Two weeks on, and it still feels like the arctic!

I have to say that I am now well and truly sick of being cold and more often than not, also wet.

Living in one of the highest and one of the few steep, north facing parts of Surrey, the ice and snow hang around here longer than anywhere else and when they fall, do so with a vengeance and we get far more than anyone else locally. I have resorted to taking photos of the garden marked with the date and time and sending them in to work when I can’t get out of the road with the car, as they don’t believe me. For instance as of now, everywhere else the white stuff has disappeared, but not here! Oh no, it is lurking in corners and on the flower beds looking like it will be there until July. There remains a reasonable sized bank of it nestled up against the side of the greenhouse which is frozen solid.

The forecast for the Easter weekend, which being at the beginning of April we might have had not unreasonable hopes of being spring like and warmish, looks dire. Top temperatures of four degrees all weekend, significantly lower than average, with drifting fronts of rain and sleet criss-crossing the country. We might avoid those in the south east, but with what can only be described as a needling, bitter wind still in evidence it still looks as though we have become a far flung outpost of the arctic.

“Don’t be such a wimp” I hear some of you cry! “You can dress for the cold and when you get out and do a bit of exercise you get so warm!” Maybe, and if that’s what you want to do then bully for you, but personally I can do without weather which means it takes about ten minutes to get ready to go out of the front door due to the amount of clothing and thermal protection you have to put on. To walk the dog, I am wearing leggings with jeans over the top, a T-shirt, then a long sleeved shirt, then a thick jumper, then a Barbour. I have a thick scarf which is wrapped round my neck about three times, a woolly hat which makes me look as though I am going to a fancy dress party as an elf, two pairs of sock, wellies and leather gloves. Quite frankly, I look ludicrous and am a fair impersonation of the Michelin Man, being practically circular once everything is on.

There would appear to be no let up in this abysmal weather for the foreseeable future, quite possibly through to the middle of April. It will really piss me off if the moment I go away for my holidays in the second week of April the weather breaks and the UK gets sunshine and mid teens temperatures. I remember two years ago going to Greece with two friends mid April when the weather here had been awful and saying “It’s lovely in Crete in April, temperatures mid twenties and we’ll be on the beach”. The minute we left, temperatures in the UK became tropical and the whole week that we were away, it was 27 degrees here but tipped it down in Greece and was cold. It didn’t ruin the holiday, but it didn’t help after I’d bigged it up so much.

I dread to think how much money we will owe the gas board by the time (if ever) we get to switch the heating off. Four days a week (the weekend and the two days I work at home) the boiler is going for about 16 hours, virtually all day. This is a naturally cold house due to the two open chimneys, an unheated kitchen (the radiator is behind an extra cupboard we installed as I have so many pots and pans, and so we switched it off) and the fact that the French windows don’t shut properly with a gap at the top you can see daylight through. I keep meaning to get them fixed, but they’re not a security risk as the locking mechanism still works and have simply dropped slightly in the centre away from the frame, so it isn’t really a priority. I’m not even sure if you can get things like that fixed, or if they have to be replaced. That definitely isn’t affordable, although if I offset the gas bills I might manage it.

The best investment I have made in recent weeks was an electric blanket, which I bought through an ebay ‘Deal of the Day’ for about a quarter of its usual price. About an hour before we go to bed one of us goes and switches it on and it’s toastie in the extreme when we eventually slip under the duvet. Lovely, and no need for bedsocks.

Now there’s an image to leave you with!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow (again!)

So after having been lulled into a false sense of security, we have again been deluged with snow in the south eastern corner of the UK.

Highly localised, the late evening and overnight snowstorms have caused havoc, with motorists stranded for 10 hours and more on the A23 towards Gatwick and Crawley. This morning we have about 5” of snow in the garden and on the way to the station (where unfortunately the trains were running into Victoria and so I had to go to work) there were drifts at the side of the road at least two feet deep.

We seem to have been well prepared for the snow a few weeks ago, but this lot really caught us out. Right up until the last minute, the forecast was for ‘a few flakes’ but what we actually got was a total blanket. At 6pm yesterday the roads had not been gritted and the traffic crawled along in both directions on a white ribbon with two crooked tyre tracks in the middle. Morrison’s car park, where I leave my precious soft top during the day, was pristine white and the slope leading to it particularly hazardous. It took me 30 minutes to do a 10 minute journey, but that was nothing compared to someone I know who took seven hours to get from Guildford to Sevenoaks.

Central London, of course, is totally snow free. It’s as though there is under street heating for all the toffs in town whilst the poor peasants in the countryside wade through drifts and fall into ditches. My work colleagues don’t understand why I turn up in about three jumpers, snow boots, a rather fetching bobble hat and thick coat when the streets are clear of ice and the sun is shining. I have resorted to taking photos of my garden and gate with its icy hat on to convince them that it really is a totally different world just 20 miles as the crow flies south of the big smoke.

You all know, if you read this blog regularly, how much I hate the weather in England. My sinuses block up, I am prone to chest infections and viruses (have been ever since I was a kid) , I am afraid of falling on ice due to a dodgy back and knees and fundamentally, I just hate being cold and hate being wet. It seems like it has been cold and wet since late October, and I don’t think we have seen any sustained period of sunshine all winter. I feel so much better in the summer when the sun shines, and even better in a drier climate.

I read my horoscope the other day and it said that a fundamental change would happen soon in my life which would make me completely rethink my future direction, including my work and well being. Clearly, that means I am about to win a large sum of money which will enable me to stick two fingers up at my employer, retire early and go an live in Crete, occasionally popping back to visit The Hubby, Daughters One and Two, The Dog and The Cats. In fact I will probably take The Dog and The Cats with me. It is highly likely in that scenario that I may not return to the UK from my April holiday and will simply stay there planning our retirement mansion in the sun, getting all the pets shipped out to me.

Of course, we all know that horoscopes are complete bunkum, but it’s nice to dream isn’t it? And the weather has been c**p, so why not?

These people should be subject to mediaeval tortures...

Today, I have discovered that for the second time in a month, one of my bank cards has been cloned and used for fraudulent purchases.

About three weeks ago, upon checking my bank statement through, I noticed that my debit card had been used for two large purchases in John Lewis totalling over £600. They weren’t mine and to give them credit (no pun intended) the bank refunded the money without any argument and replaced my card very promptly.

I have now discovered that my Barclaycard has been used by someone else to purchase large amounts of stuff from Amazon. Amazon did pick it up, stopped the order and alerted me, and Barclaycard have been equally good at suspending the account and are sending me a replacement despite the fact that their call centre sounded like it was in Delhi and something out of 'The Bext Exotic Marigold Hotel'. So I haven’t lost any money, just about two hours of my life on the phone. But it is the sheer inconvenience of it all which is so galling.

The first time I was without access to my bank account for about a week (it’s with First Direct, so is entirely internet and plastic card based). I had very little cash in my purse, so was forced to borrow from The Hubby. And I couldn’t buy anything in shops as I had no card and they won’t take cheques any more. I had Tesco groceries on order paid for by said card, and the payment was refused because by then the card was suspended. Ensuing lengthy phone calls to Tesco Customer Services ensured we didn’t starve, but did nothing to reduce my blood pressure for which the doc has already upped my medication.

This time it’s a credit card, so not quite so pressing as I have others, but still bloody inconvenient. My visa card is the one which I have had for years and which I know the number of, expiry date and security code off by heart. I use it all the time over the web (which is where some bastard probably hacked the details from) so don’t have to go and get it out of the safe every time I want to buy a CD or book (I don’t carry credit cards in my purse any more – too tempting). I have it logged as my payment method with lots of web sites I use regularly so I don’t have to go through the tedious process of entering the information every time. Supposedly these sites are encrypted – they all display the little padlock sign at any rate – so it must be someone in their back office who has access to the full card details who is doing this.

The Fraud Department at the bank tell me that the details could have been copied ages ago, and then sold on to unscrupulous people who sit on them for a while and after several months, make purchases from temporary addresses using false names, get the goods then scarper. Frequently, they buy stuff which they can sell on for the cash. Often, they wait until just a few weeks before the card expires (my Barclaycard was due to expire at the end of April) as they know they will only get away with a few transactions on each card. They have it down to a fine art.

My shiny new visa card will, I’m told, arrive in about a week’s time. Even though this has happened to me about five times in the last few years, inevitably, I will log it onto the same web sites for routine shopping and treats because I now use the web so much to live my life I’m not sure I could manage any other way. Groceries delivered, flights and hire cars booked, birthday and Christmas presents purchased are just a few of the things I use it for and which make life manageable. Without using the web in this way, which I’m sure was never envisaged when Mr Berners Lee invented it, there simply wouldn’t be enough hours in the day.

If I ever come face to face with the scum which have either nicked the card details and sold them or those that have actually used them to defraud both me and the bank, I think I will ask the government to revert to mediaeval times and bring back punishment by chopping off their fingers and cutting out their tongue. Then the thieving toe rags won’t be able to use their keyboards and phones to steal from anyone else, and it’ll serve them right.

Too much to do and not enough time!

You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged lately. That isn’t a product of a stagnant creative urge, but more a lack of time with not enough hours in the day. Much of that busyness is self imposed, but not all.

Work is just ridiculous at the moment. We are going through a complicated restructure to make savings (although the official message is to create efficiencies) which I am leading as many of my teams are affected. It is taking up an inordinate amount of time and effort to dot ‘I’s’ and cross ‘T’s’ to make sure that it is not only thought through but ‘union proof’ as well, and immune to challenge. Couple that with a bunch of senior colleagues who do not want to listen to my advice (of course me being the only one qualified in general management as well as project and programme management means I am not worth listening to) and it makes for a very frustrating and demotivating experience.

On the more positive side, I have just started DJ’ing for a local community radio station, which I am thoroughly enjoying. That is something which I didn’t anticipate doing when I said in January “Now, I’m going to have a rest for a few months”, but it is an opportunity which has just presented itself and is proving to be great fun. So tune in to www.ridgeradio.co.uk (it’s a web based broadcast, not over the conventional airwaves) from 5pm to 7pm every Friday evening for ‘Friday Footlights’ or from 7am until 9am alternate Saturdays (starting this Saturday, 9^th) for the Breakfast show with news, views, popular music and classic golden oldies to hear my dulcet tones where ever you happen to be. You’ll enjoy it, I promise! You can even send in a request or dedication and I’ll try and play it for you.

All this is running alongside the fact that we are making sterling efforts to get the house sorted out the way we want it to be, after many years of compromise to accommodate our tribe of children. We have tidied the hallway to make it more welcoming and moved all the admin stuff and the computer upstairs to create a proper study. Next up is to tidy the outside lobby and have a massive chuck out (hopefully over Easter if the weather is fine as we will have to put everything outside overnight before we can sort it and put it back in a more sensible order) and then the loft (which we will do instead at Easter if it is horrid weather) which has stuff in it we haven’t touched for ten years and therefore probably don’t need or want. After that, we will move the lounge round to face the garden again and use the ‘front room’ as the dining room, which it is much more suited for.

I’m also making efforts with my health, trying to sort out all the medical issues which have plagued me for the last few years and trying to get slimmer, fitter and basically with more zest for life. I am tired of being tired all the time (forgive the pun). I want to put myself in good shape to have a long and fulfilling old age, ideally in the Mediterranean sun, and so need to be healthy enough not to have to rely on the Greek medical system (not that there’s anything wrong with it, it’s just not the NHS [maybe that’s a good thing] and it’s expensive!).

Finally, I have all these creative ideas flowing for children’s books, a TV cookery series and goodness knows what else. Despite now having had almost two months off from doing shows, I’ve done nothing about any of it, and it’s about time I did; I’m sick of what I currently do for a living.

So I’ve been busy. But I like blogging, and I know that quite a few people read it, so they must enjoy them. So I’ll make more of an effort in future, I promise! Now, back to work…..