London Misfit

I’m still clinging to my atheist status, but thank you god anyway. All delivered, and very, very pretty!

Today I have waited at home all day for yet another Ikea delivery. After last week’s abortive attempt to deliver: arrive at 7am, can’t park, leave, telling me I should have told them to put it on a small truck - what, I’m in the freight business now?? Call me crazy but I would have thought it was pretty clear that any delivery in central london would require something less than an inter-continental trawler.

Anyway. This time we agreed a small truck. And we agreed between 11 and 3. It’s now 14:53. No truck. There’s a good reason for that - apparently DHL (Ikea’s delivery partner) find delivering in London to be a “logistical nightmare”. Um, maybe you’re in the wrong business then?

Alarm bells started to ring when I was told the truck was on delivery 15 of 21. Hmmm, not such a small truck then? The street has been mocking me in its emptiness and abundance of parking opportunities since 10am. It’s still empty now, but not for much longer as people start driving home. And yes, despite being an atheist now, 18 years of being drilled in catholicism still meant I did a little deal with god this morning to keep the street clear.

Of course, the catholic god is a capricious god. “Ha ha” thought god. “Sure, I’ll keep the street clear. But you forget to ask that the delivery happened on time, didn’t you? Haha, got ya, teach you to be a turncoat, you nasty little atheist you!”.

1. New Hitachi travelstar drive installed and working beautifully in the Vosonic 8360. Vosonic has had a stay of execution, and I shan’t be throwing it out the window. Today at least.

2. The day after mid summer is a gorgeous sunny day (I’m ignoring the gale force winds - you learn to take what you can get and be grateful in London).

3. The runts upstairs have been taken out for the day by their long-suffering mother.

4. The Protected Music Converter continues to work its magic on itunes

5. Oh, and finally a phone marketing call I wanted to receive. BT have lowered the monthly cost of my broadband. Yes, I know they’re pricey, but it’s worth it for three years of sterling service, amazing assistance through 4 house moves, and only 2 occasions of no service in all that time.

1. You know what’s fascinating? You buy a lovely Vosonic 8360, it seems ok for a bit. Slightly flakey, and occasionally the hard drive just seems to grind a lot without getting anywhere, and sometimes tells you it just doesn’t exist at all. But otherwise seems fine.

Then six months later it just refuses to work at all. It won’t even re-format. So you start hunting around. According to the Vosonic site you can just replace the hard drive with any 2.5″ PATA drive. Oh except (in big warning letters) Western Digital, as those aren’t compatible.

Where it gets truly fascinating is that when I open it up to check what they originally put in (to make sure I don’t get the same flakey model they used), guess what it was? Oh yes, that would be a Western Digital.

Suddenly it all becomes clear.

2. And to the fucking phone marketing wankers who’ve been calling all day - your stupid system isn’t working, I will not now or in any conceivable future ever buy anything from some idiot blind calling me, so piss off and find someone else to bother. Eight times you wankers have called today and I’ve had enough.

3. I’ve lost my olympus battery charger

4. Mid summer in London has been grey and drizzly.

5. The revolting runts who live upstairs who keep throwing tennis balls at the front of the house.

Yesterday was a fascinating day.

First, I left my house, and there was a guy peeing against my front wall. I said Good Morning as a reflex, and so did he.

Moving on.

Got on the tube. At the next stop, a very serious looking, well-dressed, middle-aged business man sat next to me. Then he removed a pen from his pocket, stuck one end in his mouth and proceeded to play it as if it were a flute. Complete with the swaying head movements, and slightly frenetic fingering.

Later, after an appointment with my orthodontist, two guys got on the tube and sat opposite each other. One was luxuriating in a cold. Complete with explosive sneezes without any attempt to cover his mouth. And huge great snorts to hoik the copious phlegm back into his throat. Which is just about bearable, except that he followed this up with then somehow getting this grossness into his mouth, sticking out his tongue to examine it, then swallowing it with an enormous gulp. His friend kept making the sign of the cross, then kissing his fingers (I had some sympathy with that reaction).

After, the elderly woman carrying the live rabbit at midnight on the Hammersmith & City line seemed almost normal.

This week I rented a car to go and pick up some tiles for the new kitchen. Unfortunately I hadn’t really thought this through, until my mother pointed out that the weight of 20 square metres of floor tiles would weigh some ridiculous half ton, and the car would probably not be able to take the weight unless I distributed them all around and did two trips. And then I thought about myself loading them up at the shop, then trying to unload them back at home. My back would probably not enjoy that too much either.

So I didn’t get the tiles. But the car was prepaid so I figured I’d just do some other heavy-ish shopping while I had it anyway.

Turned up to pick up the car, and there was a large poster saying ‘Add a satnav to your rental now’. Seemed like a great idea, so I asked to add one. “Oh, we don’t do satnavs” I was told. When I pointed at the sign right behind the girl handling the pickup, she just shrugged and said “Oh yeah, we stopped that a year ago”. Maybe take the sign down then, you moron.

Anyway. All I needed to do was turn right on Bayswater road and home was then about 2 miles straight down from there. Only I couldn’t turn right due to hideous traffic.

An hour later I was still driving around Bayswater, having taken a little detour via Kilburn (don’t ask). I tried calling my sister, who knows the area, but apparently she was call screening! Then I had a genius little idea - I have a compass on my keyring and I figured I just needed to keep going west and I’d get somewhere near home. Orienteering in the centre of London with a car!

So in the end, I went west at every turn, and finally made it back to Bayswater road. Approximately 100 metres from where I’d picked up the car an hour earlier.

Oh well.

Never driving without satnav again though, despite frankly awesome orienteering skills.

I was introduced to these books some years ago by a colleague (male, believe it or not). At first, they seemed slow and bit pointless, and then I found that while reading them all the manic crap in my head would stop and slow down, and I would feel so much calmer. I still re-read the older ones now when I’m uptight or can’t sleep and they work everytime.

Having loved the books I was nervous about the TV adaptation, particularly when I heard that Richard Curtis was involved. He fascinates me in a bad way - quite how so many women are taken in by his blatant misogyny is beyond me. Case in point - Love Actually. So-called touching, wonderful love story. In reality, the only women ‘allowed’ to be happy at the end of it were those who completely subjugated their lives to men. Any women who dared have a career, responsibilities, or life that existed outside of being obsessed with their much-older ‘man’ got screwed. And do not get me started on Kris Marshall’s character - quite how the poor guy gave up all credibility to act out one of Richard’s pathetic schoolboy fantasies with cheerleaders escapes me. But it was a sweet love story anyway. Apparently.

Anyway, Richard didn’t let me down. Where in the books, Precious was raised and taught by her father’s female cousins because raising children was women’s work, of course in Richard’s world this became her father only. Ok, maybe this was in the interests of time, but in the books the main message about her upbringing was that her female relatives taught her all these things to learn to hold her own in a Botswana still dominated by men.

Also, where in the book she was smart enough not to sell all the cattle to fund her business and house but to keep some back for the future, in Richard’s world, she sold the lot (cos clearly women are way too dumb to make smart investment decisions). Again, where in the book she setup the business and hired Mma Makutsi to help her, it became the male hairdresser who bolstered her up and got her clients. Oh, and the in the book, all the men (her father in particular) thought it was a bad idea to setup a detective agency and run it herself, in the TV version it was the men who persuaded her it was a good idea, and the women who denigrated her it.

But all that pales against the greatest misogyny - her husband, Note. Who in the books beat her to the point that she was terrified of him, and hated him. But of course in Richard’s world, all this abuse is instantly forgiveable if Note has his trumpet and can play it at her father’s funeral.

Ok, I’m done. And once we got past the intensely irritating opening sequences (of course, everyone knows that when you grow up in Africa you have baby rhinos that you can walk up to, and giraffes following you around etc. Stereotype, much?), it improved. Once Jill Scott actually got to do some investigating, and the fun really started, it was great.

I recorded it, and frequently re-watch it, but always skip over the first 20 minutes of stupidty, including the animals that all kids in Africa apparently have following them around (where were mine?? I feel so left out by not having my own giraffe following me around when I grew up there), and the father’s funeral with Note playing the trumpet. The rest of the hour and a half is brilliantly done, but much stronger when it’s Jill Scott leading the scene.

Now, I’m just hoping that the lovely Richard is not involved in the tv series to follow. God knows he’ll probably have her ceding the agency over to Mr. JLB Matekoni, as obviously a man can run it much better.

Don’t ask: “So, how’s the studying going?”

Could just be that I’m a woefully unprepared student, but this question is never going to be answered by anything other then “Crap, thanks for asking”. And that was just when I was approaching an exam I felt confident about. Mostly, it will be answered by a snarl, and if you’re close enough, projectiles.

A few things did go wrong with my Ikea delivery, but they were all my own fault, and not Ikea’s. Which is very irritating. First, it didn’t occur to me to measure before I ordered. So one 60cm cupboard was going to attempt to squeeze into a 40cm gap. Then I thought to check the ceiling height. Luckily the ceiling was the exact height of the cupboards, or would be if I could chop 10cms off the cupboards. Not my finest hour.

So I rang up to cancel the order, dreading the whole process after the debacle with the refunds last time. Well it was like dealing with a different company. First off they answer the phones, secondly they are pleasant, thirdly they cancelled the order immediately, updated the order status, sent me a confirmation email, and then sent me a follow-up email to confirm the refund was processed. And two days later the money was back in my account. Would the real Ikea please stand up?

Having taken the fundamental step of getting a measuring tape out this time, I submitted the same order, different size, and was then allocated another delivery date. Today was the day, and so yesterday morning I received a text telling me the delivery would be between 12 and 7pm, then today I received a call at 12:05, then at 12:20 they turned. Could not have been more pleasant, even though they had to park a few doors down and carry everything back. Then they double-checked the order contents, and left.

So I actually received every piece I ordered, in the correct size and colour, at the time and date specified, and by pleasant delivery guys. This must be unprecendented.

I have complained a few times here about Ikea. The idea of having to collect some very heavy stuff from a warehouse yourself, in blatant disregard of any health and safety regulations, the lack of delivery then a huge fight to get your money back, as they assume you received the goods once the delivery has passed, regardless of whether this actually happened (really wish I could take that approach with my clients at work. What do you mean the system isn’t there? Of course it is, it was due yesterday).

But, I have an unholy love of a bargain. Yes, yes, I know the reason I can get the price is that the customer service is unrelentingly atrocious. It wouldn’t be so bad if there were no customer service. That would actually be preferable to the torrent of abuse and ‘I’m just following procedure’ that you have to put up with. I’m intrigued by their hiring practices - only the most unpleasant and brain-dead need apply?

I have just placed an order for a whole load of Ikea bedroom furniture. I wouldn’t have done this, except that the quote I just got from a builder for two fitted cupboards was enough to send both me and my bank manager into palpitations. So I have given up and gone back to the enemy. I’m also about to order a kitchen from them (again, their price is exactly 8% of my builder’s quote). And the thing is, I know this is all going to end in tears (mine), bad tempers (mine and theirs), and money lost (mine).

And the scariest part? The delivery date I’ve been allocated is April Fool’s Day.

Oh yeah, this is going to work out well.