Friday, January 30, 2015

Result and a Nob

The red car below is owned by a nob......it was left there this morning at 7.00am, sometimes people do block the driveway while they nip across the road for a paper etc. The nobs car was still there at 11.00! As you can see there was no chance of getting the little C3 Citroen out.

There was a sticker on the window that indicated where the chap or chapess worked, I rang them, they were very helpful and very quickly found out it was one of their employees, I indicated that my wife had an hospital appointment, and if it wasn't moved shortly I was going to put a brick through the window and move it.     

Ten minutes later a very apologetic chap turned and said it was too snowy to go any further so he just abandoned it and walked the 3 miles to work, he was so apologetic I almost felt sorry for him.

I fixed the brick back into the wall and carried on with my day.


Next the result........

For over a month now we have been trying to get a refund from the Australian shipper of our belongings, the belongings only got as far as a Manchester warehouse rather than Sydney, as we had paid for the goods to all the way to Sydney and I had in fact picked up the goods and now had them in my possession they owed us a lot of money but out the kindness of their hearts decided to refund us $475 out of $1745.

We have been waiting for the refund for nearly 6 weeks and have rang them twice and sent numerous emails, last night I had my angry head on so we sent them a letter demanding the email address of the managing director,I also found their lovely facebook site with lots of glowing references of what a wonderful company they were.

My thoughts on the company were far from glowing so I stated the honest facts on their facebook site.   

This morning the money was in the bank, along with a grovelling apology on facebook and in an email from their accounts manager.

Social media rules OK!

Which brings us to living in the real world......we don't like it and I am getting far too angry at in the scheme of things quite trivial events, although to be fair $475 isn't trivial.

We need to get back to a more relaxed lifestyle..........

NARROWBOATING

I have mentioned it before, but we are very seriously looking at getting another boat....

Probably around about the 57ft mark, prefer cassette dunny, semi trad, pullman dinette and proven live-aboard would be a start. 

We still have 5 months left on our lease here in the cottage so we have plenty of time, I just thought I would put the feelers out early in case anyone knows of any decent boats coming up for sale.

We would still like to escape to Spain next winter, but if we have a boat it is quite simple and doable. 



Thursday, January 29, 2015

I've Been Working!!


For Free!!

We had a really good dump of snow this morning, and even though the road outside had been gritted cars soon became stuck in the slippery conditions.


I joined some of the other locals pushing vehicles on their way.



I  spent about 2 hours helping out.




This one was a bit too heavy!


The snow carried on for a few more hours and the roads became completely impassable except for the 4WDs 


Later on we took the boys for a walk around Bolly, Bombo loves it.








Later in the day the sky cleared a bit.


But not for long, a lot more snow is forecast, bring it on! 


Monday, January 26, 2015

Australia Day 2015

We always planned to go out for a drink on Australia Day, what we didn't expect was for Ray and Diane to turn up with requisite bunting and flags.

Once the bunting was sorted we toddled off to the pub.

Fosters was on special for £1.80 a pint!! Thankfully they had run out of the foul tasting piss. 


We were the only Aussies in the pub, actually we were the only people in the pub! Although later we were joined by a young Aussie lad that plays cricket for a local team, he hails from Tamworth NSW and is loving his time in Bolly.

It was an intimate little party but as always with Ray and Duane great fun.


The doggies got into the act wearing their Aussie rugby shirts!



Happy Australia Day Readers xxxxx

The Old Operating Theatre, Museum and Herb Garret.

Elaine has always wanted to visit the The Old Operating Theatre, Museum and Herb Garret in Southwark, so yesterday we were up very early and took the high speed Virgin down to London.

The museum is virtually next to the Shard


This is the entrance, then it is up a very narrow spiral staircase.


The old operating theatre.


And operating table.


It is quite a small but very interesting museum, click here for the details.


Elaine was in her element.


Herbs galore.



The witch herself....and I mean that in the nicest possible way.


One for the ladies bits!!


I especially liked the cervical dilator.....bet most of the ladies didn't! 


After we finished our museum visit we met up with Elaine's sister and hubby.

We had a drink in a pub at London Bridge before heading off to Jamie Oliver's restaurant in Covent Garden for a long lunch, Elaine's niece Josie managed to  pop in and catch up between gigs.

Many thanks for the lunch guys, we will treat you to the Bolly chippy when you come up north!


Once again a lovely day in London, then it back on board the virgin for the high speed trip back to Macclesfield, a nice bottle of red finished off the day nicely.


We stayed at Elaine's dads for the night in Macc, the dogs had spent the day there, and Elaine,s bro Trevor had given them a couple of good walks during the day.

This morning this fellow was having breakfast on the bird table in the back yard, so is he grey or red?


Thursday, January 22, 2015

A Cunning Plan!

We are off to Cornwall in a few weeks time with some of the Aston Marina boaters, there will be eight of us altogether, staying in a cottage.

We will probably take it in turns cooking, so with that in mind we invited Ray and Diane from NB Ferndale round for dinner last night. They are currently moored up on the Bollington aqueduct.

The plan was that I would cook dinner.....once they sampled my culinary delights, there would be no chance of me cooking in Cornwall!

I am pleased to say the cunning plan worked a treat!

This morning I was up at an ungodly hour as I had promised to take Diane to Macclesfield station as she was off to Watford for a few days.  I had to pick her up at 11.00am!!

As Diane is away we will meet up with Ray for early doors tomorrow at the local.


Back to today.....

The snow has all but gone from Bollington and we thought it had also gone the surrounding countryside.  However this afternoon wee jumped in the car and went for a drive up the hills behind Bolly.  Just as we were about to leave El's brother Trevor arrived, so he came with us.

We had only driven for about half a mile when we came across this ...

Another couple of miles and we were in a winter wonderland ...

They have had a serious dump of snow up here ...

We stopped in the Goyt Valley and decided to walk around the reservoir ...


Elaine's arty shot ...


It was a lovely day and temp was about -3, but with no wind it felt a lot warmer.


The dogs were loving it as there were animal tracks everywhere.  Here is Sammie burying his head in the snow checking out a scent ...

I just love the snow ...

Bombo was going so crazy he discarded his coat that El makes him wear!  He then dug deep ... 

The sun was going down rapidly so we decided to back track.  We really didn't want to get lost and call out the emergency services!  We will start a bit earlier next time then we should be able to circumnavigate the lake. 


Mush doggie ...


Elaine playing snow angels!  You can also see some animal tracks on the left of the pic ...

A view of the reservoir on the other side.  We will tackle the walk around that one another time!

All in all, a lovely afternoon!

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Catching up.....

On Monday we caught up with some old friends from Aston Marina.

They drove over to us in Bolly, bringing with them  a lovely bunch of flowers for the lovely Elaine ...

We went across the road to the Spinners.  I am pleased to say we are now on first name terms with the bar staff....we are officially locals!


Sammie tongued his old friends ...

Me and Roly at the business end ...

Joan, Bev and Duane ... two of them were drinking tea!! 

Afterwards they all came back to the cottage for nibbles.  It was great to catch up with them all.


The snow has just about all gone around Bolly.  I was walking the dogs the other day, treading carefully so as not to slip on the ice when I came across this old biddy's house, who had put about a truck load of grit outside her house to melt the half inch of snow!  I skidded on the grit and nearly went arse over tit!  In the process I ripped the sole off of my u-beaut  boots that I bought in Spain!!  I am pleased to say that a cobbler has reattached the sole so they will live on!

We are both off to London this Sunday to have a look around some medical museum that El wants to see ... then hopefully catch up with Elaine's sis and bro in law.  We are very much looking forward to that, we do love our London trips!