The Week in a Rant

After going on about how undignified online ranting can be yesterday, I'm going to risk appearing a hypocrite today by telling you what a lousy week I've had.  I'll try not to let it turn into a rant - I certainly don't think that it is all a conspiracy by members of a comedy discussion forum to ruin my life.  It has just been one of those weeks where problem after problem have piled up on top of each other - every time it looked like I'd surmounted the latest problem, another appeared from left field.  For starters, my car seems to have spent half the week in the garage being variously serviced and MoT'd.  All of which has been highly disruptive to my work patterns.  Not to mention expensive.  Then my electric razor died.  Or rather it required a single spare, a new foil to prevent it hacking my face to bits on the old one which had worn through.  Except that it turns out you can no longer get spare foils for my ten year old razor.  Consequently, I had to buy a new one.  Unfortunately, most of those available seemed to cost three figures - bloody ridiculous!  Having eventually found a shaver at a more reasonable price, actually buying it then became a problem.  Having to do my shaver shopping after work, I found myself in Boots, five minutes before closing time, with both open tills clogged up by these two women who, not satisfied with buying half the shop, also wanted to query aspects of every item with the cashiers.  When I finally managed to pay for the bloody razor, I found the security guard had locked everyone in, as it was past closing time!  For fuck's sake, show some common sense!

Anyway, having started using the shaver, I'm not convinced that it shaves any closer than its predecessor.  However, it doesn't hack my face to pieces.  This problem sorted - and the car issues ongoing - completely out of the blue I get a letter from my car insurers saying that they are still waiting for me to send them a photocopy of my driving licence.  Really?  They've never asked for any such thing.  Indeed, to quote their renewal letter "you don't need to take any further action, your policy will be renewed automatically".  Pretty clear cut, I'd say.  But in their latest missive they even threaten that my policy could be cancelled if I don't provide the documentation they never asked for when it was renewed (and when they took the first payment).  So far I've ignored the letter.  When I have the energy I'll ring them and point out that cancelling the policy because of my failure to provide documents its renewal wasn't dependent upon and I wasn't asked for would be a clear breach of contract on their part.  I'm really not sure why they think threatening their customers in this way will guarantee them repeat business.  Then, yesterday, I came home to find my bathroom infested by ladybirds.  Hordes of the little bastards.  Most I caught and threw out of the window, but those which refused to cooperate vanished up the nozzle of my vacuum cleaner.  What's going on?  Where did they come from?  I seem to recall a friend having a similar experience.  She seemed to think it had something to do with the Curse of King Tutankhamen - she'd seen something about him on TV before the infestation.  I'm not so sure.

Today the car was finally MoT'd, leaving only the road tax renewal to deal with beore the end of the month.  However, my ongoing IT problems continue to waste so much of my time.  The failing hard drive on my main laptop is severely restricting its functionality, whilst my back up laptop (my old IBM Thinkpad) seems incredibly slow.  It also really doesn't like multi-tasking.  Oh, and the 'N' key keeps falling off of the keyboard.  Clearly, a new laptop is needed, but I'm reluctant to splash the cast after all the other spending I've had to do this week.  That said, I've identified a source for a reasonably priced Lenovo laptop with a more modern and powerful processor than either of my current machines.  The only problem is that it is only available in blue.  To misquote former England manager Graham Taylor: 'Do I not like blue'.  Well, there you have it, my lousy week.  Can next week top it?  Is it all a middle class conspiracy to keep me down?  Probably not.