I get it

This conversation happened this morning:

Dave: “I’m trying my new migraine medicine."

Me: “Does that mean you have a migraine?"

Dave: “Yep. Head really hurts."

Me: “So you won’t be going into work then…"

Dave: “I have to."

Me: “You don’t have to."

Dave: “I do."

Now your instinctive reaction here might be to think “What?!”  I know, a killer hurting head and he’s still going to go to work.

The thing is that I understand this response.  Dave had people travelling to the office for meetings and he didn’t want to let them down.  I’d have had the same reaction.  I might have tried to think of someone who could take my place but, if that had failed, I’d haul my sorry hurting head into work.

If you travelled to a meeting to find your host was off sick, how would you feel?

 

Rozzers

You may be aware that I live next to a building site.

You may not know that the police have knocked on the door in the past to ask about thefts from the site.  We hadn't seen anything but we have been keeping our eyes open in case there's a repeat performance.

Today was Sunday and the planning permission that has been granted prohibits work on the site on a Sunday and yet, as I was putting the rubbish out in the back garden I heard noises from the site.

I knew that both entrances to the site were locked.  I also knew that the Portakabin that the builders use for frequent tea-making wasn't open.

I hopped onto a bench and looked over what remains of our garden wall and the temporary barrier the builders have constructed.  I couldn't see anything, but I could definitely hear something.

What should to do?

I guessed that nobody was being murdered because I couldn't hear screaming.  I figured the noises were being caused by one of three things:

1.  Thieving scum
2.  Young people mucking around on a building site.  Dangerous.
3.  Builders.  Shouldn't be there but harmless.

I thought the third option was unlikely because whoever was there wasn't behaving like the Monday-Saturday builders: gates locked, Portakabin closed, no loud swearing.  The balance of probabilities indicated I needed to call the police.

I dialled 101 and, after waiting an age once I'd been put through to the control room, I explained things just as I have here.

About three minutes later two police cars turned up and there was a knock at the door.  A mountain of a police officer wanted to jump over our wall until he found it was a wobbly and unstable wall.  I helped him and a couple of his colleagues find the easy access for those with a slim frame.

As the occupants of the first two cars were tentatively making their way onto the site, two more cars turned up.  I think it might have been a slow crime day in Brentwood.

About ten minutes later I got the lowdown.  Three Romanian builders were a bit surprised to discovered by Brentwood's best blue line.

The police officers said I should call again if I see or hear anything suspicious. They said I did the right thing.

So next time there's activity on the site when there shouldn't be, I'll be calling 101.

Panasonic Breadmakers

I think I've blogged in praise of the Panasonic breadmaker in the past.  It's a brilliant piece of kit and we use ours almost daily.  In this case it's Panasonic we should thank for our daily bread.

But, our first Panasonic broke after about 18 months.  I think it was a mechanical failure.  So, because we are so dependent on our breadmaker I hot-footed it to Currys and bought another.  This time I paid for a "Care plan" which would last three years and provide a replacement should we experience another failure.

Today, exactly to the day, two years after I bought that second breadmaker it failed.  We tried three loaves and all were rubbish.  I couldn't remember the details of the Curry's Care plan so I phoned.  The nice customer sewrvice representative at the other end gave me a reference number and told me it expired on the 8th of January 2016.

We took the broken breadmaker which had cost £119.99 into the store and came away with the latest model which was on sale for £134.99.

I never buy product insurance but because we'd experienced one failure I thought I'd take the risk and this time it paid off.  As it's worked once for me I asked if I could do the same for this new breadmaker.  So I have paid another £30 to be covered for the next three years and, yes, I feel that Panasonic should probably design something that's a bit more robust, but I'm guessing that in two years time I'll be getting another upgrade because the current model will fail.

The unexpected bonus was that I will be getting a refund on the remaining year of unused Care Plan on the broken product.  I didn't expect that.