Refitting

Posted: Mon 31 May, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Shopping | Leave a comment »

Our local big Sainsbury’s is in the middle of a refurbishment and extension – it’s a huge job which looks to be doubling the floorspace of the place.

Although why they’ve had to take the ceiling tiles out throughout the store is something else, and really makes the place look ugly.

Sainsburys at Longwater, Norwich, where they have taken out all the ceiling tiles

Ugly view throughout the Sainsburys store at Longwater Norwich

Pretty, isn’t it?

Missing Days

Posted: Sun 30 May, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

One thing that brings out my OCD is seeing empty days on the calendar of posts on the right-hand side. I don’t see them often, and it’s only this month that I’ve gone over 190 missed days all told. Considering I’ve now been writing D4D™ for nearly eight years (Eight years on 9th August, to be exact), that makes it a 6% fail rate so far. Could be worse.

But I still don’t like seeing those empty days. I know I shouldn’t care all that much – and in other ways it doesn’t annoy me at all – but all the same, I have to seriously resist the temptation to post-date some posts in order to keep my month filled.

And the reason I’ve missed those days? To be honest I’ve no idea. All the normal stuff is still going on, but the work/life balance is way out of whack at the moment, with work taking up way more time than it should do. Admittedly, I’m somewhat letting it happen, but it’s still out of whack. That’s something else to work on. Joys.

In the meantime, I’m going to try and not have too many blank days. But I’m also going to try and not get stressed about those blank days as and when they do happen.

Parking – Mini

Posted: Sun 30 May, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Driving, Parking | 3 Comments »

Another spectacular piece of parking.

The Tesco store in Dereham really does appear to be a mecca for people who can’t park their cars within the lines.

A Mini, AO 06 ORK, more in the hatch-markings than in the space

That really is quite impressive, AO 06 ORK

Putting the “ORK” into Dork.

Village Life

Posted: Sat 29 May, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, News, Norfolk, People, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

This week has been fairly eventful in the life of one of the nearby villages.

On Tuesday Norfolk police arrested a man about the suspicious disappearance of his wife, Emma Ward, who hasn’t been seen since the start of April. Since then the house has been taped off, and there’s always a police person sat outside it in a car. He’s been released on bail for the moment, but it’s all a bit “wait and see if she appears”. Her friends have put up a Facebook group, and it’s had coverage in the local media too.

It’s strange really – I walk past their house every day with Hound, and you realise afterwards that you haven’t seen two cars there for a while, but you don’t really think about it ’til something like this occurs. I do keep an eye open as I walk round, but still you don’t think about that kind of thing. I wouldn’t know either of them in the street – while I know some of the people in the village,and others as I walk round, I couldn’t put names to most of them, and I certainly don’t know their life histories. Maybe I should- personally I don’t think so, but there we go- but I don’t.

I’m not one of these “Oh, it’s so shocking that it happens near where we live” merchants – this kind of thing goes on wherever you live. It’s just it’s not the first thing in your head – “Oh, the car hasn’t been there. I wonder what’s happened to the owner”.

Of course I’ve mentioned it to the plod sat outside, that one car’s not been there for a while. In a fit of community spirit I even remembered that Google StreetMap had gone through the village a while back, and was able to give them a printout of the StreetMap photo of the house with the now-missing car in the driveway. (No numberplate, but it gives them a colour, make and model to work from) I’m sure they knew already, but well, I’d rather they got told thirty times than everyone assuming they’d got the information already.

My personal suspicion is that she’s dead. If she’d just disappeared then you’d think the husband would be the first person to report it, and to take far less than six weeks to do so. Not reporting her missing just makes you look so suspicious anyway, but the entire thing just strikes me as strange.

Ah, the intrigues of village life.

Tosspot

Posted: Sat 29 May, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Own Business, People, Stupidity, Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

You may recall that back in March 2009, the accountant I had for my company went bust. The basic summing-up of why he went bankrupt/insolvent (not sure if they’re the same or not, and don’t much care) can be listed as :

  1. Franchising isn’t a great idea – the fees he was paying to Tax Assist were huge
  2. If you’re in trouble like this, don’t take out other loans to shore up the business. It all comes back to bite you on the arse.

Yesterday I got the final official documents from The Insolvency Service, explaining that (as expected) they’d got absolutely sod-all from the cunt’s assets, so no-one who’d paid him fees in the run-up to tax-return time would get anything at all.

Even better, they’d managed to attach the asset-release summing up for a completely different person with the same surname, from two years previously. Oh whoops.

I’ve made them aware of it, but had no response currently. I’ll get nothing from my useless fuckstick bastard of an ex-accountant.

All told, not a great day.

Spillage

Posted: Fri 28 May, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Green, News | Leave a comment »

One of the things I find with all the news coverage about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the US is that you can’t really envision the scale of this oil slick.

via Twitter, I found this graphic which seems to really help

Graphic of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in context

Most of the south of england would be covered, if the spill had happened off the coast of France

You can also go here to see it for yourself, or choose where else to center the map in order to get some scale on this disaster

Road to Nowhere

Posted: Thu 27 May, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Driving, Norfolk, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

Only in Norfolk.

Over in Attleborough, there’s a new road been put in which currently goes nowhere. It got used straight away as a place for a bunch of travellers. (and I believe there’s rumour of it being used as such on a longer-term basis) They got cleared out a few weeks back though.

Over the weekend I went past it, and there’s some road signs been put up.

30mph on a dead-end road with no houses or buildings on it

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