're up to.  I would say, "Watch this space...", but eBay sent me an email saying that I won't be notified of any action taken to any users due to the fact "it's important that eBay maintains member privacy".  Ah well, I can always look in on the user and see if he still exists.

EDIT: According to the reply to my negative feedback to the seller, eBay ruled in his favour.  Part of me thinks he would say that, but even if they did, ah well, I tried.

Blogging... lack of

So, I would like to write more blogs, but I have no idea what to blog about.  I don't run all that often anymore due to a trick knee (although I did run 4 miles for the first time in ages last night); I really don't fancy smashing fencing and rebuilding it all that often and I can't think of anything else that interesting that I do.  I mean, who wants to hear about my work in IT support?  Occasionally something interesting occurs, but not so much I feel any great urge to write about it.  What else do I do?  I watch TV.  Who is interested in hearing my thoughts on Star Trek: Voyager?  I thought not.  I eat out with Sharon, but we're quite boring and go to a lot of the same places and eat a lot of the same things.  I go to the pub.  We rarely vary our routine and go to the same place and discuss a lot of the same things.  Don't get me wrong, it's immense fun, but I can't see it making for particularly good reading.  I am currently planning a wedding, well Sharon is and I'm chipping in on occasion.   Some people may be interested in that I guess, but do I want to share the details of my wedding with the world in general?  Not so much.  

So, what to write about?  I read a couple of people's columns in Sunday papers and they always seem to have something to talk about.  One of 2 things is happening in their cases: 

1. They have much more interesting lives than I.  
2. They are much better at thinking of something to write about from their dull lives and making it interesting than I.  

I'm thinking it's probably a combination of the two.

Conclusions.  I need to do one of three things:

1. Do more interesting things, so I can write about them.
2. Make a note of things as they are happening that may make interesting writing/reading as they are happening.
3. Continue to not blog very often.
4. I know I said three things, but I just thought of a fourth.  Randomly read other people's blogs on here and see what it is they write about.  It may lead to inspiration about my own life.

I have just quickly scanned a few people's blogs on here.  It turns out people are boring and interesting at the same time.  This bodes well.   From my quick random scan it appears that people blog about space; mountain biking; Michael Jackson; random doodles they have drawn; and in some cases they blog in a foreign language!?  Doesn't get me any further with ideas, but it does lead me to think that, who really gives a shit what I write about?  Not that many people (if any) will read it and as long as I enjoy writing it then all is cool.  Even Sharon doesn't read my blog.  She says, "What's the point?  I see you every day."  She says pretty much the same about why she never looks at my Facebook and why she never responds to my texts or emails...

The Saga Of The Fence...

So, I've been doing a lot of stuff in my garden of late.  Cutting back trees, weeding paths and mowing lawns and things.  This weekend I turned my attention to the front garden and something that has been doing my head in.  Round the edges of the lawn are little pebbles (pea-shingle I think my dad called it, but I could have just made that up.) When I strim the edges of the lawn, the cuttings go on the pebbles and are impossible to get off without sitting for hours picking up individual blades of grass.  And it looks shit with rotten dead grass there all the time.  I decided to move the pebbles from the edge to the main raised area at the front, which already has pebbles in.  But not quite enough and so you can see the lining in places.  The raised area is edged in by a small fence.  When I say fence, it is in fact one of those crappy ready-made things from B&Q with a couple of stakes at either end that are quite frankly useless.  The weight of the pebbles and earth had caused the fence to tilt forward.  I decided to straighten the fence.  Looked easy enough.  Rake the pebbles back, pull the fence up and hammer it back in straight.  Half an hour tops.  Half an hour later I was still struggling with the second panel, after giving up on the first as I was destroying the stake.  I would come back to that one.  With every blow of the hammer onto the block of wood I was using to protect the fence another bit of wood fell off the fence.  I was taking many steps backwards and the fence was looking many times worse than it had when I started.  Fortunately my dad decided to call round for an impromptu visit and spent 10 minutes laughing at me and my failure to straighten a small fence.  He then gave me tips on what he would do involving the words "wall" and "concrete".  As it's a rented house I can't really undertake major building operations like that, nor would I like to spend that much money.  The landlady has given me permission to make minor improvements to the garden, as I have been doing, but only to tidy it up and get rid of anything which is obviously dead, shit or overgrown.  When my dad left I decided to carry on with trying to just get the fence back to how it was.  Things did not go to plan.  The next thing I knew half the fence was on the floor in pieces and I was hitting it with a spade.  A spade that slipped out of one hand and rebounded into my arm leaving a rather nice lump and bruise.  Of course, this didn't improve my mood much and quickly led to the rest of the fence joining it's deceased brethren.  After the dust settled and Sharon deemed it safe to return, we stood looking at the place the fence used to be and a place that quite obviously needed a fence to be there again.  Sharon disappeared into the house and returned with my car keys.  We were going to B&Q.  We returned a short time later with some decking.  The cheapest wood known to mankind.  I assume it must grow naturally and abundantly in routed and treated planks, because how else can they afford to sell in for less than £2 a plank? 

So, I was going to build a fence.  Seemed simple enough.  Hammer in stakes and screw planks of wood to the stakes.  The planks are 2.4 metres long and the hole 4 metres.  A 2.4 metre and 1.6 metre run was called for.  I measured and cut everything and hammered in the stakes.  All the time I could sense the time marching on.  The quick job of moving a few pebbles, followed by sitting in the garden drinking beer in the sun had completely gone out of the window.  It was now build a fence and get it done before tea so we could maybe go to the pub after tea.  My mood had not improved much.  But it turns out that anger is quite useful when hammering stakes into the ground and it was a temporary release.  I got the 2.4 metre run up in no time.  I got the first plank on for the 1.6 metre run and the battery went on my electric screwdriver.  With the battery went my will.  Plus Sharon was making tea.  I decided to call it a day and resume on the morrow.  I was knackered.  It had taken me all afternoon to get nowhere.  Pub didn't happen.  Mood and tiredness meant it was a no-goer.

Sunday morning.  Up and breakfast ate.  Outside for 10 o'clock with a newly charged screwdriver and, more importantly, newly charged will.  It was raining, but that wouldn't stop me.  The old dear next door shouting "Get that job done before it rains" as she left for church spurred me on.  I quickly screwed the rest of the planks into place and announced the job completed.

Or was it?

As I had done a 2.4 metre and 1.6 metre run, it looked like two fences side by side.  Probably because it WAS two fences side by side.  That niggled me.  Mainly because it looked a bit shit.  If I overlapped the planks, doing long, short; short, long; long short, it would have a much better effect and would look like one fence.  It would also be stronger. It would require a couple more stakes, but that wasn't a problem.  I bought another stake and set about making the quick change.  Surely it was a simple job this time.  Just swap the middle two planks round.  Job done.  I took the middle two planks off and set about it.  They wouldn't go in the space.  Why won't they fit!?  Anger was rising again.  But I suppressed it and set about the task practically rather than emotionally, which had fueled the work the day before and obviously hadn't worked out too well.  As it was technically two fences, and they weren't quite level with each other, I couldn't botch it.  I tried removing the top planks but it still didn't help.  Basically I had started on uneven foundations and it had made the entire job a botch.  Self doubt and laziness set in.  I was a heartbeat away from putting it back as two fences and calling it a day, but renewed motivation struck.  I thought, if I put the botched one back together, every time I look at it I will think, "I could have done that better".  So I decided to do it better.  I dismantled the entire thing and started again.  This time using a spirit level, rather than just my eye.  Things went much better doing the job properly, with the correct tools and a clear head.  In what felt like no time at all I was nearing completion.  The battery went on my screwdriver again.  It had been a hard weekend for the poor little thing.  Even this would not stop me though.  I continued with a normal screwdriver and soon the job was complete.  I stood back and looked and for the first time all weekend was happy with what I saw.

Here enduth the saga.  Did I learn anything?  Don't hit a fence with a spade was the main lesson learnt.  Ouch! Don't cut corners was another.  In the long run you'll only end up having to do it properly anyway, so it won't actually save time.  I keep peeking out of the front window to look at my fence.  I think I love it all the more because of how much hard work it was.  Admittedly, hard work I created for myself.  Because when it actually came down to it, and I did the job properly, it wasn't a particularly big or difficult job.  Ah well.  I'm still proud of my little fence and the weekend it enveloped.

I never did move the pebbles...