Go to work on a noisy crumpet

When I say work, turning up would be closer to the mark as I have absolutely nothing to do now, nor the prospect of anything. I find myself looking for cheap holidays on the internet and working things out; anything to drive away the boredom. I even worked out how much they were paying me to make a cup of tea last week – about £2.50. As a consequence I’m drinking far more tea than I should, I’m also going to the toilet more than I need, partly because it’s almost overtime; “time and a turd”. Anyway, I would like to thank Claire for looking after me so well while I have been in this contract, she’s been brilliant. She hasn’t missed one morning where she has got up to make my sandwiches and breakfast every day. As I’m getting in the shower she asks me what I want for breakfast, to which I always ask for my favourite, crumpets. Claire doesn’t like making crumpets because they wake Harriet up. Each day she tries to talk me into having fruit or cereal because that’s better for me, especially being diabetic now. Sometimes she goes back to bed but she has always got up with me to wave me off; thank you darling!

We have both mentioned before that we made an offer on Dan’s flat, who used to work with Claire at the Open University which is the largest university in the world. Well, I had a feeling that the estate agents were trying to pull a fast one so I asked Steve to ask Jan his wife to ask Dan if he had been made aware that Claire had made an offer for it. Jan is doing Claire’s old job at the OU and so works with Dan now. Anyway Dan was off work Thursday and Friday so she couldn’t ask him. Steve has started to come out with us on a Wednesday night and also has an iphone so it gives us all a chance to compare our latest App’s. Anyway, Dan’s house was advertised at one price but the details had a sticker over the original price which says to me that it had recently changed and rather than printing more copies out they stuck this over the only bit that had changed. We offered the full asking price but the agent told us that it wasn’t enough and that Dan needed 20% more than the asking price. In fact he said that this wasn’t the full asking price as it said OIEO after the price. Apparently this stands for “Offers In Excess Off”. Anyway Dan has sold this flat twice in the past and it has fallen through both times and he is now getting a little concerned that the property he wants to buy will slip away from him. I said that we were cash buyers and that we could complete in 3 weeks but the agent didn’t seem interested. I know that by law they have to inform the seller of all offers regardless of the size of it but my instinct told me that he hadn’t. I have the feeling that someone at this agency wants to buy the flat on the cheap. It’s even the same price on Rightmove which would only take minutes to change.

Having had nothing to do last week I have been doing extensive searches for holidays, my favourite pastime. I love looking for holidays so the old saying that arranging a holiday is half the fun seems good to me. When times are hard all you have to do is look for and arrange two holidays without taking them. In this way you have just as much fun without the expense. Anyway, the best value 3 week holiday was in Goa which is strange as the flight alone is 10 hours where even Tenerife is only 4 hours flight away. Also when you get there, its much cheaper as well so you save twice and you also have guaranteed good weather. Once the monsoon season is over is clear blue skies all the way until next April. The official start of the Indian summer was 7th October so its time to go already. The cheapest one I could find was leaving on 11th November for 3 weeks with B+B accommodation in North Goa all for £478 each. Claire and I prefer South Goa where most of our time has been spent; in fact we have only spent 2 nights in North Goa. Last time we were there we couldn’t find anywhere to go on our weekly big bike ride day; we had got to the point where we had been everywhere. Well the north we have yet to explore properly, we have had a drive day in a taxi and stopped off all along the coast line to take some photos but its not the same as staying there and exploring yourself on a bike. The chances are that the hotel with the cheap deal will be rubbish but we could stick it for a couple of days before going our own way. If we hired a bike in the North for a week we could explore it properly and have a base to do it from, we should be able to drive to most places and back in a day from there. Once the weeks up we could go down to the South and stay here and there like we normally do anyway. I can’t find a flight only, as cheap as this deal which includes the hotel so even if we never stop there its better than getting a flight only.

Talking of holidays, have you seen the exchange rate of the Australian dollar lately? It’s down to $1.6 to the pound so it’s almost equal to the American dollar now. We thought that it was low when we went there at $1.8 because it had only recently dropped from $2 to the £. Mind you, all currencies have a bad exchange rate to us at the moment, even the Indian Rupee is down to 70Rs to the pound. Last time we were there it was about 85Rs to the pound. If you go to Europe the Euro is about the same as the pound these days and I can’t see it ever getting much better. When I was a kid you used to get $4US to the pound; in fact we used to call half-a-crown (2 shillings and sixpence or about 12.5 pence), “half a dollar”. Yes, I grew up with old money and it wasn’t until I started work that we changed over. You used to get Victorian coins in the change in your pocket which seems bizarre now I can hardly believe that it’s a real memory. I used to save coins in those days as all you had to do was collect them from your change. I still have most of them now; for example I have all the brass-nickel three-penny bits ever made. Well not all of them but every variation in style and year. I have all halfpennies from 1900 to when they stopped making them and hundreds of Victorian coins. Maybe I have kept them long enough now and should start to investigate their worth. I even have crowns, sovereigns and solid gold coins of various denominations. I have one solid gold set that was worth thousands when I got it so hopefully that should pay for another property by now; or at least a holiday for Claire and myself. I also used to collect stamps which most kids did in those days and I still have all of those. They must be worth a fortune by now its just not knowing how to get them valued or marketed. I guess by following ebay I would get an idea of their value. I was so sad I even belonged to the local “Coin Club” in Melton Mowbray. I think I was called a “Kleptomaniac” or at least something like that.

We finally watched the last ever episode of “The Sopranos” on Friday and it as taken us over a year. With 6 series and over 24 hours to each series it’s hardly surprising but the last series we have only been able to watch one episode a week. It’s basically about a modern day mafia family living in New Jersey which doesn’t sound great but it is. The first series where all the introductions were made has been described by people in the know as at least the equal to anything written by William Shakespeare. Although I am not in the know, I would have to agree with them it’s by far the best drama series to ever appear on the TV in my opinion, it’s so cleverly written whilst being gripping the whole way through. If you get the chance to watch that first series take it – you will be hooked! Trouble is it makes everything else seem limp in comparison. I must say that I was a little disappointed with the end but I guess they had to be different. I can now understand why so many people were expecting another series to follow and couldn’t accept that it was over for good.

Claire went for an interview last Wednesday and she got on really well with the lady that interviewed her so I wouldn’t be surprised if she gets it. She wouldn’t find out until Monday or Tuesday so I couldn’t book our holiday until then. Trouble is we need a visa to go to India and through the post it takes 2 weeks to get. If she does get the job then we need to dash off on Friday 15th for 2 weeks before she starts but that will leave us even less time to get our visas. We seem to be doing the holiday equivalent of painting ourselves into a corner. Tenerife is looking better all the time. I hope that Claire doesn’t get this job secretly because it will screw up our holiday to start with and I might end up with all the washing and ironing in the process. Don’t tell Claire though because I think she would really like it as she hasn’t worked for about 4 years now so her confidence could do with a boost work wise.

Finally finished work now and Claire didn’t get her job and neither did I. I had agreed to be put foreword for one as I expected Claire to get hers anyway. Neither of us heard anything back from the agents. This allowed me to book our holiday to Goa and we will be off on 11th November for 3 weeks. Even better news, while I was waiting to hear if we had got the jobs, the holiday had gone down by about £100 each and ended up costing £399 each. Of coarse we had to pay extra for baggage but that was all. I think we got it at about the optimal time because they have already stated to go up again for the same date and hotel. Can’t wait now, especially having my iphone to take on holiday to help with the blog!

There is a great little app where you talk into your phone and it converts your voice into text and it’s very accurate. This should take the sting out of typing onto a little phone one letter at a time, especially when you have “fingers like a pound of sausages” like me. I have already bought a cheap travel keyboard that uses Bluetooth to communicate with the phone. It also folds in two to make it even easier to travel with. I’ve tried it out and it works great so that’s another reason I can’t wait to go away to try it all out. Claire bought another add-on as a surprise for me finishing this contract; it’s a iphone docking station. You just plug in your iphone and it charges it up, sets the clock on the docking station and allows you to play music through the circular speakers. You can even charge a second iphone if you have two. This is quite a small solution to taking music with you on holiday. Of course, when we do go on holiday you guys get the added benefit of having me blog more often. Why has it all gone so quiet?

Oops, the smoke alarm has just gone off, got to go now my crumpets are ready!