So terribly sorry

I really have been slack haven't I? I've just been exhausted and aside from a bit of posting on forums I've actually done diddly squat. No yarn work whatsoever. I've reallly wanted to and I need to start thinking about stuff to put on the website for Winter but it'll have to wait.

Wiltshire was good. We stayed in a B&B in Devizes called Rockley House and the lady who ran it was just delightful. She couldn't have been lovelier if she tried. On our last night she asked if we wanted to stay on the canal boat they have there. The boys were chuffed to rocks:















No. 2 son did well at the chess and won two games. I'm always relieved that he wins any at that level as the kids have generally reached an extremely high standard and have private coaching etc. My boy plays for an hour a week at school if he's lucky. None of us at home play chess so he doesn't get any practice here. There were 600 kids playing chess that day in 30 degrees plus temperatures.















I was glad when it was over and even more grateful that the hire car had air conditioning. Poor No. 3 son had a really bad sickness bug on the last night and spent the entire night throwing up but he bravely trudged round Stonehenge the next day.

















All in all it was a good trip and the boys behaved really well. The biggest disaster was going to Longleat and leaving the camera on the bed at the B&B. Silly cow. I bought one of those disposable ones but the pics won't be as good as from the diggie - especially as it's got a sooper dooper zoom. Oh well, such is life when you've got the braincells of a half formed amoeba.

Hopefully I'll be back with some yarn content soon but today I'm going to lie on the sofa and watch DVD's with the kids. Dyw genes for now my lovelies!

Urgh

I feel a relapse looming :( All the signs are there. Severely twitchy, weak muscles, my lungs hurt, my throat hurts, my head hurts and I'm not sleeping. I can't string two words together and the slightest noise is like having my head in a metal bucket. I have to have all the doors and windows shut because the noise of the birdsong is driving me nuts. Basically I feel like I've done 10 rounds in a boxing ring. Sometimes I only feel this bad for a weeks or so, sometimes it goes on forever. I'm sincerely hoping it's the former. I have to go to Wiltshire tomorrow for 3 days. My middle boy is playing in a chess tournament and I promised him and his younger brother we could go to Longleat. They're bouncing off the walls with excitement - I'm wondering how I'm going to get through it - lol. Maybe 'Doctor Theatre' will kick in just in time.

I'm rather short of portable projects so I dug out some yarn I made earlier in the year and have started some socks.




















The greeny/orangey one is some cheviot roving I dyed and spun while I was waiting for our Dorset to come back from Natural Fibre. It's a hard wool so I may add some leather soles to the socks and make them more of a slipper affair. The brown is Alpaca blended with Shetland and if there was enough of this I'd make a pair of socks and never take them off - it's sooooo soft. But needs must when a yarnaholic has no projects on the go so a stripey mix of hard/soft it is :)

I'll be back on Monday evening and hopefully will have some pics from Longleat if I have the energy to actually go. Wish me luck.

Busy doing nothing - it's a long one

I've been so busy for the last week. I've been trying to sort out my mother in laws phone. She's 86 and lives alone in a detached property in a semi rural location. On 27th June her phone line came down - she discovered this when she tried to phone for help after falling and breaking her ankle. Luckily her neighbour called round minutes after she'd fallen and called for help and then called BT to tell them the line wsa down. On the 3rd July (!!!!!) a BT engineer called round and said that a temporary line could be put in and left. Then....nothing. On 5th July I called BT to find out what was happening and after being shunted from pillar to post I was told that they had a completion date of 14th July to reinstate her line. I said that wasn't acceptable and asked to speak to a manager. I was told that a manager would call me back next day to discuss it with me. Next day a manager ( a nice Welsh woman who is the only one who has been honest in 500 fekkin phone calls) called me back and said that the 14th July was actually the date that the plans were going to be recieved by BT engineers so that they could think about re-routing the lines underground and that the actual date we were looking at for my M.I.L to have her phone back was mid August!! That's 7 weeks for an elderly lady who lives alone, in a detached property (and has a broken ankle) to be without a phone. I started a complaints procedure straight away. Have any of you ever tried to complain to BT? It's a farce. I decided that I would follow their complaints procedure to the letter as, if you want to go to Oftel ,they won't even think about your case unless you've followed 'procedure'. It's been a total eye opener and a weeks 'work'. It's been like being back in mental health. All day on the phone trying to sort something out. I called them on 7th July and said I wanted to register a complaint about the way the situation was being dealt with and wanted to speak to a manager. I was told a manager would call me back. They didn't. After 3 days of constant phoning and constant promises of call backs which never materialised I decided my complaint wasn't being dealt with correctly I called the BT Complaints Review Team, I got through to Broadband customer services. I tried to call them again and got though to standard customer services. I said I wanted my complaint reviewed and they said 'But you have to regsiter a complaint in the first place' I told them I had and they said there was no record of it. I explained the situation and they said a manager would call me back within 2 hrs. They didn't. I called again. I got put through to a call centre in India and said I wanted to regsiter a complaint. They hung up. I called again and was told a manager would call me back within 2 hrs. They did! They said, 'There's an engineer at the property right now'. We drove round there, there wasn't. I called again and was told 'They're not beginning work until 14th July'. AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!

I've been told by two separate BT representatives (both of them managers) that to provide my M.I.L with priority care due to her age would be ageist (wtf?!) I've been told by one of the managers that she herself lives alone and doesn't expect anything other than standard service provision ( I assume she's not 86) I was old that my M.I.L could indeed recieve priority services but only if she registered and paid a premium.When I asked what BT's commitment actually was to older customers I was proudly told that BT promises to give them the same standard of service as any other customer. Good of them eh? It has been a nightmare but an education.

This afternoon I decided enough was enough and I called BT Head Office and asked to speak to Sir Christopher Bland (BT Chairman). They asked what I was calling about and I said 'I have concerns that your services are not being delivered within a framework of social responsibilty'. I explained the situation and the woman was very quiet and listened. When I finished she said that she completely understood my concerns and put me through to the highest complaints dept. Within an hour there was an engineer on site at my M.I.L's house attemtpting to sort out a temporary line and I have had 3 calls from 3 separate managers to aologise and thank me for my patience. Am I being cynical or is the standard complaints procedure designed to get the caller to lose the will and give up? How many people are stubborn enough to go as far as I did? How many people just believe the lies and give up?

I also contacted Age concern and my concerns about BT's customer care for the elderly have been passed on to their policy department. I've written a formal complaint to the BT chairman and said that(in a much more formal way) I think their standard of customer care for elderly cutomers stinks.

The irony is that I've gone into work mode. If it was about my phone I would have been screaming sort my &*(^%$£ phone out you )&^%$£" %$£*&^%!! Lol I am utterly exhausted and can't believe how mcuh energy this has taken. Still.....

Here's a pic of how the (unwashed ) alpaca is spinning up















As it's not washed and I'm pulling it out of a bin bag to spin in locks it's not wanting to spin particularly fine. It'll be interesting to see how it comes out.

Whilst I've got you there you can help me with a dilemma. have a look at this yarn.


I don't know whether to keep it or put it on the website. I really like it.


















Decisions decisions :)

Message for stroppygob

The name says it all eh? lol. Why don't you bookmark my blog if you're going to keep reading it? Then you wouldn't have to do blog searches from work.




















For everyone else I've got a nice pic of my new ukulele :)

Look what I got

One of our baby goats, Clover, has gone to live on a farm up the road. I knew the woman had alpacas but had never been up there. When we took Clover up there she asked me if I wanted some fleece and as I tried to remain nonchalant and not bite her hand off she gave me this















An entire bin bag full of top quality alpaca fleece! Isn't it lush? I spun some up on Friday night (being very careful of The Knee) and it's beautiful. Clean enough to spin straight out of the bag. I might try to prepare some just to see if I can get it really fine but I don't have any combs. I really want some combs but am loathe to pay out for the mini ones. I want big girl ones but I can't find any.

Anyway - best get on - the feedback form on my site has stopped wroking for some reason so I guess I'll spend the day staring at the screen again. I'm going to try to squeeze some spinning in if I have enough energy as I have extreme withdrawal symptoms :(

With regards to changing the name of the blog I've decided to keep it the same. I don't think it's a good idea to give in to bullies and he is a bully. He's not particularly liked on the forum, spends hours on there just winding people up and claims to follow me around other forums I use. I guess I should see it as a compliment but I'll try to dredge up some human compassion toward the bloke - he's obviously got problems.

TTFN :)

Bitter little people

Yet again some saddo with personality issues has decided to post a link to my blog on an open forum. This person has the personailty of a dead sea slug and spends all of his free time on the net pissing people off - or trying to - he's a sad litle man. His wife seems quite normal though - maybe she's more of a carer than a wife. Perhaps I should make it clear that I am a user on the same forum as this arrogant tosser and he has posted the link to my blog on the forums without my permission and solely to have a dig. As I have already had problems with people on that site turning up at my house to freak me out and another one (who thankfully wasn't bright enough to post the correct link) posting the addy and slagging off my kids I'm sure you'll all understand that it's not something I'm particularly happy about. Posting anonymnous links to blogs on forums is one thing but posting the blog of a fellow forum member without their permission is quite something else in my book. The majority of members on that forum are very nice people but there seems to be a large percentage who don't know how to behave.

So, now the website is up I think I have to change the name of this blog so that I can keep it in the format is presently is - it has enough personal stuff in it that I don't want it advertised and if I did it would be my job not some arsehole with too much spare time and not enough mates.

I don't want to lose the readers I have so what's a girl to do? If I just change the name will people still find it via google? Will all your links to here still work?

Ideas on a postcard - lol