Tuesday 23 August 2016

Sad news

It is with a heavy heart that I have to write and tell you that Martha went over the rainbow bridge on Monday 8th August.
She had a short battle with cancer.
Just a month short of her 15th birthday, we miss her daily and love her lots.

Run free sweet girl xxxx

Monday 16 May 2016

New home woes!

It's Saturday the 14th of May and I'm sat in my bedroom reading my emails as this is the only place I can get a tiny bit of 3G when up pops an email saying


Well I run down stairs to see if there is a delivery note through the door as I've not heard the bell or a knock.
No note , no sign of a van in the distance.
I ring the customer information line after searching their website to get through to an automated service that takes me four separate attempts to navigate
"I'm sorry we didn't recognise that number" hangs up.
"I'm sorry we didn't recognise that number" hangs up...etc etc
On attempt five I refuse to give the automatic women any information and finally speak to somebody. She informs me that she will communicate with the depot and they will ask the driver to REdeliver!

So it's Saturday I have the day to myself because my husband, youngest and two friends have gone to Wembley to watch the women's FA cup final and my eldest is at a birthday party.
I'm sat in the living room watching out the window like a hawk, mobile by my side in case it rings.
Now I know that my house is brand new and hard to find but after eight weeks it's beginning to really pee me off.

On Wednesday we were finally graced by the presence of a BT openreach engineer he connected up the fibre optic thingimmyjigs from the front of the house to the inside of the house so hopefully when we have two green lights we can ring BT and arrange to be connected back to the real world!!
Not having any broadband or telephone connection for the last 8 weeks has been 'fun' you find yourself slowly weened of Facebook,Twitter and Instagram but when you realise that you now live in Cheshire's version of the Bermuda Triangle and 3G and 4G signals are a rarity you start to get a bit ratty. I have also realised that I have a rubbish contract with EE and am constantly using up my data.
This results in not being able to read emails, receive iMessages, connect to what's app messages and apparently receive calls!!!
I've been transported to the 80s.
I can thankfully use the internet at work and I have been able to check bank balances, update change of addresses, order online shopping etc in my lunch hour and even, in the case of getting Jacks birthday presents, go in at the weekend!!
When moving into a new build it is apparently the new home owners responsibility to register the address with the Royal Mail (I don't believe that) so prior to our move I rang the number provided and informed them I would be moving in, I was told it would take a couple of days to update on various systems but all seemed OK.
I also rang my local council to order my bins after a number of calls to various people who told me different information I was told my bins had been order and would be left in my back garden.
They weren't.
Another call after moving in, to a couple of different people and they finally arrived delivered to my front door.
I promptly filled these bins as I'm sure you can imagine a family of four would do on any normal week never mind a house move on top and put them out on my bin day.
The site manager said he saw the bin men and would inform them about my bins.
I also saw said bin men at lunchtime and spoke to them in the street informing him of my location and full black bin, he told me oh yes I've just emptied that one.
Nope.
I get to the house, bin is full.
On returning to work I see the recycling bin men and have same conversation about full bins.
They found them and emptied them so I ring the council, have a little chat, yes I'm in a new build, no I registered the address over a month ago, the recycling guys managed to find me, the delivery driver managed to find me, my bin is full and you didn't empty it.
Drivers notes say it wasn't out, was it in designated area?
Where is my designated area? (It was at the end of my drive.)
I don't know.
I don't either.
We will send you out some purple bags to put your rubbish in as we won't be collecting it until the next black bin day.
Ok fair enough.
These bags never arrived but a lady from this council did, she found my house and she decided where my designated area was!
So I asked for the bags, she didn't have them, they didn't come in the post and I will get to that!!
With a full black bin and an empty green bin because I haven't needed to use it yet I decide to bag up my household waste and store it in the green bin, I won't put it out on Wednesday, but I do put my recycling boxes at the end of the drive in my newly designated area.
On Wednesday afternoon I pick up my empty recycling boxes from said designated area and walk up to the house and notice a sticker on my green bin which has been sat by the garden gate all day minding its own business happily looking after my extra household rubbish.
This sticker reads that they were unable to empty it as it contained the incorrect waste!!!!
I HADN'T PUT IT OUT.
IT WASN'T IN THE DESIGNATED AREA.
THEY HAD COME UP TO THE HOUSE AND STUCK A STICKER ON IT!!!!

This brings me to the post situation, now I know in this day and age we rarely get much of it but having moved house I though we might get a bit, new utility account stuff etc and also Jack had his 10th birthday 3 weeks after the move so that meant cards.
So after 2 weeks of nothing I popped to the local sorting office and informed them about my situation and address a couple of minutes later he returns with a handful of post, fair enough early days teething problems etc he knows we're in now, I even draw him a little map, post then arrives with postman scribbles on envelope indicating where we are in relation to other houses, nice, joined up thinking, like it. I even post myself a sealed envelope with a message to them, this arrives, the message must be getting through.

Jacks birthday arrives, post doesn't.

I go into town, visit sorting office, same man, he trots off comes back with pile of post, I've gone armed with a map from the David Wilson Site office with road labels and stars and arrows 'we are here'.
Post comes in dribs and drabs, we don't get much!

Jack decides he wants a bank account for his birthday money and Tommy wants a more grown up one too so we go and open accounts, Tommy will be receiving a card and PIN number through the post.
NO POST...
I go into town, visit sorting office, same man, he trots off ...

Thinking I've conquered this one I send of my car log book and driving licence...they're not back yet!

It's beyond frustrating when there are services that just say ok and the next thing you know they're ringing the doorbell.
Sky found us and installed our sky dish.
The window cleaner found us before we moved - slightly stalker like!
The aerial man found us.

Ocado have a phone line and listened to me and wrote down my address manually because even though Royal Mail told me it would update in a few days, eight weeks on it still hasn't, the delivery driver then rang me and asked for directions and on top of that when he had found me he updated HIS notes directing future Ocado drivers so last night my shopping arrived -early- to my front door.

I'm still sat waiting for Yodel to deliver my coffee table on a Saturday because I'm in with nothing to do, unfortunately I'm to scared to turn the Hoover on in case he's half way up the road whispering my name and emailing me to tell me I'm not in.

Wednesday 6 January 2016

Update!

Hello to you, long (long) time no blog!
So just a quick update, still loving the Cheshire life, the boys have settled into school and the dog is going strong, she will be 15 this year!
Well I don't like a post without a photo and what a treat I have for you, if you read my very early genealogy post you'll be aware that we (my mum) had sadly lost the photo she had of her dad in his RAF uniform...drum roll... I went to visit her in the summer and whilst looking through and old album we found it, stuck between two pages in an album she'd searched before!!


Aubrey Belcher Lund

You can see my earlier blog here:
Genealogy Post