10:30 One of Lois's jobs that she does for her church is to look after the bank account that the church uses, firstly to fund its preaching effort through locally organised seminars, and secondly to provide money to support the twenty or so Iranian Christian refugees who have been baptised and who have joined the church, as well as other Iranians who are preparing to take that step. They are officially classed as asylum-seekers, so they get an allowance from the UK Government, although it could hardly be described as generous. What a nonsense!!!
Lois lives dangerously when it comes to computers and she doesn't always record things like her passwords and pin numbers, but prefers to commit them to her memory, or to trust the computer to store the passwords etc and fill them in for her on her login screen. This habit got her into trouble this week, however, when she got herself locked out from the church's bank account.
When she rang the bank's helpdesk to ask what to do next, they told her that she could remove the lock on her pin number herself, in any ATM cash machine, provided she used the correct pin number. So this morning we drove to our local Tesco express mini-supermarket to try this out - predictably, perhaps, it didn't work, so later this week we're going to have to drive to one of the bank's branches in Tewkesbury to get staff to remove the lock - what a crazy world we live in !!!!
Also this morning we visited our new local NHS doctor's surgery to ask for repeated prescription of our medication, but again we were thwarted. It seems that, as this is the first time we've asked for a prescription here, from this surgery, that we have to get a phone appointment with a doctor first. What a lot of nonsense, when our previous surgery has obviously okayed the medication already - isn't that good enough for the new surgery? It's all the same NHS after all, isn't it?
What total madness !!!!!
Finally we visit the local B&Q mini-DIY-superstore and buy a couple of toilet-roll holders and a mat to go in our hallway. Our fitted carpets are brand-new, because of the house being a new-build, and Lois and I have to indulge in a bit of an awkward scuffle at close quarters when we come in the front door, as we try to compete with each other to get our shoes off and our slippers on first, before we step on the new fitted carpets. This new mat will give us a bit more space so we'll have room to have a real professional tussle from now on haha!
13:00 We have a list of about 30 defects we've discovered in our Persimmon new-build home in Malvern that we moved into on 31st October. That's getting close to almost 1 defect found per day - what madness!
Neil, the customer care manager on the estate was supposed to meet us yesterday to go through our list of defects - and Persimmon are supposed to fix everything listed within 30 days.
As it turned out, Neil couldn't meet us yesterday, but I caught sight of him outside our house at lunchtime today, and I got him to agree to a rescheduled meeting on Tuesday next week, which will be good. And Lois and I have decided that we'll try and find at least another 10 defects before then, to make the meeting well and truly worthwhile haha!
16:30 A phone-call with my sister Gill in Cambridge. By coincidence Gill, like me, had to "break in" a new mobile phone during this last week. Thinking it would be a chore to transfer data, contacts etc herself from the old phone, she decided to take both her old phone and her new phone into the Vodaphone shop in Cambridge at the end of last week.
As it turned out, the shop's incompetent staff spent 3 hours trying to do the job and eventually gave up. How crazy - don't Vodaphone train their employees? Luckily Gill was able to do the job herself at home.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!! [That's enough craziness! - Ed]
We both look ahead to Christmas. Lois and I hope to be spending it with our daughter Alison and family in Hampshire, while Gill and husband Peter will be hosting two of their daughters: Lucy and Zoe with partner Chris, at their Cambridge home. Their third daughter Maria and husband Tom will be enjoying a pandemic-deferred honeymoon in New Zealand, which will be nice!
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