48
Posted: Tue 5 November, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, 2019/20, Cynicism, D4D™, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten) Leave a comment »Usually at this time of the year I write about what’s happened over the last year, and what I’m planning for the coming twelve months.
That’ll probably still happen – it just won’t be perfectly in line with my birthday this year. How do I know that? Because today’s my birthday, and I’ve done sod-all about preparing those posts and thoughts. Which might be a bit of a hint.
So anyway, today I’m 48. I don’t feel it at all, but there we go, that’s how things work out sometimes.
Anyway, blah, resolutions stuff later.
Anniversal
Posted: Tue 13 August, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, Bankruptcy, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Rebuilding, Thoughts 3 Comments »Having gone through the six years of the bankruptcy process (as I’ve written about many times in that period) today marks a year since that process completed. Time flies, and all that rot.
It’s the final real anniversary of any significance though – even though it came off my record a year ago, most of the banks work on a “Six years plus one” basis (fuck only knows why, but that’s their choice) when it comes to ‘full’ current accounts and the like.
So that’s where we are now – the full “six years plus one” is complete.
It shouldn’t affect things much – it would be nice to have a ‘full’ account with overdraft facility and so on , but only because that’s another thing that is good to have. I’ve done fine over the last seven years with no overdraft and never needing one, and I don’t see any reason why that would change now.
However, it does mean I’ll almost certainly move away from my current bank’s offering, purely because they were lying dicks about it all the way through the process. Once I’d gone through the first year where I was officially bankrupt, I was fine to have a basic current account. When I got it, I was totally honest with the bank, and they said I could try to apply for an upgrade to a ‘full’ current account on a regular basis (every six months or so) and see how I did.
It was only after three years that anyone mentioned that they wouldn’t give me an account until the “six years plus one” – ‘but it’s not that we have a policy, sir, it’s just that’s how it works, we won’t do it before then‘ – and so had basically lied and wasted my time for all those reviews. That did cost them money in the end – a complaint went all the way to the Financial Ombudsman, who found in my favour. (The rule in this case is keep a record of all paperwork and appointments, so you can show a history of wasted time, and stuff that you wouldn’t have done if they’d been honest and said to not bother for seven years!)
So yes, I’ll probably change banks for the current account – I’m not yet sure who to, but we’ll see what happens.
But the most important thing really is that now, seven years on, there’s nothing else keeping me back.
Halfway
Posted: Mon 1 July, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, Change, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten) 1 Comment »Today, we’re halfway through 2019. The first half has been pretty good, but also has had its downsides and irritations.
So in the second half, I’m aiming to get rid of some of those irritations, and to get some stuff done that’s been hanging around for a while. I’m not saying it’ll definitely happen, but I’m going to try, at least.
One irritation for me – as I’ve said before – is how much the noise of flies (and other buzzy bugs) annoy me. It’s something that I just can’t tune out, for whatever reason. When the weather’s warm, the food I have for the cats attracts flies, so it gets deeply annoying after a while. In previous years I’ve bought small bug-killers and so on, but they’ve never proved to be overly effective. So this year, I’ve finally bitten the bullet, and bought one of the classic ‘kitchen’ big blue bug zappers.
So far (and it only arrived today) it’s seeming pretty decent – although the zap is pretty noisy! Hopefully it’ll prove more effective than the previous ones, and any flies this year won’t annoy me as much.
After that, well, we’ll see what other stuff I can get done and what other irritations I can get rid of.
History Plays
Posted: Mon 20 May, 2019 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Theatre, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »As I said last week, this year’s Shakespeare intake has somehow ended up being all about the history plays. It’s not been an intentional set of decisions, just the way things have worked out.
I’ve already seen two productions of Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and Henry V this year. (And of course I also saw “Queen Margaret” late last year, which takes all of Margaret’s lines from Henry VI – all three parts – and Richard III and builds a play/story around that)
And now I’ve also booked to see the RSC’s production of King John later in the year.
All told, that means that of the histories, by the end of the year I’ll have seen …
King JohnRichard IIHenry IV, Part 1Henry IV, Part 2Henry V- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
Richard III- Henry VIII
- Edward III
So, I’m more than halfway through the histories. Not bad, in less than a year.
Getting Out More
Posted: Sat 4 May, 2019 Filed under: 2018/19, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Gigs, London, Single Life, Travel Leave a comment »I really need to remind myself that long weekends are meant to be about relaxing and doing less.
Over the next four days, I’ll be…
- Socialising with friends at a barbecue thing (and probably doing a fair amount of the cooking)
- Going to three concerts
- Seeing the parents
It’s all a bit busy – and the following weekend isn’t much quieter. Thankfully there’s some time off in the meantime, but yeah, all a bit chaotic. Again.