Thursday January 19th 2023

What a frustrating day - you would think wouldn't you, that if a couple move to a new-build home, that they would start getting bills for gas, electricity and water, without having to tell the companies supplying it to start charging us? What madness! 

Since moving in, on October 31st, we have had no utilities bills, and it's now 2 and a half months since we came here! It's ridiculous! 

Lying in bed this morning at around 7 am, I suddenly realise this fact, with a start! My goodness, I can't let this go on or we might be faced with massive demands for money at some point in the future. It's madness !!!!  [You've established that already! - Ed]

So today turns out to be a frustrating day, because I have to ring the Severn Trent water company helpline and then the British Gas hotline. 

Severn Trent have apparently "not set up the new account yet", which is extremely poor - they were our suppliers in Cheltenham so we just moved to a new address in their area and we're not new customers. So what's so difficult about that?

British Gas, who supply both our gas and our electricity, turn out to be unaware that our smart meter for gas isn't functioning - it isn't sending them any information about our usage of gas, which is crazy! And it turns out that we haven't received any bills yet for electricity, because we haven't yet used up the Governments £200 handout to customers, to help them with the much bigger bills that everybody is getting now. 

This proves to be all a bit tortuous to unravel. The woman on the helpdesk is charming, however, and I tell her eventually she's the nicest person I've ever talked to on a helpdesk. 

She asks me if it's cold where I live, and comments that it's very warm where she is. She tells me that she's speaking to me from South Africa, so that figures - it's summer there, just like it is with our daughter Sarah in Perth, Australia. I had already "clocked" the woman's South African accent, but hadn't thought anything of it because there are hundreds of thousands of South Africans living in the UK. 

She says she makes a habit of talking to her customers like she would if she were talking to somebody in her family. 

Why can't they all do that?!!!!!

She's so nice that I forgive her for twice making me go downstairs, out into the cold, to get down on the cold hard ground to try and look inside the battered brown gas meter box - it's madness !!!!

I twice have to get right down on the cold hard ground outside our front door

to try and read the little gas meter inside the nasty brown box - it's madness !

(box highlighted by my graphics team, i.e. me)

Thank goodness for phones that can take pictures! I couldn't possibly read the tiny figures on them, so I take a couple of pictures witt my phone. First the woman wants the serial number of the meter, and then a few minutes later I have to go down again to take a reading. It's crazy!!!!

11:00 There's excitement in the air this morning as Lois and I look out onto our new-build street, when we realise that Persimmon, the builders, are planting some trees across on the other side from us. That's going to make the street a lot more attractive, no doubt about that!

Persimmon, the builders, are starting to plant some

thin, weedy-looking trees on the other side of the street, which is nice!

Lois thinks the trees may be silver birches because some of the thin, weedy-looking trunks look a little bit white, or pale at least. The trees planted obviously need to be thin trees, though, otherwise they would crowd out the cars parked in front of people's houses, which wouldn't be good, to put it mildly!

12:00 We go for a walk round and about the local Three Horseshoes pub and take a look at the nearby church, St Andrews, where some of the local U3A groups hold meetings. I myself have joined the local U3A, and Lois is planning to do so when she gets a moment - life is such a mad whirl here, there's hardly time to breathe haha!

we go for a walk around and about the Three Horseshoe pub -

in the background you can see part of the Malvern Hills range

Aren't the Malvern Hills great? They are formed from some of the oldest rocks in the England, originating in the late Precambrian, so are approximately 680 million years old. 

On our walk we briefly look into the local parish church, St Andrews, and see some of the rooms where many local groups hold meetings, including the U3A (University of the Third Age).

we stop by St Andrews parish church, where several

local community groups are holding meetings

20:30 We wind down with yesterday's edition of Winterwatch, part of a fortnight of daily looks at the UK's winter wildlife, with the help of a team of live presenters and a network of hidden cameras.

Who's ever heard of the long-eared owl? We certainly hadn't! 

When long-eared owls hunt, they use their incredible eyesight of course, but also their hearing. This particular species was called the long-eared owl because of its extraordinary long tufts on top of its head, but Lois and I didn't know that these tufts aren't ears at all, they're just feathers - it's madness!

If you take an owl's face off - don't try this at home haha -  you can see where the ears are - seen here shown in red, flaps of skin with feathers on top.

The stiff red tufts on each side are apparently like big dishes channelling the sound down to the ears beneath. 

Surprisingly, as you can see, left and right are asymmetrical. Left and right are pointing at different angles for a good reason: on the left side the ear is actually pointing down a little, while the right side is pointing upwards. So any sound arrives in one ear slightly before it arrives in the other ear, depending on where the sound is coming from. This enables the owl to determine exactly where the sound is coming from, not only in 2 dimensions, but in 3 dimensions.

Here, we see presenter Chris Packham graphically demonstrating the advantages of the system:

Just one more mad feature of the crazy world that owls live in !!!! 

Could Lois and I train our ears to do something similar perhaps, maybe by holding our heads more sideways? Although we don't normally hunt mice etc - we haven't got the time, to be frank!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!