Spare Space
Posted: Thu 16 February, 2023 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »One of the reasons for my move last year was to have a bigger house, with space to have a home-office and so on, rather than Tiny House and also renting an office in Milton Keynes.
It is lovely to have a larger house, to have space for bookcases (and to have all my books out of boxes for the first time in Far Too Long) and to have that home office and so on.
However… I find that most of the time I’m still in “Tiny House” mode mentally, in that I don’t actually use that home office. It’s there, and I know it’s there, it’s just that I forget when it comes to actually working, so a lot of that is still done down in the living room instead. Additionally, I don’t yet really sit in the other part (that was the ‘dining room’, and is now ‘book room’) as a matter of course. I’ve used it a couple of times – and suspect I’ll use it more in spring/summer with some natural light coming through.
Both rooms are fine, and fit for their intended purposes. I just… don’t use them properly. Yet.
Maybe I’m expecting too much of myself. It’s not even six months that I’ve been in this place yet, and I was in Tiny House for over a decade, so in some ways it’s not surprising that I haven’t really made the mental switch yet.
I will do. I’ll get back into the mindset, I’m sure, and I’ll make use of the rooms the way I meant to. It’s just taking me longer than I thought it would.
A Lack of Life
Posted: Wed 4 January, 2023 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness 2 Comments »When I moved here, there were two horrible globes of fake-box hanging outside the front window. (Just…. don’t ask. I don’t know.)
I replaced them with two bird feeders, because… well, it’s nice/good to feed birds.
Only it turns out that this area is weird – there seem to be absolutely no small birds in the vicinity at all. Yes, we’ve got pigeons, crows, and magpies. Occasionally starlings. But nothing else, no robins, sparrows, blackbirds, tits (ho ho) or anything. It’s very strange.
I’m leaving the feeders out for the moment, but now I’m aware of this weirdness I notice it even more, and I’ve been looking out more to see if I see anything.
As yet, nope.
I’ve no idea why this might be – the area isn’t chock-full of cats or anything. It just… doesn’t seem to have any birds.
Making More Work
Posted: Fri 12 August, 2022 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »As part of my preparation for moving (about which another post sometime soon) this week I ordered some decent moving boxes from SafeStore. Yes, I’m sure there are other sources for them, and so on, but I was happy with the stuff on offer, and they’d deliver it, so *shrug*, it’ll do.
For cost-effectiveness (within the provisos of “I’m sure I could get it better somewhere else, but CBA to hunt”) I got one of their “kits” – 4 each of small, medium and large box sizes for considerably less than individual prices – and also added in some bubblewrap, tissue paper, and a mattress cover. All well and good.
It got delivered this morning, as expected and on-time. Two boxes – one the ‘kit’ box, and one for the bubblewrap roll etc. Except… there’s no mattress cover, no tissue paper. So I called them up to let them know, and the lady went off to check with the despatchers. And that was where it got weird.
“Have you checked in the Kit box? They say they might’ve put the extra things in there, to keep it all together“.
And it turned out that was exactly what had happened. But that boggles my mind.
Now, I assume (and I’m aware it’s an assumption and thus could be utterly flawed) that the kit boxes are exactly that – they come as a sealed box with the kit contents in. That makes sense to me. (Otherwise they’d be assembling the kit from box stocks for every order, which seems… odd)
So, if that’s the case, the despatchers opened a kit box, put the extra bits in, sealed it up, and then put it with the other box that already had bubblewrap etc. in it. Why go to that effort when there’s an unsealed box (with space in it) right there? Why make even more work for oneself?
I despair.
[Note : I actually did better than expected out of this deal – because they didn’t send me the kit box I’d ordered, and instead sent one that’s larger, and should’ve cost about £10 more!]
100 To Go
Posted: Tue 22 September, 2020 Filed under: Covid, Cynicism, Domestic, Lockdown, Weirdness Leave a comment »Today is day 266 of 2020. There’s only another 100 to go.
I’m not going to tempt fate (or give it ideas) by saying things couldn’t get worse. They could. Knowing the way this year’s gone so far, they probably will.
In the meantime, I’m going to be slightly altering the restaurant plans and bookings I’d already made for the rest of this year, following on from today’s (frankly bizarre) “everywhere’s got to close by 10pm” dictat.
I’m not sure what makes things safer by closing pubs, restaurants and food places by 10pm – as other restaurateurs have said, they’ve worked hard on making sure entry/exit times were staggered, whereas now it’s going to be a big exodus at one time.
It’s all just weird.
Memory Failings
Posted: Fri 28 August, 2020 Filed under: 1BEM, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Do you suffer from long-term memory loss?
I don’t remember, I don’t remember(Chumbawumba’s “Amnesia”)
Within my office block, I’m regularly gobsmacked by how people seem incapable of seemingly simple tasks, like remembering to turn things off that they’ve just turned on. For example, walking in to the toilets, turning on the lights, and failing to turn them off again when leaving. (And sometimes also somehow forgetting to turn off taps that they’ve just used)
I honestly don’t understand this – and I’m potentially being charitable by attributing it to forgetfulness, rather than just being unthinking asshats – but it does seem to be ever more prevalent. Maybe it’s related to the office rentals being all-inclusive, meaning people give less of a sod about utilities and so on.
But even then, I wonder, is that also how they are at home? Do they keep leaving things on there as well? Do their partners/parents just keep on tidying up after them, turning things off again?
(And just because I’m not perfect – I’ve been meaning to write this post for the last two weeks, and I’ve kept on forgetting to do so)
One Speed Fits All
Posted: Fri 17 July, 2020 Filed under: 1BEM, Commuting, Domestic, Driving, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »Recently I’ve noticed something odd on my journeys to/from the office that really annoys me. And it’s to do with speeding (as the title may have suggested)
Particularly on my way home, the drive contains a variety of country roads and towns/villages, so we fairly regularly swap between speed limits of 60 and 30mph, with one small stretch at 20mph. Which is easy, so long as you’ve got a brain, and some awareness. (And you’d pretty much hope that a driver has both)
But no. On a regular basis, I see drivers who decide to drive at about 40mph the whole way, regardless of what the limit actually is. It means they’re either going ridiculously slowly, or stupidly fast.
It’s not really a problem as such – it’s just annoying, and I truly don’t understand the thinking that leads to this behaviour. It’s all just bizarre, really.
Lockdown – Space
Posted: Mon 1 June, 2020 Filed under: Domestic, Lockdown, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »One of the weirdest things I’ve found about the Lockdown (I can’t really call it the current lockdown any more, the speed with which it’s being rescinded) is that outside my house, there have been many more parking spaces than usual.
I can’t explain it – all logic says that with fewer people travelling, the spaces would’ve been filled at the start of the lockdown and then vehicles wouldn’t have moved. However, that’s not been the case – there are fewer vehicles, and the spaces seem to vary all the time, but there are always spaces.
All I can assume is that where I live has a fair percentage of people who have second homes here (for commuting during the week or whatever- we’re only an hour from London, so it kind of makes sense) and who haven’t been here while things have been different.
I’m not complaining – it’s just always seemed odd to be able to park outside my own house, rather than having to find spaces further away.