kestrel

it’s cold in the house today – so I went downstairs to put the heating on. The control is on the wall-mounted boiler in the kitchen.

I spent some seconds staring into the cupboard *next* to the boiler in some confusion, until I remembered that it was a cupboard, not the boiler.

it would probably be kindest to have me put down.

a *very* happy birthday to scarlatti – may next year be better, and may your upcoming UK trip be entirely splendid!

we trundled off to Thornbury this afternoon to look at a car – a black Subaru Forester, although that’s not important right now.

it was at a car sales lot, and the chap came out, went to fetch the keys, came back, unlocked it and started the engine.

first thing I asked was “is it a UK model or an import?”, to which his response was “they’re all imports, madam – they come from Japan”. I’m surprised he didn’t pat me on the head, really. This exchange was repeated three or four times, until I said “could you please answer my question – is it a UK model or a grey import?”. To which he replied “it’s grey”. Then he switched off the engine, removed the keys, locked the car and walked away!

perlmonger and I looked at each other in some bewilderment for a few moments, then perlmonger followed the chap to the office and told the guy that he was rather impolite, at which point he stood on the doorstep and informed us that he was polite to people if they were polite to him. I told him that we was looking for a black Forester, and he said he wouldn’t sell us a car. And we responded – fairly predictably – that we wouldn’t want to buy one from him. And he called me “darling”, which really didn’t help. Neither did it help when I asked him not to. He then referred to me as perlmonger’s colleague – when I pointed out I was his wife, he said “well, I havent seen your wedding certificate”.

I said that I was quite surprised he ever sold anything to anyone, and told him I hadn’t been impolite (which I hadn’t, but I was veering towards Very Polite by this stage), but that he came across as extremely patronising. He informed me that he owned the car and the garage, and that he did very nicely thank you. Things didn’t look as though they were going to improve, really, so we departed to the Subaru dealer in Bristol*, and found several other nice Foresters to look at.

perlmonger and I truly weren’t rude at all – but we *did* want to know the provenance of the vehicle, and he simply wouldn’t tell us. We’re no strangers to grey import vehicles – we own two now, and actually turned up in one, had he bothered to look.

a very strange experience, really. He’s Thornbury Car Centre, by the way – you might wish to make a note so you can avoid them.

*I’d been in there last weekend, and the guy recognised me, greeted me by name, and was helpfulness itself – now that’s the way to do it. And we’re test driving one tomorrow :)

we have just about finished the work that is due on 30/11. We have just about finished the work for the same client that is due on 31/12!

another client who has been dragging their heels over their new site has phoned and said – at last – how pleased they are with it, and that our navigation to the top levels of their online catalogue (said catalogue done by someone else entirely) is better than the catalogue’s own. Which is nice.

have almost completed the quote for a largish job for an existing client which should take care of January’s sales forecast.

have cooked and consumed proper shepherds’ pie, made with minced cooked lamb. Stopped at two glasses of wine, though the temptation was strong.

have watched Pirates of the Caribbean – rah! What an excellent film that is. And Johnny Depp in eyeliner … [swoon]

and now it’s the weekend, and we can take it easy-ish in December. Life is getting better. I think.

night all …

this will probably be my default icon over the festering season.

in other news, I dreamt last night that someone gave perlmonger and I a Fiat dealership, situated on the Norwich ring road. As we arrived, the Managing and Financial Directors were clearing their desks, in their very nice office, which had floor to ceiling windows on two sides, and you had to walk down a flight of four steps – the width of the room – to get to the main space. All carpeted with very expensive carpet.

we inherited some staff – a girl who had an office with two desks in it, and a gas cooker behind her. In a sort of deep turquoise,, but about 18″ higher than a normal cooker. Then there were two more girls, one with a very bad curly perm, and a rather dim middle-aged chap who washed the vehicles and moved them about. There was a spiral staircase down to the basement, which had lots of exposed pipes in it.

god knows what it all meant – but if I’m to have a car dealership, surely I could dream about something a little more exciting than bloody Fiat?

as I have often said, it’s like the killing fields round here. Yesterday, Lilith brought in a pigeon, and went to ground with it under the head of the bed, where she couldn’t be got at. Liessa went to join the fun and, although [I'm very pleased to say] I didn’t go in there, perlmonger says that there were ghastly crunching and slurping sounds. TMI, I’m sure.

we pulled the bed out last night to dispose of the remains, and hoover up the feathers. There are a *lot* of feathers on a pigeon – so many that the little Dustbuster couldn’t cope, and the Dyson had to brought into play. While vacuuming, perlmonger located a mouse [deceased]. He located it because the Dyson slurped it into its narrow hose, rear end first, and so we were treated to the image of the head and torso of a mouse sticking out of a vacuum cleaner tube.

In case anyone is unaware what we have to put up with, a reminder is here. There is also another dead [soggy] mouse on the patio, and the remains of another pigeon bagged up waiting for the bin men.

is it any wonder that we’re disturbed?

I nearly always agree with Libby Purves’ articles in the Times, and today’s is no exception.

“IT IS easy to get distracted. A pair of bat-eared Charleses bludgeon one another in a cartoonish class war; irate huntsmen and soppy fox-huggers snarl across the hedgerows, while police roll their eyes to heaven. House prices slide, the Home Secretary’s private life startles, and a weird fashion emerges for buying turkeys stuffed with geese and costing £185 each. Meanwhile, various intimate surveys of the national navel-fluff reveal that we like money more than time and that our nine-year-olds are hooked on designer labels. Tasty topics beckon on every side. Even for the most devoted news junkie, it is easy not to mention the war ….

We are told to “move on” and that Iraq will not be an election issue. Until the Red Cross is happier, I for one will find that move impossible.”

read the rest here

I have done Something to my right shoulder, and it hurts when I do *that* [omnes: "don't do it, then"]. If I stretch my arm sideways, I get a sharp pain, and I can hear all the little bones clicking – sorry, TMI probably. This makes working quite tricky, as that’ exactly how I get to the Artpad, but heigh ho.

I suspect that it’s tension related; we’ve had a very tough couple of weeks on a variety of levels, although I can see the light at the end of a tunnel, and I don’t *think* it’s the train. I was thinking of booking a session with .. what? Physio, chiropracter, osteopath? Not sure what’s the best.

any recommendations?

after some Outs, which perlmonger has detailed, and a very stressful week, we decided that we would just veg out this weekend.

so we have done pretty much bugger all, in real terms; I cleared out the baking cupboard, which resulted in me putting 1.5kg (yes, really) of dried fruit into a humungous fruit cake (currently driving us mad while it cools down). I’ve also cleaned – *and tidied* – the kitchen. I knew it was there somewhere under the junk mail and so forth. And I have done all the prep for tonight’s beef stroganoff,, accompanied with matchstick chips, for which I must thank Pete for locating some Dexter fillet in the bowels of the freezer.

he has gone to the farm shop for me, and ripped some more vinyl – a slow process, but worthwhile. Tonight he has done Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, which I sang when I was a lass. Soon, the aforementioned beef wossname, and a DVD.

a good day.  Hope you all had as relaxing a one as we have.