07:00 Lois and I sip our tea in bed and grumble about Thompson and Morgan, and their delivery company, Whistl (formerly TNT). On November 19th Lois ordered some new lavender plants from Thompson and Morgan, a long-established company (1855). She planned to plant them in the bed by our front door. They were despatched on November 24th but they never arrived.
Eventually the delivery company Whistl discovered that the package had been damaged and had to be discarded, but without letting Lois know. We eventually found out the truth from Whistl last Friday. But they asked us to contact Thompson and Morgan to request replacements - why couldn't they do this themselves? And today Thompson and Morgan tell us they have ordered replacement plants, which would be "despatched by the end of December" - but why the delay???! Not good enough, Thompson and Morgan!! And not good enough, Whistl !! We are not happy!!! And now it's getting colder, and the earth is getter harder - damn !!!!
We would at least like to have been emailed a picture of the damaged package! Is that too much to ask???!!!! We often get emailed pictures of packages that have been delivered successfully, standing in our front porch: and we're invited to send Amazon compliments about whether the unseen delivery man was on-time, polite, respectful of our property, and the like: which we always do - we feel sorry for these poor delivery guys, and we think it will up their morale if we give them 5 stars or whatever.
But if your package gets irretrievably damaged, couldn't they still email us a picture of it, with a message saying "Damaged - your Thompson and Morgan order number blah blah blah", with a picture of it in a horrible heap of plant branches and cardboard? And an invitation to award stars for timeliness, politeness etc?
It's the fact of not being told that we are angry about. We're not unreasonable - we realise that things get damaged, and not just small things - just the other day the Universe itself got damaged (report, Onion News):
JPL scientists added that Voyager 1 now appears to be
moving laterally, scraping its left side along the universe’s outer edge, and
that it is expected to continue doing so for the next 50 or 60 years until the
remaining fragments of the probe eventually come to rest in the bottom-right
corner of outer space.
“While we’re receiving only intermittent signals from Voyager now, incoming data indicate that, in addition to nearly totalling the craft’s thermoelectric generator, the collision left a significant dent in the end of the universe as well.”
I have to say, this kind of puts the lavender plant debacle into perspective somehow! But nevertheless come on, you guys at Thompson and Morgan, and Whistl. Get your act together!!
08:00 We tumble out of the shower - it's my turn to clean it, today, which is a bit of a workout in itself. And today is also a "walk day" according to the schedule worked out for me by my NHS physiotherapist Connor. I have 3 "walk days" a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The other days are "exercise days".
Walk days are better, because we go in the mornings, and by 11 am or 12 noon it's all over for the day. I can do a 4.5 mile ride on my exercise bike later on, in the afternoon after nap-time, if I want, but that's strictly optional. Nevertheless I try to do this ride every day if I can - and if I watch YouTube videos at the same time it goes by very quick.
10:30 We do our walk. It's only 36 degrees F, or about 2 degrees C, and we certainly need our scarves today. There's only one other person about - a man jogging with his dog.
1. Reykjavik Social
Services were running a boys' home about 30 years ago out in the frozen wastes
somewhere, where boys were routinely bullied and abused by staff.
2. Four members of staff at the
home - Thor, Omar and Brynja and Gudmundur ("Gummi") - have now
recently been stabbed to death, apparently by a serial killer, who leaves his
"signature" on the eyes of his victims - yuck!!
3. A former inmate of the home,
Andres, now in prison, tells police he knows who the killer is: he says it's
Steinthor ("Steini"), who 30 years ago was an older boy at the home,
and who, Andres says, also killed a younger boy there called "Tommi"
although Tommi's body was never found at the time. Tommi's skeleton has now
been located, however. I think it was dumped in the docks, or something of the
sort.
4. Andres leaks a story onto social
media that police are looking for "Steini", who he says is the
police's principal suspect.
5. Tommi's father, Kristjan, hears
about this social media chat. Full of rage, Kristjan then finds where Steini is
hiding out, at a disused power plant. Kristjan tries to kill Steini in revenge
for the murder of his son Tommi, although I think Steini is in fact still alive
(only just!).
"Steini", recovering in hospital on a drip, strenuously denies having murdered anybody.
"Gummi's murder" is beginning to look different from the other ones. He's the only one to have been pepper-sprayed before he got killed, for instance. Poor Gummi !!!! And there's a suspicion that he was killed because he was trying to talk to an Icelandic TV station about what really went on at the boys' home in the 1980's.
All in all, the main plot theme is turning into more of a cover-up story than just a murder mystery. The police hierarchy and the Government seem anxious to wrap the case up, saying that it's "solved" now, against the wishes of the detectives leading the investigation, Kata and the stony-faced (and now apparently "gay") Arnar.
Yikes!!!
Again the highlights for me are learning little bits of Icelandic. From yesterday's episode I learnt that the Icelandic for "mistake" is "mistök". We got our English word from the Vikings who settled in England over a thousand years ago. Today, to my knowledge this word is only used by English, Icelandic and (I've just found out) Swedish ("misstag"). The Norwegians and Danes have dropped the word for some reason - not "suave and sophisticated" enough, probably!!!
Tonight I find out that our verb "to trust" is "treysta" in Icelandic. Again we got this word from the Viking settlers. Today this word is used only, in this sense, by us and the Icelanders.
Aren't words and languages totally fascinating? Who would want to study anything else???!!!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her Bible Seminar, and we watch an old episode of "The Vicar of Dibley" plus a new up-to-date "lockdown" episode, where we see the vicar, Geraldine, holding some sort of Sunday School class on zoom.
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