ianbee: this is instead of getting a dog

How I ruined everybody's day

The clocks went forward yesterday night (the "bad" one). I was staying in a hotel in Hobart. Before going to bed I reset the time on my phone and set the alarm for 7am. I had warned the receptionist that I was planning an 8am checkout. She would be up, I was reassured.

I presented myself to reception at 8am. No receptionist.* I called her on the courtesy phone and she appeared a few minutes later in her dressing gown. She apologised for not being awake earlier. The clock behind the reception desk said 7am.** "I changed that last night," she said, "somebody must have changed it back again." She adjusted the hands to read 8am and signed me out.

On the way to meet my colleagues for a lift to the airport I tried to get breakfast. Everywhere was shut, even the places that advertised an 8am opening time.*** I eventually found a cafe that was just setting up and they agreed to make me a coffee. I waited for my colleagues and when they were late, I rang them and the whole sorry incident unfolded.

* 1st warning sign, ignored.

** 2nd warning sign, ignored.

*** 3rd warning sign, ignored.

The critical incident review showed that the probable cause of my incredibly early start, and the root cause of the panic attack that befell anyone staying in the Astor Hotel that morning was that my phone was clever enough to change the time automatically, but not clever enough to tell me it had done it.

PS while writing this I saw this:

This is not how you spell poo

There were several of these signs pinned to the shrubbery along the road the other day. I corrected the spelling on the first one, then found that someone had beaten me to it on the next bush. In hindsight I wish I'd given the author public credit for the apostrophe.

I saw the bicycle video before you

This video has been around for a while now, so this is going to seem like I'm jumping on the bandwagon - but I saw this ages ago! Before it got really popular and before you got sent the link in an email by friends in Nepal, etc. It's a guy, on a bike, in Edinburgh. If you haven't seen it yet, this is the video that makes me so happy ...

My home in Edinburgh is ten minutes walk from most of the locations. I have even sat on some of the benches he jumps over, and have sheltered under trees he rides up. Even better, I saw the man himself once practising outside the Standard Life building at the top of Lothian Road (the bit where he cycles round a circular bit of slanty wall). He timed a jump, landed right in front of me and rode off ...

Electric Light

Saw this in a museum yesterday. Made me smile. I like the idea that people would try and 'light' electric bulbs with matches.

 

I reckon electric light does affect soundness of sleep if you leave it on.

Earthquake

So apparently there was an earthquake last night. I felt nothing. All the ornaments fell off the shelves in the living room. I felt nothing. The owner of the guesthouse sheltered under the strongest door frame in the building. I felt nothing, and I'm a bit annoyed that no-one checked in on me. I could have been crushed by a falling vase. The bus driver this morning said that his instant reaction was to protect his plasma telly. The ski guide today pointed out all the resulting mini-avalanches. I felt nothing and it's really frustrating because I have no exciting stories to tell. sorry.

Toughen Up, Princess

I was just wondering if anyone knew what the Latin translation of "Toughen Up, Princess" might be.

No reason.

Carry on...

www.insteadofadog.com

I told someone about my blog the other day and about how it was instead of getting a dog. They asked what the address was and were disappointed to hear that it wasn't www.insteadofadog.com

Well now it is.

Can't believe I didn't think of that before.

Letterbox Weevils

Australians like having their letterboxes open to the elements so when it rains in the morning their post gets soggy and when the sun shines in the afternoon their post dries out. They also like their letterboxes really really tiny. Someone worked out the smallest letter that anyone might send and made the slits just a bit smaller than that. I leave the back of my letterbox open so the postie can just bypass the slit altogether, but they seem to enjoy destroying things and still cram it in through the front.

My post-traumas have recently taken on a new twist. I began to receive mail that hadn't been destroyed by an enthusiastic postie or inclement weather, but appeared to have been eaten. It became apparent that I've got things living in my letterbox, possibly letterbox-weevils, probably many of them, definitely with teeth.

The man at the post office accepted it gingerly which was lucky considering my previous bad experiences with collecting parcels. He probably went to wash his hands soon afterwards. I did.

So on the way home I went shopping for bug spray. This country has an almost endless choice of bug sprays; they are categorised by type of bug, type of surface, and amount of pain suffered in death by recipient. They also have pet-friendly ones and ones that don't kill your budgie if you forget to leave a window open. Unfortunately they do not have specific letterbox sprays so I brought a generic crawling-insect general-surface quick-death kind-to-dogs spray.

Thankfully I looked before I rained aerosol death down on my letterbox because there were two snails hiding in the corner. I showed them to my neighbour, who's a boy and is eight years old, in the hope that he might be persuaded to remove them for me. He thought they were 'cool' but didn't want to get involved so I reached in and plucked them out myself, feeling like I'd completed a challenge on one of those reality-jungle TV shows.

(They were rehoused humanely.)

My Britain, for the benefit of Australians

   

Cross-cultural washing machine collaboration

I feel I need to close the loop on the washing machine (minor) saga. My new Australian machine was delivered earlier in the week on the back of a ute*. It's actually second hand but it's the best and newest in the laundry room. My neighbour came to watch me install it and was very impressed. In Australia they like to keep all the washing machines together here in one place, for company and protection I guess. That's mine in the middle, it's huge! Australians like top-loaders because you can add socks half-way through the wash, if you like half-washed socks. It was nice to wash some clothes yesterday and not look out of the window and see water pouring out of the door of the laundry room into the garden.

 

On the other side of the world, my new Edinburgh washing machine was delivered earlier in the week and installed with minimal fuss by my resourceful tenants. It has a timer function so you can say "I want to wash these clothes, but not quite yet. Surprise me." Incidentally, for the Australian readers, you'll notice that in Britain we keep our washing machines next to the cooker. This is so that dirty tea-towels don't have far to travel. If we kept our machines in a little room behind the tennaments we would spend half our lives deicing them, although all the tramps would have cleaner clothes. When my resourceful tenants pulled the old machine out from the wall, they reported minimal mouse poo. I knew it was personal.

* a pick-up truck. Usually has an unrestrained dog in the back and a big bit on the front to scoop kangaroos out of the way.