Dear Cleaner or "What keeps His Nibs and I Together"

I love you.  I mean it. 

I know we seldom, almost never, see each other, but I love you.  Every Friday evening we arrive in from work, after up to two hours in the traffic, and find the house in absolutely perfect order.

The floors are beautifully clean, as if no muddy paw has ever set foot on them.  The sofa hoovered to its pre-dog-hair glory days.

The bathrooms are a joy, not a speck of dust on the bath, you can almost see yourself in the sinks.  The toilets nicely closed down, and when they’re opened again, bright blue water faces me.

And a load of lovely freshly ironed clothes, already on their hangers (if I’ve had the gumption to leave you any hangers) just waiting to be popped into the wardrobe.

You’d be surprised at the level of activity in this house on a Thursday night.  I don’t want you knowing how we really live, so I always make sure I leave the kitchen nice and clean and tidy.

I have to sort out the laundry, of course.  It’s usually been hanging on clothes horses in the corner of the kitchen for a few days, possibly since the weekend before. 

On a Thursday night I have to separate the clean clothes that need to be ironed from the ones that don’t.  One basket for the shirts and trousers and other stuff for you, and another for knickers and tea towels and things that we don’t think need ironing, and you wouldn’t iron, even if we thought they did.

Before you started coming here, we used to spend our weekends in uproar.

We never cleaned the house properly, to be honest.  We told you that, the first time we met.  I’d tried to tidy up around a bit before you arrived.  I knew that if you came to see us and the house was in its usual state, there was absolutely no way you’d take the job.  And I really, really wanted you to take the job.

We used to get up on Saturday mornings and start fighting about who was going to do what, for hours.  The big problem was that His Nibs didn’t think we needed to do the housework.  He was happy to live in the dirt.  And he didn’t think there was any need for me to make a fuss, if I wanted to do it, that that was up to me. To shut me up, he would often talk me into going out for lunch with him, and abandoning all thought of housework.

Which I was surprisingly easily tempted by.

Of course, that would mean there was double dirt the following weekend and the whole caper would start again.  And the pile of ironing would have reached epic proportions.  Sunday evenings were completely wasted doing that.  It was do it or go to work in our pyjamas, but I absolutely hate ironing and did every single garment with resentment and venom in my heart.

So housework was always a problem for us.

The only time we really cleaned was when some loved one would phone to say they were on their way.  I would breezily offer welcomes on the phone, hang up, and start squealing “They’re coming, they’re coming” like something from a bad zombie film and physically force His Nibs into action.

I think it was the stress that used to get him going.  I’d be shouting and running, and spraying bleach left and right and threatening to leave immediately if he didn’t get going.  So rather than be left dealing with the visitors on his own, which he doesn’t like, he’d join in a bit.  If we could get the kitchen and bathrooms sorted before the arrival it was all right, I’d prefer if he’d run around a bit with the hoover as well.   On days when the traffic in town was bad, we’d often get to give the dirty bits of the wooden floor a quick slap of the mop, and the whole thing would be considered a great success.

I suppose it was a bit of a giveaway when I opened the door, still red in the face and smelling of a nasty combination of work and bleach.  I would smile and pretend that everything was normal, and His Nibs would smile and say something like “Thank God you’re here at last, she has me knackered trying to make the place look less like a squat”.

The happy days we now have, being able to invite who we like to the house when we like, never ever arguing about whose turn it is to clean the bathrooms, and both being able to do whatever we like at the weekends, is absolutely great.  We love you.

Please never leave us.  I often wonder if it would be an exaggeration to say you saved our marriage.

The Laptop Doctor

I didn't want to become Ireland's grumpiest woman, I really didn't.
But they're forcing me now.
I'm being coerced and tormented into losing my temper at every turn.

Last Sunday week, I was sitting at my desk, having a little rant on my laptop.  (I believe it was my moan on "Shops" - see the list on the right if you missed it.)
And suddenly my laptop got all weird.  The mouse would go left or right, but not up or down.  The laptop is less than a year old, and I immediately got all narky and wanted it repaired.

I remember buying it very clearly.  It was around this time last year, when I decided to set up a space in my house for writing ranty little diatribes.  A new desk, chair and laptop were purchased to ease my way.  I suppose poor His Nibs thought that it was worth kitting me out with this stuff if it would make me rant at the laptop, not at him.

Anyway, I've seen the IT crowd.  And I work in an office.  So I did what I'm supposed to do.  I turned it off and then back on again.
No luck.  In fact, it seemed to be getting worse.  I cursed and swore a bit, and demanded that His Nibs hand over his laptop, which in fairness to him, he did.  But it's missing the letter D.  You'd be surprised how annoying that is.

But I digress.  
The following day, I went to the laptop doctor with my precious computer.  He looked at it, made a few faces, stuck a massive sticker on the top of it - which I know, I just know, is going to leave a horrible gluey spot, and demanded the charger, which I'd forgotten. I promised to bring it the following day.

Then he demanded the original receipt, which I didn't have, obviously.
I reported that I was actually told when I asked at purchase time whether the receipt is the guarantee, that they were registering it on their system, so one way or the other they'd have a record of it, but sure, to hold onto the receipt anyway.
I asked him to look up the elusive "system" and find the receipt.  He clearly didn't want to.  I told him I thought it might have been in the last two weeks of September, 2011.  He insisted it was the 26th October - which I knew was wrong.
Five minutes later, he concluded that that purchase was actually my Kindle, which I'd managed to break in two days. I agreed that yes, I had.  I don't know why he looked at me like that.  I hope he wasn't trying to imply that I'm destructive or anything.

After that he gave up looking for the purchase completely and asked me for €65 instead.  I huffed and I puffed and he told me that he'd refund me if I found the receipt.
I need that laptop, I really do, how else can I rant and rave?  Writing with a pen doesn't work, the temper is gone off me before I have the thing half written, so I gave him the damn money.  Then I told him to try really hard to fix it, because I need it, I'm a writer.  I couldn't think of any other job, on the spot, that might hurry him up.

"Really?" he asked "would I have read anything you've written?"
I admitted it was highly unlikely.
"So what you mean is that you can write?"
I was forced to agree.
"Yes, I can write too" he told me.  "It's great, isn't it?"

Humiliation piling onto hopelessness, I left.

The following day I arrived back in, as instructed, with the receipt and the charger.
"That's fine" he told me.  "Now I can refund you the €65.  Do you have the receipt for that?"

"I have the receipt for the computer, and you know I gave you the money.  No, I don't have the receipt, I left it in my laptop case".
"I'm afraid I can't give you the refund without both receipts.  Now, let's have a look."
There was a couple of minutes pause while he tap tapped on his keyboard. 
"Oh yeah, I fixed that one."
"Really?  Great!"
"Yes, I re-set the factory settings, so I hope you backed everything up somewhere".

Silence.

Another couple of minutes of tapping.
"Oh no, that's right, I thought I had it fixed but it went wrong again.  I'm afraid it has to go to laptop hospital".
That's not a direct quote actually.  He started talking in letters, like HQ and UK, and other things I didn't want to hear.
"Right.  How long will that take?"
"If you don't get it back within 28 days we'll give you a new one."

Twenty eight days!  For God's sake.  I couldn't believe it, but what could I do?

A week passed, oh so slowly, while I tried to get used to doing without my faithful friend, the laptop.  I couldn't believe how much I missed it.

Then, this morning, my mobile rang.
"Hello, this is someone from the laptop doctor's." - Again, this is not a direct quote, he gave his actual name and the name of the pointless, useless shop.
"OK" - I held my breath - was this to be it? The one time that something in my life was sorted out quickly and efficiently?  Was I to get my beloved gadget back?
"Yes, we're sorry to tell you that we haven't been able to fix your laptop here.  It has to go to laptop hospital in the UK."
"Yes, I know.  I was told that a week ago.  Are you telling me that you haven't sent it away yet?  A week later?"
A brief pause.  Then... "Well anyway, we can't send it away until you pay us €65 repair fee."

"Is this a practical joke?  I paid that a week ago.  AND the laptop is under guarantee.  As a matter of fact, YOU owe ME €65 - is this someone I know, winding me up?"
My voice was reaching a pitch that caused my colleagues to start looking up, and looking anxiously at each other.  ("Careful everyone, she's going to blow!").

"Hmm.  Do you have the receipt for the €65?"

"Not on me.  It's at home.  I'll bring it in tomorrow. And I can only advise you not to be there when I do.  I've never heard such a pile of nonsense, you have got to be joking...."

I think he could sense that there was no good end to the conversation he found himself in. He had the sense to interupt me.
"No, no, don't come in, I'll just send it off, it'll be fine.  Goodbye."
And he hung up, just like that.

Now you tell me - is it any wonder we're all so furious walking around?

There's Vintage, and then there's this.......

Guess what's back? 

Loud knits and horrible court shoes with a one inch blocky heel, according to the soothsayers at London Fashion week.

But more more interestingly, in my opinion, guess what else?

The Plague.

The actual plague.  Not the one His Nibs insists he has every time he sneezes twice in a twenty four hour period,  but the real deal, Bubonic Plague.

According to news reports, in February 2011, a Chicago researcher who was working with a weakened form of live plague bacteria, up until then thought to be harmless to humans, died of the plague.

In July this year a man in Oregon was bitten by a stray cat his family had adopted.  The foul moggy was apparently choking on a rat it had caught, and the man tried to save it.  The rat is thought to have had plague infected fleas.  The man survived, but lost his fingers and toes.  He won't be able to go back to work as a welder, obviously.  I have no idea what happened to the cat.

A seven year old girl in Colorado caught the plague this month from a dead squirrel, while she was on a camping holiday.  Happily, she also survived.  There's been no satisfactory explanation as to what she was doing with a dead squirrel.

Another unidentified woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, also says she was bitten by a choking stray cat.  I'm not sure whether that's true, or if she's incapable of making up her own story, but wants in on the action.

A couple in New Mexico caught the plague from fleas on their ranch in 2002.  Both survived, although he lost both his legs, and they are now writing a book about the experience.

I have to admit, I thought the plague was like smallpox, completely eradicated.  But apparently an average seven cases a year are reported in America.

And up to three thousand cases are reported around the world annually.

There hasn't been a report of bubonic plague in Europe or Australia for donkey's years.

Russia, the Middle East, China, Southwest and Southeast Asia, and Africa provide most of the cases.
In other words, where the people and sanitation are both poor, where rats and other rodents are living, literally, with the people.  And there isn't enough of anything to keep things sanitised, including clean water.

But the seven cases a year in the Western World are big news, apparently.

Dear Shops

We are in the height of a recession. You know this, and we know it.

The reason we’re not in your shop buying loads of stuff we don’t need is that we have finally accepted that it’s an “either or” situation with the mortgage and your lovely new handbag.

It’s no longer a matter of possibly being able to manage both.

It’s not the staff’s fault that we aren’t buying stuff. And it’s not your fault either. There’s nothing wrong with your shop. Honestly, we all wish we could allow ourselves to be tempted by your lovely displays.

There is absolutely no need to try to “improve the shopping experience.” I hate that shopping has become an “experience”. It used to just be a hobby. We’re Irish. It’ll be a sad day for the nation when we accept that we’re having an experience, instead of just “going to town”.

And the stupid questions. In the first place, please note that if I walk into, for instance a stationer’s, my personal favourite kind of shop, I’m really just in there looking for something to buy. Left to my own devices, I’ll definitely find a notebook that I’ll never use, and will pay over the odds for.

If you walk straight up to me and ask me what I need help with, however, you’ll make me all paranoid and feel as if you think I’m a shoplifter, and I’ll soon leave empty handed.

This nonsense of “Is there anything else I can help you with?” at the checkout is another thing.

It’s fine in the bank, if I’ve just checked my standing orders, or requested a new card or something.

Being in the bank is like being in the doctor’s. I often save up a few things, to make it worth my while.

If I develop a severe pain in my knee, I don’t go to the doctor’s and pay out fifty euro for his opinion. I usually soldier on until I need to get my ears checked too, and maybe collect a repeat prescription, and if I have any other little anxieties I ask him about them as well. Sometimes when our business is concluded I even sit there in silence for a minute or two trying to remember if I’ve had any other aches and pains.

I don’t think he’s that fond of me, but hey ho, it’s worth my while.

Being in the stationer’s, however, is completely different. There is absolutely nothing else you can help me with. It’s not like I’ve wandered in looking for a notebook and would like your advice on what I should write in it.

If I arrive at the counter with six notebooks, a handful of pens and maybe a photo frame, not as unusual as you might think, please don’t ask me if I want a bag.

If I can barely carry everything to the counter, I hardly want to carry it down the street, now, do I?
Just give me a bag. If I don’t want one I’ll say so.

No I don’t have a loyalty card, if I had I’d have handed it to you. And if I don’t have one by now, I don’t want one. So please don’t ask me.

Worst of all is that department store that shall remain nameless that asks every time you go to the counter whether you want a store card. As in a credit card. And when you say no they offer you 10% discount on today’s purchases if you’ll just sign up. I have enough trouble trying to keep up with my bills and hide them from His Nibs without getting another one just to get 10% off a top today.

We know it’s you, the directors, you are passing the diktats forcing your floor staff to ask us all these daft questions. They don’t care, mostly, if we enjoyed our shopping experience or not. They’re usually perfectly nice people, left to their own devices.

Stop making them do annoying things, it's never going to make us buy more stuff.

Just let them at it, or we’ll all start demanding to speak to the manager all the time to share our “shopping experiences” with them.

 

Dear Sat Nav

I’m sorry to tell you this, but you are either a complete idiot, or a total liar.

I admit it, I know absolutely nothing about North Dublin.  I think you’ll find that most people either know the North or the South side.  I like to think I know the south side, but I don’t really.  I can find my way around the South Circular Road area, but that’s probably because I lived there for five years.

One way or the other, I refuse to be judged on my hopeless geography.  I’ve spent a number of years making my peace with it, and I’ve decided it’s fine not to know how to get to Cabra.  Or Cork. 

And that’s where you come in.  Do we have a Trade Descriptions Act in Ireland?  I was told that investing money that could have been spent on wine or some expensive skin care product that I’d never use (because I’m saving it for special occasions) on a Sat Nav would put a stop to all the nonsense. 

I could stop going around and around roundabouts hoping a signpost would spring up while I’m on my way.

And I could also stop leaving the house an hour and a half before I need to, because I wouldn’t spend any time pulling over and asking random strangers for directions when I'm sixty miles from where I need to be.

It was bad enough the time that I was in Kerry with my mother, and rather than bring us to Killarney, where we specifically asked you to take us, you insisted that going up a mountain and apparently through a private farmyard was the way to go.

 I used to read those newspaper articles about people who follow their sat nav blindly and drive into the sea and think they weren’t fit to be on the road.  These days, I find that before I obey your instruction to take a turn, I stop to peer down the new road in case there’s a river or a giant hole where the road should be.

You had to make a show of me, of course.  It’s always when there’s somebody watching, isn’t it?

We wanted to go from Dublin city centre to a village on the northside.  We weren’t just going for a spin, we had actual business there and were on a strict time restraint.

When we needed to find the R107, why did you keep telling me to turn for the N11?  And of course Anne, my friendly passenger, who was frankly a lot more help than you, had to turn on the sat nav on her mobile.  She more or less knew the way anyway.  I was lost almost as soon as we left the car park.

You embarrassed me there, you evil witch.  And if Anne hadn’t been there I’d still be driving around, presumably admiring the sights of Newtownmountkennedy or some such place.

Pull yourself together.  This is getting beyond a joke.

Or I’ll throw you out the car window and just bring Anne with me everywhere I need to go.

 Yours

Embarassed and Furious

 

All Ireland Day

It's like a time warp in our house. The whole day, from the time we all woke up this morning, has been about the fact that it is All Ireland day.

My mother is with us for the weekend, thank God. I'd struggle to get through All Ireland day without her wise words and expressive eyebrows.

We were told, by the brazen faced His Nibs, that he would be taking control of the television for the day. There was the minor match, he told me, the build up starting at half past twelve, an hour before the actual game.

Then there would be that match, then the aftermath of that match.

At three thirty, he informed me, there would be another match, the main event. As if I didn't already know all this.

All my life, All Ireland Day has been an important day.  Not to me, but to everyone who was in charge of me. 

Obviously, I don’t count His Nibs as one of these people.  I’m talking about my childhood.

I come from a long line of GAA fans.  My parents, and my grandparents, would talk about nothing but the big game for at least a week before the All Ireland.

On the big day, our Sunday roast would be eaten and the washing up done by one o’clock, when the eternal coverage would start.

If we were enjoying a particularly sunny September, the light would come in through the curtains.  It was the seventies, I don’t think the curtains were even lined.  Blackout curtains were far off in our future.

So my Dad, who loved GAA almost as much as he loved us, would hang a couple of blankets over the living room window, so that the room was in complete, black darkness.  The kind of darkness that makes children bump into furniture and yelp, usually just when someone was about to take a free or a penalty.  There was no sympathy, just a shout to shut up, and not to stand in front of the television.  Eventually we learned that if the sitting room was in blackout conditions, the simplest thing was to crawl across the floor on our hands and knees.

Obviously the people who designed the house we lived in back then either didn’t like watching matches, or didn’t have children.  To get from the back garden you had to walk through the kitchen and the living room, into the hall and then down to the bathroom.

It was an assault course for the six small children trying to navigate their way around the house while the adults sat riveted, and screaming at the telly.

So, His Nibs doesn’t frighten me with his blathering on about “The Match”.

My mother and I went out for lunch today.  Then we came back and in a pincer like attack, we threatened him with what we would do to him if he messed about.  There was to be no pausing at the good bits.  His Nibs likes to stop the game at essential moments and ask us to guess what will happen next.

I have absolutely no interest in GAA, so I just sit there making silly suggestions, like for instance maybe a fox will run onto the pitch and run off with the ball , or that a streaker will run across the pitch, or something equally unlikely.  

My poor mother, a lifelong GAA fan, does her best to be quiet and polite, but always ends up texting my brothers for updates.  She has to assume that we’ll never get to the end of the game in my house.

And when he’s seen the good bit, he’ll rewind and look at it again.  Eventually even I get fed up waiting for the final result and go online to find out what happens.

And today, after all that, after the argument, and the endless footage, and the television being at double the usual volume, which is apparently non negotiable, there was a draw.

And we have to do the whole thing again, in three weeks time.  On his birthday.  So we won’t be going out for a lovely lunch and I won’t be getting drunk to celebrate on his behalf, him being a non­ drinker.

Sometimes it’s hard, supporting a spouse’s interests.

 

Dear “Customer Service Representatives”

I didn’t have a bad day today, you’ll be glad to hear.  I got a decent amount of work done, the traffic wasn’t too bad coming home.  All was well.

Until we got here and found the note from the postman, informing me that I hadn’t been at home today, when he called. 
Armed with the friendly little note, I went on the Internet to try to establish who on earth had sent me a parcel.  And it turned out that it was you.

You see, I’m not actually an idiot.  While I was speaking to you, two days ago, I informed you that I would not be at home to receive my new phone in the post.  I asked you, quite clearly, to have the parcel delivered to my kindly next door neighbour.  We’re lucky, His Nibs and I, to have the kind of neighbours who will take in parcels for us without  having to be asked in advance.

I was informed it would arrive three days from the conversation.  Which is tomorrow.

Despite this specific agreement, you took it upon yourself, of course, to send the phone to my house.  So now I'm faced with the extremely annoying job of getting to the sorting office to collect the parcel.

Except the sorting office is open from 8am to 2pm from Monday to Friday. 

The postman called, apparently, at 8:05 this morning.  I would have thought that if I wasn’t at home at that time of a Wednesday morning, I was probably not going to be around on weekdays between these times. 
Anyway, I decided that it was your fault, for not sending it where I asked you in the first place.

So like a fool, I decided to ring you.  I don’t know why I’d make a decision to do something so annoying, when I was already so annoyed.

You surpassed yourselves today.

I was instructed, by the infuriating recorded voice, to choose whether I wanted to pay my bill,  report a fault, make a service inquiry or whatever other nonsense they could come up with.

All I know is that the list of options was so long and boring that by the end I actually didn’t know which one I needed.  All I knew was that “speak to an actual human” wasn’t a choice.

Around and around we went, with me shouting at the recorded voice, and him ignoring me.  Eventually, on about the eighth round , I threw my head back and shouted “For God’s Sake” at the ceiling.  So he put me through to Broadband support.

No, the human I’d finally got through told me, he couldn’t put me through to the person I needed to speak to.  He could only put me back through to the damned recorded voice.

I eventually got through to another human, about ten minutes later.

I informed your “assistant” who assisted in absolutely no way, that you had sent the phone to the wrong house, and that I am not in a position to collect it. Was there any chance you could kindly send me another phone?  Since I’m not going to collect the original one, it’ll eventually be sent back to you.

No, no, she informed me, that’s not how it works.  If my phone is broken, that’s my problem.   I need to get in touch with the maker of the phone apparently.

I don’t think so. The phone was supplied by your company, and since your colleague had already sent me one phone, I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t sort it out.

Her best offer was to send me a bag, into which I am to place my broken phone.  I’m to post it back to you.  And I’m not to collect the new phone, I’m to contact the phone maker for a replacement.  They will eventually post it back to me, and I assume this whole caper will begin again.

The phone is rented, I’m so daft that I’ve been paying a couple of euro a month for the use of this five year old phone for years. 

I informed her that none of this was going to happen.  The phone doesn’t work, kindly stop charging me rent for it, I’ll just buy a phone in Argos or somewhere.

I still need to send back the old one.

I admit I started to lose my temper a bit with the nonsense she was now spouting.  What’s this foolishness about an empty bag being sent to my house?  And by the time all this sending rubbish around the place is over, I’ll have been without a phone for a fortnight.

I ended up telling her I couldn’t deal with her, and hung up.  Her last words to me were that she was sorry I was so upset, and she’d cancel the line rental.  I barely caught her words as I switched off the mobile.

Shite.  Now she was going to cancel the phone line altogether.  I need the landline.  I like talking.  And His Nibs is very fond of looking up the Internet to find the most dangerous and unlikely holidays he can suggest to me, just to torment me.

I sighed very, very deeply, and re-dialled.  After another infuriating, distressing and depressing round of stupid questions from the disembodied voice, I got through to another human at last.

I told him my tale.  I told him that I’m buying a phone tomorrow.  And that I want to just bring it home from work, plug it in, and start making calls. 

“Could you please hold” he asked me.  “It’s our distribution department that sent the phone to the wrong address, I’ll put you through to them.”

“Do NOT put me on hold” I told him, very loudly.  “I do not wish to speak to the Distribution people.  I don’t care where the phone is, or where it will be.  I’m not getting a new phone from you.  Do not cut off my line.  Do we understand each other?”

“Yes”

“So when I bring my new phone home tomorrow, I’ll just plug it in, and it’ll work?”

“Yes”.

“That’s fine.  Thank you.”

I was too exhausted to make dinner, after all that.  It may not sound like much of an ordeal, but it took a miserable forty minutes.

I can’t wait to see what on earth happens tomorrow.  I presume another phone will be sent to the neighbour, or it'll be the line all along and not the handset.  Or something else difficult and irritating.

I don’t think I have the strength to ring you two days in a row.  Just sort it out please.