Apologies to the dozen or so people who regularly read my blog, but I’m afraid there’s no A Little Bit of Blake today. There was going to be. I had every intention of sitting down and chatting with you right up until Saturday mid-afternoon, but then cold, hard reality hit, and I realised that I simply wasn’t going to have time.

It was an annoying day yesterday, but then the whole week has been annoying. Unusually, I had Monday off and spent the whole day cleaning the house from top to bottom including removing several huge cobwebs. Honestly, I know spiders are god’s creatures and all, but please, do they have to build palatial mansions in my house? I also tidied the garden, vacuumed, and washed my car, finished an arc book I’d been struggling to read for two weeks, caught up on all the laundry and ironing. And then I had to shower because doing all of that on the hottest day of the year so far was probably not the best of ideas.

Tuesday and Wednesday I was at work, and they were terrible days. The shop was like a ghost town – hardly anyone came in and as for sales, well, let’s just say divine intervention will be needed to get me through my target this week.

Thursday was a day of running about. I had to go to the bank to unblock my PIN so I could use it to buy Father’s Day presents and other shopping. I had correspondence to try and catch up with, an online shop to finish, and various other bits and pieces that filled my day. The weather was on the turn as well. The gloriously hot sunny skies were fading to gunship grey and a few spatters of rain could be felt.

If Thursday was busy, Friday was worse. We awoke to the sound of torrential rain slamming onto the roof and it didn’t stop all day! I had to collect our shopping at ten and that was no fun in the rain, but at least I managed to park under the click and collect shelter so was partially protected from the monsoon. Back home, shopping unpacked and sorted, Miss F and I then hammered down the road to visit one set of grandparents. We hadn’t been able to see them since Christmas 2019, so it was good to be able to chat with them, although we did keep our masks on. They are both elderly and vulnerable and although I’ve had both my jabs, I am aware I can still be a carrier, and of course, Miss F hasn’t had any jabs yet. So, masks and keeping our distance seemed sensible.

Back home, there was time for a quick lunch and then I had my usual virtual meet up with my local author group, which was fun. There was a lot of us this week and the time flew by until it was gone 3:30 and Miss F was poking her head around the door and pulling faces at me. It was time to put on my raincoat and get going.

Out into the rain, we went again. It was really belting it down now and the roads were treacherous as we drove to the village where my parents live. There is a bottle bank there, so I took the chance to offload some bottles and jars and then we had a thirty-minute visit with my parents and gave my dad his Father’s Day gifts.

Back in the car again, the skies were now black, and the rain was actually painful on my head. I’d given up on my hair – any hint of moisture and it frizzes into an uncontrollable knotty mess, and I end up looking like a Muppet. I had to get Miss F to work for five and it was now twenty to – no problem normally, but in these driving conditions?

The roads between my parents’ house and the restaurant where Miss F works are not great. All county lanes running between farmland, heavy rainfall tends to wash mud from the fields all over the road. Plus, the roads are not very well maintained and have ginormous potholes along the edges, which, when full of water become invisible and will merrily rip the shit out of your suspension. Stupidly, I decided to take a shortcut, completely forgetting how truly bad those roads were. At one point, the flood water was so deep I wasn’t sure the car would make it through. But he’s a sturdy chariot and apart from a few grumbles and splutters from the engine, Basil made it through every time. Glancing at the dash clock though, I realised we were pushing it and told Miss F to phone her work and advise them she might be five or so minutes late because of the flooded roads.

As it was, it was seven minutes past five when I dropped her off and then I had to drive home. By now, the rain was even worse. It was like driving underwater and I was reminded so much of the news footage you see of India in the monsoon season to the extent I half expected to see the bloated carcass of a cow go floating by.

Back home, I fed a screaming cat who’d obviously been out in the rain to perform her daily ablutions and was not happy about it at all, and with a huge sigh of relief sat down with a big plateful of Somerset Pork and roast potatoes and veg that I’d taken out of the freezer the night before. I’ve started watching The Witcher on Netflix, and although I’m enjoying it, I can’t help but think it’s a rehash of almost every fantasy series and book out there. There are elements of Game of Thrones and some case of outright plagiarism – I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard them referring to the Elves of Cintra – this is a novel by Terry Brooks which was published about ten years ago. Surely, they’re not allowed to breach copyright rules like that. But still, it’s enjoyable and I watched a couple of episodes whilst eating my dinner and then ironing Miss F’s work shirts for her next couple of shifts. And then it was 9:30 and time to get back in the car and risk the roads again to go and collect her from work. This is one thing I won’t miss when she’s gone to university, the constant running around for her and the amount of petrol I’m chewing through each week!

Saturday, I foolishly believed it would be a bit of a lighter day for me. Sure, there were beds to strip and remake, laundry to do, and I wanted to decoupage the desk, table, and tray that have been hanging around for ages. But that wouldn’t take me long and there would be all afternoon to sit and write my blog.

I’d forgotten, you see, I’d forgotten just what an arse achingly, fiddly, messy, and time-consuming task decoupaging is! I started at about ten, by three in the afternoon I’d only just finished the tray and realised I had to realign my priorities. I had stripped my bed off that morning, so obviously had to remake it, but Miss F’s hadn’t yet been done so I decided to leave it until Sunday. I briefly took a break and made my bed, and then started on the desk. Even though it’s much bigger than the tray it’s a lot easier because there is less fiddle. The desk has big surfaces which you can get up to speed on and it’s a square shape, but the tray is smaller and has handles with holes cut into them which you have to try and paste the scraps of wallpaper around.

Luckily, there was no one else in the house because the expletives floating up from the basement were inventive, to say the least. By the time I heard Miss F letting herself in the front door at 5:20 I’d managed to do over half the desk and was sick to the back teeth of it all. Deciding it was time to stop, I’d run out of PVA glue anyway, I cleared away and washed all the paste off my hands and got on with dinner.

I suppose, in theory, I could have written my blog last night, but my evenings are a bit sacred, and I like to spend them with Miss F. She’ll be off to university in September and although I’m sure she will be back for visits it won’t be the same, so I’m trying to make the most of our time together. And anyway, by the end of the day I’m done, all I want is a plateful of dinner and something meaningless on Netflix. I admire those authors who can write in the evenings because I can’t, my brain is like porridge and anything that came out of it wouldn’t be worth having.

And now it’s almost 9am on Sunday morning and I’m off to work in an hour so again I have run out of time and only managed to bash out this quick explanation as to why there is no blog this week. Sorry, again, but at least next week I will have before, during, and after pictures of my decoupage projects – hopefully – of course, I may have given up and built a bonfire with them.

Wherever you are in the world, Happy Father’s Day.

See you next week.

Julia Blake

I have been trying to remember if my memory has always been this bad, or, if – like a lot of other things – it’s been deteriorating for years but because it’s been so gradual, I’m only now noticing it. Because there’s no doubt about it, my memory is officially rubbish.

Of course, even in my younger days there were moments when I’d go to remember something and my brain would hold up its hands in despair and shrug – sorry, mate, no can do. But, overall, I used to have a pretty good memory.

Not anymore.

Now I struggle to remember even the most basic of things. I have to think about what month it is, let alone what day. I rely on the neighbours putting out their bins to know to put mine out and what colour bin it is this week. But isn’t that the same for everyone? Isn’t there always one person in the street who knows what day bin day is, and which colour bin should go out, and we all watch for their bin before dragging out our own. Heaven forbid they should ever forget – or worse, go away on holiday and rely on neighbours to put their bin out – we’d seriously all be lost.

I forget to text people back or think I already have. Emails sit in my inbox unanswered because I’ve forgotten all about them. I do try to keep up with birthdays by constantly checking my calendar because otherwise, I’d have no clue. And as for work … since my shifts have become flexible and irregular, I don’t have any idea what I’m doing. I even got into trouble last week because I rocked up to work for a 10:30am shift, only to find I was actually on a 9:30am shift and should have opened up the shop and a delivery van had been sitting on the doorstep for half an hour. Oopsie. Got into a spot of hot water about that one.

I have money off vouchers I forget to use and there’s always something missed off the shopping list. A zoom meeting is supposed to start at 1pm – it always starts at 1pm – but in my head, it’s 1:30pm so I miss the first thirty minutes, and so on and so on.

But last week I managed a monumental failure in the memory department and have concluded that it must be an age thing – or maybe an indication of how full my head is of other stuff – that there’s no room to remember anything else.

As I told you last week it’s my mum’s birthday this weekend – Happy Birthday, Mum. Hope you’re having a great time and enjoying your holiday – so I went into Next to buy her some clothes as she’d said that’s what she wanted. Unusually, I found a pair of linen trousers and a couple of tops that I liked and thought Mum would like too. I queued and the nice lady on the till rang them through.

That’ll be £60, she said, cash or card?

Card, I replied and slid my card into the machine. As it was over £45, I couldn’t use contactless payment.

Please enter your PIN, she said.

I stared at the card machine.

The card machine stared back.

It flashed the words – enter PIN now at me – rather aggressively I thought.

I stared a bit more in the vain hope that the numbers would magically float into my brain.

They did not.

Now relying on muscle memory, I punched in some numbers and hoped.

Incorrect PIN flashed the card machine.

I gulped.

Try again, urged the lady behind the till.

I tried again.

The card machine paused, then – you’re not Julia, are you? It sneered. You’ve stolen this card, haven’t you?

Now truly scared I looked at the nice lady.

I can’t remember my PIN, I admitted sheepishly. It’s been so long since I’ve used it, I just can’t remember it.

That’s okay, she reassured me. Take your card out and I can split this sale in two so you can pay using contactless.

I took the card out, she split the sales down and I tapped the card machine twice – vastly relieved when both transactions went through smoothly.

I then left the shop desperately trying to remember my PIN and by the time I reached my next port of call, Wilks, I thought I had it.

Now I’m a regular shopper in Wilks and the staff know me so I explained to the lady on the till what had happened, but that I was 99% sure I had remembered my PIN now.

Well, try once, she said, and if you haven’t then you can pay by contactless.

I tried.

I failed.

I paid by contactless and slunk home.

I couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten my PIN. I’ve had those four digits emblazoned in my skull for almost twenty years now. It was the one thing I honestly thought I would never forget. I always imagined that after my death, if they autopsied me, they would find those numbers etched into my brain, I was that sure of them.

But apparently, I wasn’t.

I went onto my banking website and found out how to order a PIN reminder. It will take three-four working days, it informed me. It was now Friday afternoon so I assumed the earliest I would get it was Wednesday, Thursday at the latest.

I had a rare weekend off and was busy all Saturday, but on Sunday decided I had to buy myself some new clothes. What with being unable to buy any during the various lockdowns plus the change in the weather, I needed some cooler clothing. So, mid-morning on Sunday I skipped across to Next again because when I’d bought Mum’s clothes, I had seen quite a few things I liked for myself.

I spent a happy twenty minutes browsing the racks before picking out two pairs of lightweight trousers, a shirt, and a couple of t-shirts.

I queued for ages. There was something wrong with the tills – the mainframe had crashed, the harried staff explained – someone was trying to fix it but there might be a bit of a wait. The queue grumbled good-naturedly, and a few comments were made about technology only being any good when it worked.

I never did get that statement. I mean, surely everything is only any good if it works.

Anyway, a few minutes later an assistant popped up and asked me to come to the children’s department as there was a till free that was working, so I followed her there and she rang up my items.

£78 she said and then saw the card in my hand. If you’d just like to pop your card in the machine and enter your PIN, she continued.

I stared at the card machine as my world slowly collapsed about me.

I’d completely forgotten that I’d forgotten my PIN.

Silently cursing my defected, stupid brain for putting me in such an awkward and embarrassing situation, I desperately scrambled about my memory cells praying for a last-minute intervention. Nope. If the PIN was in there somewhere it was flatly refusing to come out. There was nothing for it, I was going to have to fess up.

I’m so sorry, I said, I completely forgot that I’ve forgotten my PIN. I have ordered a reminder, but I haven’t got it yet.

That’s okay, she said. I can split the order down so you can pay contactless.

She split the order down.

I tapped the card to settle the first amount of £40.

Card not authorised; the machine smugly told me.

What?

I tried again.

Card not authorised, it told me again – and this time there was definitely an air of malice in the way it flashed the message.

What?!

It’s refusing my card, I admitted.

The girl gave me a look – you know, THAT look – the look that quite clearly says – now what kind of a game are you playing here? Is the card stolen, fraudulent, or do you just not have the money in your account to make the payment?

Do you think it might be because I’ve ordered a PIN reminder? I asked.

Maybe, she agreed. Do you have any other method of payment?

Not on me, I said.

Oh, she said. What would you like to do then?

What I would have liked to have done was hide my face in shame and crawl out of the shop, but I wanted the clothes. So, I phoned Miss F.

It wasn’t even yet midday on a Sunday, so she wasn’t best pleased with being woken up by her pathetic mother. She was even less pleased when I asked her if she could possibly get up, get dressed, and pop across to Next to pay for my clothes for me. Oh, and if she could do it as quick as possible that would be wonderful.

She called me an idiot – which I felt was fair enough, and to be honest, if our positions had been reversed, I would have called her far worse – but bless her, she agreed to come.

She’s coming, I told the sales assistant. She looked relieved and placed the clothes behind the till and served the next person in the queue.

So, there I was, midday in a hot and crowded clothes store, lurking in the children’s department and trying unsuccessfully to look as if I had a reason for doing so. It felt like ages but was only ten minutes before Miss F marched in and glared at me over her mask. We shuffled back to the till, she paid, and we then came home.

Thank you, I mumbled.

Idiot, she said again. You knew you’d forgotten your PIN so what were you doing trying to buy a shit ton of clothes?

I forgot.

You forgot you’d forgotten your PIN?

Yes.

She huffed in utter exasperation at having such a braindead ninny for a mother.

I’ll transfer the money over to your account the minute we get home, I promised.

Too damn right you will, came the reply.

I phoned the bank and explained to them what had happened.

Did you reject my card because I’ve requested a PIN reminder?

No, it came back not authorised because you’re only allowed to spend £130 via contactless payment before it will ask for chip and PIN on a transaction just to touch base that it is you – and not someone running amuck with your stolen debit card.

Oh, I said. So, it was just a coincidence that it happened then?

Yes, it was just a coincidence.

So, it could have happened to anyone?

There was a silence at the other end of the line, indicating that no, it only could have happened to complete idiots like me who forgot then PIN, then forgot they’d forgotten their PIN and merrily went shopping.

And that was me with no way of paying for anything until my PIN reminder turned up. But that’s okay, I thought. I pay for my grocery shopping online, I have a full tank of petrol, and there’s nothing else that can’t wait until I have use of my card again.

BUT. I had forgotten something.

I had forgotten that last week I picked out some new bedding for Miss F to take to university with her – a lovely thick mattress topper, a washable duvet, a pair of washable pillows, and two packs of pillow protectors. We get a very generous staff discount but must apply for a code for each purchase we make. I had put the bedding away in the warehouse with my name on it and applied for the code, then promptly forgot about it.

Until Monday.

On Monday, my boss told me the code had been received and as the shop had a stocktake on Thursday, he’d be grateful if I could buy the bedding before then.

Oh, bugger.

I was only at work Monday and Tuesday and then not again until Sunday.

When I collected Miss F from work that evening, I explained the predicament to her.

She sighed.

How much do you need?

Well, it’s £64 for all the bedding, but I was thinking I need to get all our plants for our front pots and hanging baskets.

Last year because I’d somehow managed to not only make spectacular pots and a hanging basket for our front garden but also kept them fed and watered, we were rewarded with the most gorgeous display of purple and cream petunias that had people stopping in the street to exclaim about them – and had netted me a Bury in Bloom certificate. Such acclaim had gone to my head, and I really, really wanted to win another certificate this year.

It wanted but a few weeks until the judges would be coming around, so I needed to get my plants in and established by then.

Both Miss F and I were working until 5pm on Tuesday, and she gets the bus home rather than hang about waiting for me. The plan was hatched that we would both get changed as soon as we got home, then we’d drive back to my work and collect the bedding, then we’d pop into Homebase opposite and see what plants they had. If we felt that we needed more, we could call into B&Q on the way home and see what they had.

I wanted to try and find the petunias we had last year because they were huge and gorgeous. We had plain cream ones, plain purple ones, and then purple ones that looked like someone had splattered them with cream.

Rather than Miss F spend her money and then me pay her back, I estimated roughly what I would be spending and transferred the money into her account Tuesday morning.

It all went smoothly, but sadly although we found plenty of petunias, and even cream and purple ones, there was no sight of the lovely, splattered effect ones. Still, we decided to stick to the purple and cream vibe and did buy some beautiful flowers.

I was glad we had made the effort to do everything Tuesday evening. Yes, it meant we ate a little later than normal but then we didn’t have to go anywhere Wednesday morning. We both had the day off and Miss F wanted to stay in bed, whilst I wanted to get up and pootle about the garden and pot up my plants.

I will share some pictures when they are more established and there’s something to see.

For Easter, my parents had given us some Tesco vouchers. For those of you who don’t know what they are, Tesco is one of the biggest supermarkets in the UK and every time you shop there you accumulate Clubcard points – you can also get them from buying petrol from them and by using their credit card. These points can then either be straight exchanged in-store or can be doubled in value and spent in restaurants and on days out and at tourist attractions. They can also be used in some hotels.

Anyway, my parents gave us quite a few vouchers – enough to do some serious damage with – but Miss F and I were uncertain what to spend them on. Then her university announced that they would be doing an open day after all for a small number of next year’s potential students. It would be on a first-come, first-served basis by a strict booking and timed slot system. Now, the university Miss F is going to is quite a distance from here. Google maps say it should only take three hours, but we’ve been to that part of the country on holiday, and it took us over nine hours because of roadworks and traffic. The last thing I wanted was the stress of being stuck in a tailback as we watched her timed tour slot come and go.

We checked out hotels local to the university and found a nice looking one only ten minutes from it. Did it have a twin-bedded room? It did. Was there availability for the night of the 7^th? The tour is taking place on the 8^th. There was. Most importantly, did it take Tesco vouchers? It did.

Nerves on edge, we waited until the booking slots for the tour opened and Miss F jumped onto the website and managed to book our tour for midday on the eighth. I had already spoken to my boss, and he had marked those two days as being part of my weekly days off. We then drove to my parents and Miss F and my mum went onto the Tesco website and managed to book us the room.

It’s perfect. Check-in isn’t until 2pm on the 7^th, so we have time to take a leisurely drive up and stop for a light lunch on the way. We will check-in and then have the rest of the afternoon to wander around the local town and see where everything is and find a nice restaurant to have dinner in. The next morning, it’s a mere ten-minute drive from the hotel to the university so there won’t be the stress and panic of racing down a motorway trying to get there. As soon as the tour is over, we will head for home and either stop for something to eat on the way back or, if Google maps is right for once and it looks like only taking us three hours, press on for home and get something to eat when we get back.

I’m looking forward to it. This will be the first time either of us has been out of Bury for years, what with always working, having no money, and then, of course, the whole pandemic and lockdown situation, holidays and weekends away have been impossible.

Oh, and my PIN reminder turned up this morning. I looked at it. I know it’s my number and I recognise some of the numbers, but it doesn’t immediately make me cry out – why yes, that is my number, how can I possibly have forgotten it? I shall never forget it again – because I know the chances are I will probably forget it again. I shall have to write it down somewhere and yes, I know we’re not supposed to do that, but I shall disguise it well so only I know what it is.

That’s if I remember what I’ve disguised it as.

Anyway, that’s it for this week. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are well and please stay safe, stay healthy.

Julia Blake

Good morning everyone. It’s shaping up to be a very sunny day here in Suffolk which will end a week of gorgeous hot sunny days – well, all except Friday afternoon and evening, when the sky turned black, the temperature plummeted, and we had torrential rain. Hopefully, the weekend will stay fine as I have the whole two days off and lots of laundry to dry outside – don’t want to use any energy drying it, do I.

Thank you to everyone who contacted me about my energy supplier and the whole stressful scenario. During the week, I received two emails. One from Look After My Bills saying how sorry they were I’d had such a bad experience and that they promised to remove Green Suppliers from the list of energy providers they would switch me to. Umm, no. I emailed them back – as per my very extensive email, I said – not only did I want nothing more to do with Green Suppliers, but I wished to cancel my account with LAMB as well. To be honest, I wrote, I have been very disappointed with the service they had provided. I was promised big savings which simply didn’t happen, they put me with Green so are partially responsible, plus their customer services were a joke. Following advice from Martin Lewis, I was switching to Octopus and a fixed rate deal to avoid suffering from the severe anxiety and stress that this situation had caused me. Plus, I would be filing a complaint against Green with Ofgem.

Twenty minutes later, back came a hasty email. Your account with us has been cancelled, it said. Goodbye and good luck. Yeah, thought the mention of Ofgem and Martin Lewis might make them ditch me super quick!

The other email was from Green Suppliers, and it made me snort with disbelief. We’re so sorry you’re leaving us, it said, is it something we’ve done?

Something you’ve done?!

How long do you have?

I was furious. It felt like they were royally taking the pee out of me, but reading the email again, I realised from the generalised and robotic tone that it was merely a standard response generated because they’ve been contacted by Octopus and informed that I wish to leave them. It was clear no one had bothered to look at my account and what was going on. I would be wasting my breath going back all guns blazing yet. Save my strength for when I need it.

We will investigate your account, the email continued, to see if we can allow you to go.

Allow me to go?!

Try stopping me.

Look, I want to break up and FYI, it’s not me, it’s you.

So, now we wait. I have a note of my last meter reading given on the 17^th of May, and of course, I will be giving them a final meter reading. It will be interesting to see what final bill they come up with. I have a direct debit due to go to them on that day of £88. As the heating is now off and most washing is being line dried, I am expecting my energy consumption to be very low, so assume that £88 will be ample to cover the final few weeks of use plus clear up the so-called “debt” of £19 I allegedly still owe them.

I hope they will see sense and not try to hit me with another trumped-up, falsified bill because then I will have no choice but to file a complaint about them with Ofgem, plus send an email to Martin Lewis and any other consumer rights body I can find. The way they have treated me is appalling. I mean, what about if I were elderly and less able to fight back? I wonder how many vulnerable people they are stealing money from. It’s not right. There should be more control over these companies.

I have also received an email from Octopus today stating that the switchover is all going ahead as planned, so fingers crossed, and I will keep you all posted.

The beginning of the week was busy. I worked Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and although the shop was busy, once again it was timewasters.

Thursday, I had my second jab first thing in the morning. The actual jabbing bit hurt more than it did the first time, and I bled, which surprised me. I was prepared for anything, but other than a funny taste in my mouth for a couple of days – like I’d been licking old pennies – I had no side effects at all. I spent the day clearing the decks and ticking yet more things off my to-do list. We chased up the Etsy seller about my watch again – did I tell you about that? Miss F bought me a lovely steampunk watch last Christmas to celebrate the launch of my fantasy steampunk retelling of Snow White, “Black Ice”. As we went straight into lockdown on Boxing Day, I didn’t get a chance to wear the watch and it wasn’t until I returned to work that I realised it didn’t work. I would set the time and it would tick for about ten minutes before stopping. Assuming the battery was possibly out of juice, I changed it for the spare battery it had come with. Nope, the same problem. So, we messaged the Etsy seller last Thursday and heard absolutely nothing. That’s about par for the course though, isn’t it?

So, this Thursday morning we messaged them again and this time they responded. So sorry, they said, a new batch of those watches are arriving in two weeks, and they would immediately despatch one to me as soon as they arrived, and they hoped that was okay. Yes, that’s fine, so long as one is sent. It’s annoying we had to chase them, but hopefully, that is sorted.

Talking of getting things sorted, we at last set up our new Sky router box and what a palaver that was! I had to take everything off the storage box in the corner and heave it out so we could get to the sockets and phone socket in the corner, and then it was a struggle getting it to work – because nothing is EVER straightforward and easy – but we managed it at last. Haven’t noticed any difference to Sky TV or the internet in general though.

Miss F has been given an old guitar as a present. It belonged to my dad, and I remember him being given the guitar as a birthday gift from my mother when I was ten or eleven, so about forty years ago – and it was second-hand then. Did he ever learn to play the guitar? Nope. So, the poor thing has been sitting in their loft ever since. Anyway, a couple of months ago I happened to mention to my parents that Miss F would love to learn to play the guitar, so when my parents came for lunch last week, they brought the guitar with them. Miss F was delighted with it.

One of my colleagues at work plays guitar in a group, so I took it to work and showed it to him. The strings are rusty, he advised, and need replacing, but other than that it’s in good condition. Nice guitar, certainly suitable for her to learn on. Heartened by this, we took it to our local music shop on Thursday. To replace the strings and the bridge, plus tune it will cost £25 they told us, so we left it with them. Miss F has also bought a case and a strap for it, a stand plus some picks. I hope she has more luck learning how to play it than my dad ever did.

Friday, I had to do a bit of judicious pruning of my silver birch tree as the branches were drooping so low, they were bashing me on the head plus blocking out a lot of light from the garden. It was a gorgeous morning, and it was nice being outside for a change. After that, we walked uptown as Miss F needed to get a passport photo taken. She needs two forms of photo ID before going to university and her old passport has expired so she decided to be proactive and get it renewed sooner rather than later. After all, as the world opens up a bit more for holidays, I guess there might be a delay in getting it through. Once her passport has been received, she can use the information on it to apply for her provisional driving licence and she’ll be sorted.

She made sure her hair was nice, and she was happy with her appearance, then we went to Sneezums – a shop in town that takes professional photos for passports and ID. But why is it, that no matter how great you look in real life, on any photo like this you end up looking like stunned livestock?

Miss F looked like a little ghost in the picture. A pale waif who hadn’t had a hot dinner in months.

But it’s done, and when we got back, she filed for her passport online.

Whilst we were uptown, we got a birthday present for my mum. She’s going to be away on holiday for her birthday, so we plan to see her next Wednesday and give it to her then. I also called into Next to enquire if I could bring back a top I’d bought the week before. When I first tried it on, I thought it fitted just fine, so I ripped the labels off, but then when I put it on to wear it, I realised that the buttons started halfway down my chest, so I was rather exposed. Yes, I was assured, so long as you have the tags and the receipt, we can exchange or refund.

Back home, I just had time to make a quick coffee before my fortnightly virtual chat with my local author group. And that, together with catching up with housework, was Friday done.

And now it’s Saturday again and I’m sitting here writing this to you. Miss F popped up to the music shop this morning and collected her newly strung guitar which certainly sounds a lot better than it did, and I finally transferred all my phone numbers off my old SIM onto my new one and completed a survey from my local council about residential parking.

I almost missed the survey, but the Chairman of the Residents Association sent around an email reminding everyone to fill it in because we all must have our say. Survey, I thought, what survey? Then I remembered a whole wedge of junk mail that had been pushed through the door Friday morning and went to look in the bin. Sure enough, stuck to fliers for skip hire, a local estate agent who apparently wants to buy my house, and a menu from a Chinese takeaway, there was the leaflet with a link to complete the survey online.

Parking is a bit of a joke in my hometown. We’re an old town – there’s been a settlement of some kind here since Anglo Saxon times – so it wasn’t designed with car parking in mind. There are a lot of historic homes crammed into a small area and there aren’t enough places for residents to park. The situation isn’t helped by the fact they keep building new blocks of flats and don’t provide enough parking spaces for the people who live in them – if they provide any – so we have people illegally parking in the spaces reserved for residents who have paid a lot of money for a permit to park there. And it can be very frustrating when someone has illegally parked in your paid-for bay, so you must park on double yellow lines and then you get a ticket but the person who stole your space doesn’t. Something must be done about it, but I’m not sure what.

I do have a general feeling of things coming to completion this week. It’s quite satisfying as all the outstanding jobs are ticked off one by one and I’m beginning to think I may be able to start writing again next week. Because I do need to begin book thirteen soon. It’s going to be a big book I know that already. Being the third book in The Perennials Trilogy I have a rough idea of how much story there is still left to tell – and all those loose ends must be tied up as it’s the last book. It’s not only going to take a lot longer to write than say, one of the Blackwood books, but it will take longer to edit, beta read, and format. I have already booked my slot with Platform House Publishing in November to get the cover and video made, plus the final formatting. I know November sounds like a long way away, but, considering we’re into June already and other than the title I have nothing down, it’s really not.

Oh well, I wrote and published Black Ice which is 150,000 words in three and a half months and that was a lot more complex with over forty pages of illustrations, so let’s hope this one is as cooperative.

Another thing I need to do is try and get another lodger, and I have one last job to do before I can put the room back up for let. That is to make the little desk more in keeping with the decor. I’ve decided to decoupage it as I already have everything I need to do that – and painting furniture white can be very hit and miss. At the same time, I promised Miss F I would decoupage her a wooden tray to take away to university with her, plus I have a small, outdoor table to make weatherproof.

I bought this table off Amazon as it was advertised as an outdoor table, but when it came it was more like those little fold-up tables people use to eat their dinner off in front of the TV. I stood it outside and, sure enough, we had a week of monsoonal rain at the end of which the whole veneer top had peeled away. So, I bought it back in and have dried it out thoroughly. Then I went to a local DIY store and tore off lots of wallpaper samples in the colours of my garden ready to decoupage it. Dozens of coats of clear yacht varnish will make it waterproof and at least it will be something unique.

So, I have three items to decoupage and figure I might as well do them all at the same time whilst I have the room in the empty basement to work on them without them being in the way. Of course, I will take pictures to share with you.

It’s now three o’clock and if I want to at least get them sanded down today, I had better go and do it now as I only have an hour and a half before I must fetch Miss F from work. On the way back, we’ll swing around and collect our shopping and then this evening, after dinner, we’ll sit down in front of Netflix and cut up all the images we need from the wallpaper samples I have collected ready for me to paste them on tomorrow. We’re also going to visit Miss F’s other grandparent’s tomorrow afternoon as well. We haven’t seen them since February 2020 so it will be wonderful to finally be able to visit with them.

And that will be my week over and done with. It’s been less stressful – a lot less stressful – than normal, for which I’m thankful. Who knows, maybe life is done being horrible to me for a while. I can only hope so.

Take care of yourselves and wherever you are in the world stay safe and stay happy.

Julie Blake

I had a much-needed week off work this week, and many people commented how it would be nice for me to have a break. To rest after all the stresses of returning to a busy work environment and the trauma that life has been throwing my way lately. All I can say to that is – chance would be a fine thing.

I worked a double shift last weekend as the other part-timer was on holiday and the store is too busy now to be manned by only three people at the weekend. So, I worked a very long day Saturday and then all-day Sunday as well. Consequently, Monday I was already exhausted. But I had a to-do list that was bigger than my future, so I took a deep breath and psyched myself up to work my way through the whole list until it was done.

The first item was to contact my utility company and try to sort them out. There is no telephone number listed on their website so live chat it had to be and I duly typed my account number and name and told them what the issue was. Namely, that they had doubled my monthly payments and as a result, I was now in credit to them by £240. I would like my payments returned to a sensible level and a refund of the credit, please.

Four hours ticked by before I received a reply. They were very sorry I was experiencing difficulties, but they had looked at my account and could see that I was now in debt to them to the tune of £25. What?! I went back into my account and couldn’t believe what was there. Instead of the credit of £240 that had been showing on 18^th April, it was now showing that as of 17^th May I was in debt by £25. So, what they were trying to make me believe was that in one month I had chewed through the £240 credit, plus the £155 they took from my account, and another £25 on energy! Umm, I don’t bloody think so. I live in a tiny, terraced house in the UK and it’s Spring – not the Winter Palace in Russia in the depths of Winter. Looking at the bar graph, I could see they were claiming I had used more energy in one month than I had in the whole of the Winter!

Absolutely livid I went back to the live chat. Not possible, I furiously typed. I have never used over £400 of energy in one month. It was not possible, not even if I had the heating on full-blast 24/7 and switched on every single device we owned. Their calculations were wrong. In fact, from where I was sitting it looked very much like they were lying. Where had the £240 credit gone?

Another four hours ticked by before the reply came. Oh, it’s because we were using the readings from your smart meter instead of the meter readings you were giving us each month, and clearly, you are now saying they were wrong, so we’ve had to readjust your bill. What?! What bloody smart meter? I don’t have a smart meter! I used to have one about ten years ago, but it developed dementia and started claiming we were using 1.2 million pounds worth of energy in one day, then it started flashing error messages and then it died, so it was unplugged and slung in a drawer about eight years ago where it is still lying – so good luck getting any readings from that. And as for my actual gas and electricity meters, well, they are both a good twenty years old so certainly aren’t smart and don’t have Wi-Fi capabilities so again, have fun trying to get readings from them.

By this point, I was beyond angry. Luckily, I had taken screen grabs of my account showing the credit plus my meter reading history which clearly showed my meter readings duly given every single month – readings which exactly matched the readings jotted down in my notebook from where I had read them off the meters and written them down. Furiously – my typing at this point all over the place – I told them all this. You are lying! I stated. You have taken money from my bank account without my permission, you have falsified information on my account to justify stealing my money and clawing back my credit, and now you have invented some mythical smart meter to cover your arses. I want to speak to somebody higher up the food chain, please. Give me the organ grinder, because clearly, the monkey doesn’t know anything!

This exchange took all day because they were taking four to six hours to respond to my messages. I’m sorry, that’s not a “live chat” – that’s a séance.

Eventually, it got to 4pm and it was plain they were ignoring me. One of those headaches that feel as if a skewer is being shoved through your eye was brewing and I knew if I didn’t do something to lower my blood pressure it was going to develop into a full-blown migraine. The sun had come out, so I walked away from the situation and spent a couple of hours sweeping and tidying my garden and let the fresh air and the mindless monotony of the task blow away the cobwebs – as my gran used to say – before coming in to cook dinner. And that was Monday.

Tuesday. I did not have the mental energy to attempt to deal with the utility company again, and besides, sorting out the insurance claim was a top priority. Again, it wasn’t raining so I was able to go out onto my road and take lots of pictures to back up my claim. I took pictures of the shallow gateway that the stupid Yodel delivery guy attempted a three-point turn in with his enormous van. I took pictures of the locked gates at the top of the road to prove that no other vehicle could have entered the road from that end. I even hung out of my bedroom window and took pictures from above because it perfectly showed the narrowness of the road and the sheer stupidity of the man to even attempt to turn around there. It also demonstrated how his van would have blocked all access to the road so no other van could have hit my car because he was in the way.

Whilst I was hanging out of my window, a large white van bombed up the road at speed. Yep, it was him, making a delivery to the top of the road. I took lots of pictures showing how his van filled the road, and how there was barely enough space to insert a sheet of toilet paper between the sides of his van and the residents’ cars parked down both sides of the road. I got his number plate again and for good measure a picture of him for identification purposes.

I then sat down and typed a four-page witness statement of the incident giving all the facts, dates, and times, and of his return visits when I managed to get his number plate and a good look at him so could give a physical description.

This took all of Tuesday morning, then after lunch, I tackled Sky. Luckily, they had a customer helpline number which I called. It took 56 minutes for the call to be answered, so I filled in the time catching up with my reading. A lot more success with Sky. A very nice young girl dealt with me and things were arranged to our mutual satisfaction in that I’m now paying a lot less and receiving a lot more. Sky is very much like a needy boyfriend – you threaten to leave them, and they promise you the earth and swear they’ll change, only please don’t leave me!

I had a few other housework and correspondence chores to complete and that was Tuesday over and done with.

Now, we had planned to have my parents over for lunch on Wednesday. Due to lockdown and the pandemic, they haven’t been to ours for well over a year and we were all looking forward to it. However, life had other ideas and once again put a turd in my teakettle, or rather in Miss F’s.

After handing in her final large assignment two weeks ago and receiving a grade for it, she was officially signed off college and was legally no longer a student there. She has her conditional offer from her university and has applied for student accommodation and finance. All she needs now is to pass her exams, but, as they were cancelled back in February and instead several complex and involved assignments were set which her tutors were going to grade the students on, and Miss F has passed them all with merits and distinctions on most, she was confident of a high mark on those.

Anyway, as she is no longer going to college or spending all her days on assignments, Miss F has increased her weekly hours at her part-time job to twenty and on Monday caught the bus out to the restaurant to do a 5pm to 10pm shift. At 7ish she rang me to ask me to pick her up at 9:30pm as it was quieter than expected. Twenty minutes later she rang me again and asked me to pick her up immediately.

I knew straight away from the tone of her voice that something was very wrong, so I jumped in my car and made the twenty-minute journey to the restaurant. With a face like a wet weekend in Bognor, Miss F climbed into the car and poured out her tale of woe. When she had gone to the staff room to call me to ask me to collect her early, she had noticed several unread messages from her friend. Had she seen the message on the college Facebook page, her friend wanted to know. The theory exam that had been cancelled back in February was going ahead, after all, next Monday! All the assignments they had worked so hard on had all been for nothing because they weren’t going to be considered at all! They had one week to cram a year’s worth of revision into.

Miss F was so devastated by this news that she had a literal meltdown at work and her manager told her to go home.

Once we reached home, she checked the Facebook message for herself. Yep, it was true. City & Guilds in their infinite wisdom had decided that the students hadn’t had a shitty enough year and that they should sit the exam after all. This is appallingly unfair. The students simply haven’t had the quality of tuition to take this exam and Miss F was certain they would all fail. After all, they had spent the past two months working hard on the assignments that City & Guilds had insisted they do so hadn’t had time to revise, and anyway, had not known they needed to. Lessons have been sporadic and patchy this past year. What with the tutors not having the technical know-how or even the aptitude to successfully handle online teaching, the students barely attending college in real life and the fear and stress of being in a lockdown in a global pandemic caused to our young people, it is criminally unjust to put this extra pressure on them.

I am also questioning the legality of the whole proceedings. The students have done everything that City & Guilds demanded of them, and more. They have worked extremely hard to complete several very complex and difficult assignments and I can personally witness how many hours Miss F spent on them and the quality of work she produced. These assignments were all handed in and marked two weeks ago, the students were signed out, and legally are no longer a part of that college. To now come back and force them to take the exam after all – an exam they are not prepared for when they have left the mindset of revising and learning behind them – is beyond belief. To further kick them in the teeth by informing them that all their hard work over the past two months has been a monumental waste of time … it defies belief!

I was angry for her but wasn’t sure what I could do. On the advice of a friend, I did send an email to our local MP, Jo Churchill, advising her of the situation. I got an email back from her aide advising me that Jo was going to email City & Guilds to gain more insight on the situation, but I have heard nothing since so assume she has not done anything about it. I guess it was naïve of me to expect a politician to give a damn about the people in their constituency.

Because they are no longer students at the college, they can’t even take the exam there, instead, they have to take it at home with their laptop camera turned on – which adds even more to the stress.

Six days is barely enough time to cram all that revision in, but luckily Miss F’s work was very understanding and told her not to come back until she was comfortable, she could. Sadly, we also had to postpone my parents visit for a week just to give Miss F an extra day to revise.

Wednesday, I got up bright and early and determined to sort out the buggery bollicking situation with the utility company. I was sick of everyone’s shit and was in no mood to be messed about by them anymore. I wrote down all my facts and figures, looked up the details of the utility ombudsman and managed to get an actual proper telephone number for my energy company by emailing Martin Lewis. For non-UK people, Martin Lewis is a journalist and TV presenter who runs a website called Money Supermarket. He is a staunch advocate in defence of people being ripped off by companies and his name carries a lot of clout. If a company is outed on his website or his TV programme, then it means a lot of bad press for the company. So, I sent a little email and twenty minutes later back came a reply giving me the telephone number of my energy company and wishing me luck.

I settled down with a drink, my Kindle, and a notepad and pen. Thirty minutes later, the phone was answered, and I was talking to a real live person. I kept calm. I knew the person I was speaking to is not the person who runs the company, they are not the one making the rules, they know nothing about me or what has been done. Coolly and calmly, I told her I was extremely angry with how I’d been treated and that this was her company’s last chance to sort the matter out. That I had the ombudsman’s details in front of me and had already contacted Martin Lewis and would not hesitate to pass the matter over to them if I didn’t get satisfaction. But I assured her, I would not get angry with her because I knew it wasn’t her fault.

Fair enough said Nicole, how can I help you. I told her what had happened. When I told her that according to her company, I had used over £400 of energy in the past month, she laughed and enquired if I lived in Buckingham Palace. When I had finished explaining everything, she agreed that my monthly payments were too high so she would immediately put them back to the level they were, if that was all right with me. Also, she could see that I had given a meter reading online every single month – she couldn’t see any smart meter readings on my record – and she could see that the meters I had were old, general meters and certainly weren’t sending information directly to the company. She couldn’t understand why I’d been told that smart meter readings had been used and would get my bill reassessed and any monies outstanding to me would be recredited to my account.

This is why I always prefer to speak to a human being rather than try and communicate via email or live chat. If you are talking to someone it’s harder for them to fob you off and lie to you and much more gets done. Sure enough, less than an hour after hanging up from Nicole I received an email informing me that my direct debit had been changed back to £88 per month.

And that was Wednesday.

Thursday, I did do something for myself. I went out to lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in months. It felt odd walking into a restaurant like normal, although the prices came as something of a shock. We shared a starter platter between us with a pot of fries and had a bottle of the house white. Then we had a dessert each. That was it and it came to £60. Lovely though it was, I don’t think I’ll be eating out too much in the future. When a small meal for two costs as much as a week’s grocery bill for two, it might be time to think carefully about what I spend my money on.

Friday morning, I had a lot of niggly chores to do, including having to chase after Amazon again about my tablet. They had promised that the moment it was scanned at the post office they would send me a replacement. It has been two weeks since I posted the faulty tablet back to them and no sign of the replacement so we tracked the parcel on the Royal Mail website and could see that it had been signed for on the 9^th of May. So, back onto yet another customer live chat helpline we went. The operator we got seemed very confused by the whole situation so passed us onto someone else who also appeared bewildered. Replacement? What replacement is that? Anyway, they told us they would need at least 48 hours to investigate it and would get back to us.

Why does everything take such a long time? Life would run more smoothly and be a lot more pleasant if people just did their bloody job and got on with things. Why is it always up to us the customer to chase and chase and constantly enquire? Our time is precious, and most people don’t have enough of it to be always wasting it chasing after company’s and begging them to simply DO THEIR JOB! Come on Amazon, you promised me a replacement. The damn thing is faulty. It’s your product so there are no issues dealing with a third party. Simply do what you said you were going to do two weeks ago and send me another tablet.

Friday afternoon I did spend a very pleasant few hours chatting with my local author group via zoom. Miss F’s shift had been cancelled – whether that was due to low bookings or them simply not wanting her back until after her exam, I don’t know – but that meant I didn’t have to drive out late in the evening to collect her, so I cooked a lovely roast chicken dinner and opened the wine.

And now it’s the weekend and I have barely two days left of my holiday. Well, I say holiday, but as you can see, it’s not been much of a break for me. It’s coming up to 11am on Saturday and I’m sitting here chatting with you and beginning to think longingly about coffee. The rest of the weekend is already fully booked with things to be done. I have a book I need to start beta reading, there are beds to be stripped and laundry to be done. I want to have a go at making a lactose free cherry cake as Miss F has been seriously craving some. I also have some niggly author chores that I’d like to get done before returning to work.

Next week I am back to work for two long shifts on Monday and Tuesday. There will be shopping to collect after work on Monday and my parents will be coming to lunch on Wednesday. On Thursday I am visiting my favourite cousin whom I haven’t seen since December 2019, which I am hugely looking forward to, and then, oh yes, then, I have two days off on Friday and Saturday before returning to work on Sunday.

But there will be my blog to write. Plus, I need to sort the desk out in the basement ready to advertise the room again in June, and I’m sure there will be the usual round of housework, cooking, and laundry to be done.

Maybe one day I will have a day with nothing at all to do. Umm, maybe not.

Take care everyone and I look forward to chatting again next week.

Julia Blake

Well, moments after I posted my blog last week there was a colossal bang from the kitchen! I ran through to find disgusting mouldy water flooding out from under the washing machine. The machine was officially dead. Luckily, it had managed to wash all the bedding and underwear for the week, so I wasn’t left trying to sort that out, but I still had to pay a quick visit to Mum and drop a couple of loads off for her to do – thanks Mum.

I hadn’t realised how many times the washing machine went on during the week until it died and over the four days before my new one was due to be delivered, the laundry baskets grew scarily full. Anyway, Thursday dawned, and Argos texted me again to let me know it would be delivered between 3:45pm and 7pm. Great, bang on dinner time. Book twelve was also being launched on Thursday so it was shaping up to be a busy day.

About 5pm a huge lorry pulled into our road. Thankfully, it made no attempt to try and get any further in, otherwise it may have had problems getting out. A masked guy rang the bell. Luckily, he looked nice and burly and like he’d had his Weetabix that morning, but he was alone – which was concerning.

I showed him where the machine was located. He pulled a face behind his mask but shrugged good naturedly and went to get his mate who thankfully was still in the lorry. His mate came in, also a fine strapping lad. He looked around the kitchen and frowned.

HIM: Did you buy your last machine from Argos?

ME:  Yes.

HIM: I thought so, I was the one who delivered it. I remember lifting out the tumble drier last time!

Anyway, bless them, they heaved the drier out, unplugged the washing machine, slid the drier back, and started to pull the washing machine out. There was a thunk and a crunch, and as they lifted it out a big concrete block was left behind. It was broken into several big chunks with smaller bits lying all around it.

My washing machine was indeed very, very broken they informed me with knowledgeable shakes of their head. Just as well I didn’t waste my money calling in the repair man. Whilst they took the old machine out and brought the new one in, I took the opportunity to quickly sweep up and wash the disgusting floor. I also found one of those cap things that you put laundry liquid in that had gone down the back of the machine. Now, these caps have recently become rarer than rocking horse poop. Once, you got one with every bottle of laundry liquid but over the last couple of years they have started rationing us in that only one in every four bottles will have one – I guess the reasoning being to force you to horde your precious cap and constantly reuse it.

I remember last year I went to buy more laundry liquid and I needed a cap because mine had cracked through overuse. Not a single bottle of the liquid I wanted had a cap on it. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want to use a different liquid, neither did I want to pour the liquid directly into the drawer because that makes the drawer disgustingly manky. I looked along the shelves, and noticed that a different brand of laundry liquid had a cap on one of its bottles, hmm… I bet you’re wondering if I did, well, I’m ashamed to admit, yes, I did. That cap disappeared up my sleeve in a sleight of hand the Magicians Circle would have been proud of and I innocently took a bottle of my normal liquid, sans cap, to the till to pay for it. So, discovering one was a find akin to buried treasure and I fell on it with a cry of joy. It has been washed and put safely away as a back up when my current cap finally dies.

I’m also happy to report that the new washing machine works just fine, it’s quiet and doesn’t move, which is great. But I have a new problem in that the outside drain that the kitchen sink, the dishwasher, and the washing machine empty into is completely blocked. It’s flooding the path every time the appliances are used with soapy dirty water which is defacing the slate tiles. I’ve tried plunging it with a long, study stick but it seriously feels like cement has been poured down there and left to harden. I even bought a very expensive bottle of drain un-blocker – guaranteed to unclog even the most stubborn drain – well, I’m sorry, Mr Muscle, but I want my money back as it did absolutely nothing to help. I’ve called upon expert help – aka Dad.

Anyway, when Miss F read last week’s blog, she came through pulling a face and said – “You didn’t tell them about your tablet, Mum.” And she was right, in the long list of woes that I ranted about last week, I completely forgot to include the sorry tale about my tablet.

As regular readers and followers of me on Instagram will know, my wonderful daughter bought me a very expensive Kindle Fire Tablet for Christmas. It’s beautiful, has a large memory, and a fantastic battery capacity. It has some annoying little glitches including a very aggressive autocorrect that is convinced it’s right all the time, and it’s a little slow downloading my emails, but apart from that it’s great, or rather, it was great.

A couple of weeks ago, it suddenly and rather rudely, switched itself off mid-post. Annoyed, I tried to switch it back on. No go. Had the battery drained, I wondered, and plugged it in. I left it a few minutes and tried again, nope, black screen with the Amazon logo continuously flashing. I waited until the IT Department got out of bed and showed it to her. Let it drain completely of power, she advised, then charge it up. Sometimes tablets do this, but that should sort it. I left it alone for days, then tried charging it up. Nope. Black screen. Flashing Amazon logo. We tried connecting it to my laptop. What tablet? Asked my laptop. I can’t see anything there.

A bit upset, after all it was her Christmas present to me and was not cheap, Miss F contacted Amazon customer services. After a bit of toing and froing they informed us, they would repair it and would email me a return label within a few hours. This was Wednesday evening, by Friday morning we still hadn’t heard anything so back onto customer services we had to go. How may I help you? We explained the issue, they went to find the previous messages then came back and tried to convince us that we had said the screen was badly cracked. Umm, no, the tablet is in perfect condition, it just won’t switch on. Oh, they said. Are we sure the screen isn’t cracked? Yes, absolutely sure, the screen is black apart from the Amazon logo that continuously flashes.

At this information, customer services went very quiet for a few moments, then informed us that they would replace it, not even attempt to repair it. Ah ha, I thought, this is a common glitch then that you know isn’t fixable. We will email you a return label, they promised. Will you? We asked. Will you really? Because you said that last time and yet, three days later, here we are again. Yes, yes, they promised, it will be with you soon. True to their word, an hour later, yes it was. So, I printed it out, found the original box and wrapped the tablet in lots of bubble wrap, but I made sure we took several photos first showing the perfect and uncracked state of the screen – just in case. I then took it to the post office and sent it tracked and traced.

Now, they had assured us that the moment the post office scanned the label, a replacement would be sent to us. But here we are, a week later, and still no sign of it. I only hope we don’t have to chase up customer services again because it all takes time, precious time that I don’t have an endless source of. Plus, I really need my tablet. I’m managing with my old one but it’s slow and glitchy, and has the memory capacity of a gnat to the extent that I now leave it on charge 24/7 yet it will still abruptly close down with no warning.

This week has been a busy one as well because I launched my twelfth book – Kiss & Tell, book four of the Blackwood Family Saga. For once, Amazon behaved themselves, the book was published exactly when it was supposed to, and the paperback linked like a dream to the eBook version. The first book, Lost & Found, ran its free promotion exactly when scheduled, and book two Fixtures & Fittings was on for 99p at the same time.

It is a total experiment offering one of my books for free and one for 99p. It’s too soon yet to tell if it’s one that will bear fruit, people certainly downloaded the book, but it remains to be seen if it will result in an increase in reviews and purchases of the other books in the series. It did mean that Lost & Found shot up the Amazon rankings, as I’m writing this it’s sitting at no 16 in family drama and no 80 in romantic suspense. Considering how huge a category that is it’s a bit of a result. Being in the top 100 of its category also means that Amazon will start promoting the book as well, so, there’s that.

I’m working all weekend to cover the other part-timer who is on holiday this week. I’m expecting to be busy, but as I’m already through my target I can relax and count every extra sale as a cherry on top. This is why I’m sitting here writing my blog on a Friday afternoon instead of on a Saturday, and I must make sure I schedule it for Sunday morning and not Saturday morning by mistake. Once the weekend has been survived, then I have a whole week off. I had planned to start writing book thirteen, but the week has already quickly filled up with other things, so I have a suspicion that not much writing will happen.

If the weather is fine, there is a lot to do in the garden. The weather so far has been appalling. When I remember what it was like this time last year, long hot days spent pottering around the garden painting and tidying it up and then compare it to now when I’m still having to light a fire in the evening because it’s so cold. We have my parents coming for lunch on Wednesday and it will be the first time they’ve properly been in our house for over a year, so there’s shopping and prepping for that to do. Thursday I’m out for lunch with a friend whom I haven’t seen since last November. It will be nice to go into a restaurant again – I’ll need to try and remember how to eat in polite society. Friday afternoon is my zoom meeting with my local author group, and there will be the usual housework and laundry etc. So, as you can see, time to write is rapidly diminishing.

We have been without a lodger since the beginning of January and as we are now allowed into other people’s houses, I am beginning to think about advertising for a new one. The room is basically ready, I just need to dust and hoover. Also, I moved the little desk that I wasn’t using from the corner of my bedroom down to the basement. One thing everyone who comes to view the room seems to ask is – can I put a desk down here – and I suppose that’s only to be expected in these days of people homeworking and all having laptops. I think what with having a nice desk and a proper office chair, plus the TV we put in the room, it will increase the rooms desirability. But the desk is currently a very pretty shade of green which is completely wrong for the room, so it needs to be sanded down and repainted to match. So, there’s that to do as well.

I also need to repaint the bench that I bought last year for the garden. It’s a lovely big bench and very comfortable, but the paint job on it was awful and less than a year lately the white paint has almost completely rubbed away. I’m going to have a go at shabby chic and have the same pale blue I painted the fences with to use. It needs a cushion, but when I looked them up online, I was shocked at how expensive a simple bench cushion was with even the cheapest being over £70. For a piece of foam with a cover on it? I think not, there must be a cheaper way of doing it. I had a look on Amazon, I could get a piece of upholstery foam the exact size for £10, then found a pale blue gingham waterproof garden tablecloth which was twice the size of the foam. Surely, I can make that into a cover and because it’s waterproof and mould proof it can be left out all the time. At a total cost of under £30 I’m hoping it will work, but that’s something else on the list for next week.

As you can see, the days are rapidly filling up.

And now, I must go. There are posts to make, a book review to post, and a large late lunch to make because Miss F must catch the 4:30pm bus to work and will need to eat before she goes. Life is so busy.

Anyway, take care of yourselves and I look forward to chatting next week and telling you all how my week went.

Julia Blake

Firstly, apologies for not blogging last week. Let’s just say intentions were good, but time and motivation were severely lacking. Now my shifts have changed and some weeks I’m working Thursday, Friday, Saturday, it means I don’t have time to write my blog on a Saturday as I used to, and Wednesday feels too early in the week to even think about writing it, and how can I chat about the happenings in my week when the week has barely started?

Anyway, I’m here now, and after the couple of weeks I’ve had, boy do I feel a nice big rant a-brewing, so grab your Sunday beverage of choice and fasten your seatbelt.

Okay, so as you know I returned to work on the 15^th of April, and oh my goodness, went straight back into madness. No gradual easing in, no dipping of the toe in the water. Nope. Waterbomb straight into the deep end. It was manic. Like Boxing Day and New Year’s Day sales, all rolled into one. I seriously don’t know where the people came from, but came they did, all with money they were desperate to spend. Which is good, I guess, both for the company and my pay packet, but a little spacing between the hoards would have been nice.

I’ve found it quite hard going back and I’m stressed and struggling to deal with the sheer people-ness of it. Going from living quiet days at home with only Miss F for company, to suddenly being plunged into having to put my people face on for eight hours at a time has been quite a culture shock. Also, there’s the whole charging around aspect again, as I dash from work and out to collect Miss F from her work, then home and trying to sort and cook dinner whilst unloading the dishwasher, fetching in washing, feeding a whinging cat, and trying to lay and light a fire, before collapsing on the sofa at seven with a plate of dinner and no intention of moving, or even thinking about moving, until I drag my weary carcass up to bed – now do you understand why I didn’t blog last week?

I know millions of people are in the same boat, and I bet I’m not the only one thinking wistfully of the gently paced days of lockdown. Still, it is what it is, so one must adapt and adjust. I’m working today and Monday, then I have four days off, then I’m working all weekend because the other part-timer is on holiday and then I’m on holiday. Yippee. A whole seven days off. So much planned, but I already know that the week will whizz by like a gazelle on speed.

Now, what’s been happening? Well, firstly, the insurance issue has raised its ugly head again. Yep, I thought that was all done and dusted as well, but nope. I received a letter from the underwriters, an identical letter, and a claim form to complete as the one I submitted at the beginning of February, stating that I needed to complete it to process my claim.

Huh? I thought, what are they drivelling on about? This is all done, finished, car fixed and paid for. So, I wrote that on the letter, stuck it in the pre-paid envelope and posted it back. Then thought no more of it until I got home from work on Thursday evening and Miss F said someone from the insurance company had left a message saying that they’d been trying to get in touch with me and that if I didn’t give them the information they needed, then my claim would be voided. Huh?! What?! Checking my phone, I saw that a text had come from them between my lunch break and me getting home. There was a link they wanted me to click on. Well, I don’t have a smartphone so good luck with that. I decided to call them in the morning. I generally find in situations like this it’s better to speak to an actual human being.

Friday was busy, but I managed to give them a call back on the number left on the answerphone and got through to Rory, who, judging by the noises off stage, was still working from home. Yes, I had already completed the form, he patiently explained, but I had completed it for the brokers, and they hadn’t passed it onto them, the underwriters. Well, why not? I demanded. Surely when they passed my case over to them, the brokers had included all information pertaining to it? He sighed, you’d think, wouldn’t you, was his comment, but no, it had to be done again so they could go after the Yodel delivery driver’s insurance company with as much information as possible. Apparently, the other company are being arses about it. My neighbour, who was a witness, didn’t actually SEE the collision. He answered the door and took the delivery, closed the door, thirty seconds later heard the big bang, and ran to the window to see the van reversing down the road at speed with me in hot pursuit, and the wing of my car hanging off. But the company are claiming that in the split seconds in-between another very large white van could have come from nowhere and smashed into the side of my car and then, just as mysteriously, disappeared.

Absolute horse crap!

So, Rory is going to send me another form which I must complete with as much detailed information as possible. Oh, I’ll give them details all right. I asked if I could use a separate page and was told I could use as many pages as I deemed necessary and draw as many pictures and take as many photos as possible to illustrate why I believe the accident was in no way my fault, and why I believe this toerag of a man should cough up the £250 it cost to mend my car. Talk about being cheap. You were careless mate; you damaged someone else’s property. Be a man about it, fess up to what you did, agree to let your insurance pay out and then we can all move on! Jeez, why do some people have to be like this? Isn’t there enough stress and angst in the world without this?

I asked Rory what the worst-case scenario was if the driver refuses to admit fault and his insurance company won’t pay. Well, it seems I won’t get the £100 policy excess back, which won’t be the end of the world, and I will lose my no claims bonus status, which is appalling. I was in my house, my car was parked, in what fair or sane world can blame be pinned on me?! Life is all buggery bollocks sometimes.

Next thing on the crapola list – I’ve had to buy a new washing machine. Yes, my old one was about seven or eight years old, and I know they don’t make things to last anymore, but it’s yet one more niggling annoyance. Over the past month, my washing machine has been getting noisier and noisier. During the lockdown, I couldn’t do much about it, and it was still functioning, just … being a bit vocal about it. But now it sounds like a pneumatic drill is being used in the kitchen and when it hits the spin cycle the Challenger space shuttle taking off is quiet in comparison. My previous machine did the same thing, so I called in my appliance fixer guy. He looked at it, sucked in the air over his teeth, and told me it was the restraining bolts that hold the drum in place. Over the years and constant use, they become compromised until finally they snap, and nothing is restraining the drum, hence the noise. Once they go, he said, there is nothing to be done but replace the whole machine. He then packed up his box of toys, charged me a call-out fee and left.

So, when this machine began to do the same thing, I knew what it was. I also knew there was no point wasting my money on a call-out fee so I’ve been on the Argos website and ordered a new washing machine and it will be here next Thursday. Until then, we’ll need to wear noise-cancelling headphones every time I put a load on. The last time I bought a washing machine from Argos, they were offering a disposal and installation package for £50 which I thought wasn’t bad, so I took advantage of it. I do remember my dear old dad’s penny-pinching soul being outraged that I was paying £50 for someone to take my washing machine away. But when I asked if he was going to come and do it, there was silence down the phone. Guessing that’s a no then, dad.

I was hopeful they were offering the same service and was even prepared for it to cost more, after all, it had been eight years. But no, still £50, so I clicked on the button and added it to my order. Now, my washing machine is in an awkward position, so I am hoping that the delivery team who come this time are as obliging as the last ones. The machine is located in a cupboard in a narrow passageway so getting it out is difficult. I mean, washing machines aren’t exactly light and having to walk one out of a very confining space and manhandle it out of the passageway is hard enough. Then there is the whole issue of unplugging it, unhooking it from the pipes behind it and installing the new one. Above the washing machine is a sturdy shelf on which sits the tumble drier. Both machines are plugged in behind the drier, so it must be eased forward enough to get an arm in, and the washing machine plug pulled out and dropped down through the hole in the shelf. And then, of course, when installing the new one, the drier has to be eased forward again, and the washing machine plug fed up through the hole – all whilst holding a drier on your chest. Are you beginning to understand why I think it’s worth £50 of anyone’s money? They will also test the machine and take away all the packaging. Why would you not say yes to this service?

All in all, the whole situation was a niggle, but not a particularly annoying one, unlike the ongoing one I have with my utility supplier. A couple of months ago, they emailed me informing me that they were putting my monthly direct debit up from £88 to £155! A huge jump and an unnecessary one. Yes, I was in debt to them by about £150, but we were coming out of winter and I’m always in debt at that time of year. The debt is then cleared in the spring, and credit builds up in the account over the summer to help carry me through the winter which is the most expensive time for gas and electricity. Every utility company I’ve ever been with has understood this but not Green Supplier. Instead, I get a somewhat hysterical email acting as if I were thousands of pounds in debt with no way of ever clearing it.

I immediately contacted them through the chat option on their website – couldn’t find a customer helpline number, my preferred mode of communication – and explained the situation to them. Not only are we coming into warmer weather, I typed, when the heating is going on less frequently, but with drier weather, I wouldn’t be using the tumble drier as much. Nights were drawing out, so lights were going on later. Plus, as the lockdown was over and we had returned to work, we were no longer home all day using devices. I received a somewhat confusing email back stating that all direct debits were calculated to ensure their customers never ended up in debt, but they would take on board my comments and investigate it. I heard nothing further, but when my next direct debit came out, I checked my account and, sure enough, I was now over £100 in credit with them.

I assumed that the company would see this, acknowledge that I had been correct, and keep my direct debit at its normal rate. That was very stupid of me. Upon checking my bank statement earlier in the week, I found to my horror that they had whipped £155 out, so now I’m almost £300 in credit with them. I’m annoyed about this, why didn’t they listen to me? I can’t afford to be paying so much each month unnecessarily, and it means they will owe me hundreds of pounds, and yes, I know I will probably get that back, but that could take weeks, and now I have to go through the whole rigmarole of contacting them again, explaining the whole situation again, and hoping this time I will connect with someone whose brains aren’t located in their anal region and will LISTEN to me and see the logic in what I’m saying. My contract with this company expires in August, I have no plans to stay with them because of this, so I want this sorted now. The last thing I want is to be chasing a company I’m no longer with for money they owe me – I have a feeling that’s a chase I might not win.

And now we come to Sky. We have a Sky account but only have the most basic TV package you can have with them. What with having Netflix, Amazon Prime, Now TV, and Disney Plus, we don’t need Sky TV – and besides, they are seriously behind in the quality of programmes they offer. So, I pay £35 a month for the basic package, unlimited broadband, plus use of landline but I do get charged for any calls I make on there so I tend not to call anyone if I can possibly help it. I also pay an extra £10 a month for Miss F’s mobile phone to be with them. So, £45 in all. This has been the situation for years. But, when I checked my bank account, I saw that for no reason whatsoever, Sky had doubled my monthly payment to £75! No warning, no discussion, no negotiation, no reason given. Nope, they just plundered my bank account and took what they wanted, probably hoping I wouldn’t notice.

Not on Sky, not bloody on. But it means I now must try and contact them, and I know it’s an absolute ball-ache trying to get hold of anyone in customer services in Sky, I know it’s going to take time I don’t have, and patience I no longer possess. And I know that I’m going to have to throw all my toys out of my pram, pout, stamp my feet, threaten to leave and really mean it, before they will probably play ball and put the monthly rate back down to something sensible.

If they don’t play ball, I will leave, but that will be a pain in the arse as well. Having to find another broadband provider, having to change my email address everywhere!! Having to shift Miss F’s mobile account to another company, and the whole cockamamie hoops we’ll have to jump through to move her number. Yes, it’s doable, and yes, I will do it, if I must, rather than bow to Sky bully boy tactics and stay with them if they don’t reduce the payment, but oh, I don’t want to. It’s yet more time, more stress, more phone calls, more headache-inducing angst. Why is life never simple? You get straight, you think – right, that’s everything sorted – then two seconds later, bam, the shit hits the fan again and you grind your teeth in sheer bloody frustration at how buggery bollocking annoying everything is.

Then, we’ve had the whole thorny issue of student finance. As you know, Miss F has been accepted at her dream university. It’s what she desperately wants, it’s all she’s been dreaming of for years and I really want it for her. But it’s expensive and without the very generous student loan she is entitled to, it would be an impossible dream. So, as soon as applications for the upcoming year were allowed, we carefully went through the form online, completed it all, sent them whatever bits of paper they needed, and considered it done. Because I earn diddly squat, she is entitled to her tuition fees paid in their entirety and almost £10,000 a year in living expenses. Which, as I told her, if she can’t live on that then she seriously has a problem, as I’m paying a mortgage, running a whole house, and feeding two of us plus a cat on not much more.

We thought it was all done and going through the system. Then Miss F was invited to take part in an online discussion and information forum on her new university, and one of the subjects they talked about was student finance. Our ears pricked up at the news that there is a small bursary that she would be entitled to of £1000 per year. It’s for students from low-income households and will automatically be awarded so long as she has ticked the box on the form giving the Student Finance people permission for her details to be shared with her university.

Miss F pulled a panicked face. She had seen no such box on her form, and she had gone through it minutely so was confident if it had been there, she would have seen it and ticked it. She typed the question about it. The tutor said it should have been on the form, but she was to phone student finance and speak to them about it.

So, yesterday, Miss F settled down with the phone number, her application number, and what she needed to ask and called Student Finance. We timed how long she was on hold. 56 minutes! Almost an hour of nonstop elevator, do your head in, shopping made easy muzak, and reassurances that her call was important to them, but had she looked on their website for any answers to any queries she might have? She hung on and hung on until finally, the call was answered. Miss F explained the situation. At first, the guy seemed unable to grasp the problem but then said there was a sliding button on the form that she needed to switch to grant sharing permission. Miss F said she hadn’t seen it, was he sure it was on there? Oh yes, he assured her, it was there, she had obviously missed it. But, whilst she was on, he was looking at her application and could see it was on the verge of being rejected because there was a discrepancy between the amount of income I had stated, and the amount of income H.M. Revenue & Customs had confirmed.

WTF?! I grabbed the phone from her, told the guy I was her mother, and what exactly did he mean? After much discussion and toing and froing, we think we’ve figured out what happened. I had to insert my income figure from the P60 issued on 6 April 2020, which I did, but my total income figure wasn’t a round number, there was a rogue 25p. We tried to enter the whole amount, but it wouldn’t accept the pence so all we could do was put the pounds. But of course, this doesn’t tally exactly with what H.M. Revenue & Customs have on their form, so the figures are out by 25p.

Now, wouldn’t you think someone would have the sense to realise that the form doesn’t accept pence, look at the two figures and go, okay, it’s only 25p. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t make an iota of difference. The household income must be below £25,000 per year to qualify for this level of finance and my income is well below that, so it’s not as if that 25p would push me over some sort of band. No, as usual, it is red tape, algorithms, and people being unbelievably petty and creating yet more angst, stress, worry, and work for everyone involved. So, following the guy’s advice we have now uploaded my P60 for the period required to them, and, as per his further advice, uploaded my P60 for the 6 April 2021 as well, just in case.

I hope this has sorted the issue. If they reject her Student Finance, I will kick up such a stink they’ll be able to see it from space. Miss F qualifies on every level so there is no reason for such a thing to happen. Don’t worry, the guy reassured us, this happens all the time. Well, if it happens all the time, fix the buggery bollocking issue! Either change the income box on the form to include any pence or put a little line explaining that if there are any pence it is crucial to round the sum up to the nearest pound, not down (as we did).

Hopefully, by manually submitted the actual P60s we have sorted the issue. I’ll keep you posted.

So, then Miss F went back onto the Student Finance website, pulled up her application form and together we scrutinised it inch by smegging inch, and you know what, she was correct, there is no box, button, or slider that we must click to allow sharing permission. It’s simply not there. We spent an hour going over and over the form. By this time, Miss F was stressed out of her head and sporting the beginnings of an anxiety migraine so bad she had to call off work. The only option we have is to call Student Finances again and get them to stay on the line whilst they tell us whereabouts on this bloody form this mythical, non-existent button is! But by now it was late Friday afternoon, and neither of us fancied another hour sitting on the phone feeling our brains leak from our ears as we listened to that never-ending, soul-destroying muzak.

Why is life so hard? Miss F howled at one point. And what could I say? Welcome to the world of adulting, honey, it’s shite and it only gets shittier the older you get. It’s an endless round of petty inconveniences that in themselves don’t amount to much but piled on top of all the other shitty things you must deal with daily, add up to a constant barrage of annoying buggery bollocks that will slowly drive you demented and drain the will to live from your soul.

Right, I think that’s it for my whining and ranting … let’s see … work, insurance, washing machine, utilities, Sky, Student Finance … yep, I think that’s it. Thank you for putting up with my rant.

Okay, so let’s try to end on a positive note. Kiss & Tell, book four of the Blackwood Family Saga is scheduled to be published on Wednesday and everything is looking set for a smooth, hitch free launch – but, this is life, and, as we all know, life can be a bit shite, so I’m braced for problems. To celebrate the launch of my twelfth book I’ve decided to do something I’ve never done before and offer one of my books as a free download.

That’s right, this is an exclusive heads-up for the nine of you who read my blog. On the 12^th, 13^th, and 14^th of May, book one of the Blackwood Family Saga, Lost & Found, will be free to download. That’s right, completely, and utterly free! Not only that, but book two in the saga, Fixtures & Fittings, will be only 99p (or local currency equivalent). What with Kiss & Tell currently only being £2.99 (or local currency equivalent) to pre-order that means if you wish to snag the first four books of the Saga, instead of it costing you £15.96, it will cost you only £7.97. What an absolute bargain! So why not click on the Kiss & Tell link on my books page and book your pre-order at the sale price, then look out on the 12^th and grab the other three books in the series. At these prices, you’d be crazy not to.

But hurry, on the stroke of midnight on the morning of the 15^th all prices will go back up to their normal levels and this amazing deal will be over.

As most of you know, I have never run a free offer on any of my books before and I have never run a sale at 99p and, depending on how many downloads it generates, I may never do it again, so this may be your only chance to grab four Julia Blake books at a remarkable cut-throat price.

Now I need to go, there is laundry to do, beds to make, a fire to lay, shopping to do, and a dinner to prep. At least, you got a nice girthy blog to make up for missing last week, which I hope you enjoyed even though is was mainly a good grumble and a rant.

Take care and try not to let life grind you down.

Julia Blake