20 January 2011 (Thursday) - Phone Calls and Letters

Over the last few days I might have given the impression that I’ve fallen out with the parrot. The parrot certainly redeemed herself last night – she climbed off her cage and marched across the floor to me. I put my hand on the floor by her, and she carried on marching up my arm. I felt quite flattered that I was allowed to hold her; the only drawback was that she wouldn’t hold on very tight, and she nearly fell off a few times. But that was last night…

Regular readers of this drivel may recall that we’ve lost our marriage certificate, and on Monday I ordered a copy. The copy cost me over twenty three quid, and it’s arrived. As I showed ‘er indoors ^TM the copy, so she showed me the original which she’d found. Oh, how we laughed.

As I was on a late start I took the opportunity to see what other post I had waiting for my attention. I had the bill for this last month’s mobile phone use, which is substantially less than the bill for the old phone used to be. I took part in a customer survey for Asda. They wanted to know my shopping preferences on a wide range of items. Which struck me as odd – surely they could work that out from my credit card transactions with them. After all, Tesco’s seem to do so when they send my vouchers for money off the things I regularly buy from them.

Axa Sun Life Services had written to us telling us our policy was due to mature in less than a month. I phoned them - in the first instance I needed to know exactly what policy was maturing. It turned out it was one of the endowments for the mortgage. This presented a problem – all the paperwork was made out to pay off the Portman building society. They were taken over by the Nationwide some time ago. And all the paperwork included the name of a Ms Gardner. ‘er indoors ^TM  hasn’t been that for twenty four years.

The chap at Axa was helpful. The endowment we took out isn’t going to pay off the mortgage; it’s going to be a couple of thousand pounds short. Not as bad as it might have been really, but at the time we were led to believe it would pay off the mortgage and we’d have several thousand pounds cash in our hands. I might just have a quiet word with the chap who sold me the endowment and see if I can’t shame him into covering the shortfall out of his own pocket – after all it was my own father in law. Failing that, I’ll have to resort to the policy we took out ten years ago to make up the difference.

The chap at Axa did tell me to contact the building society to be sure that all would be well at their end. So I phoned the Nationwide building society who assured me all would be well. I need to write back to Axa Sun Life – I’ll do that tomorrow – if my printer works. I am reliably informed that it doesn’t any more. And to add insult to injury, the nice chap at Axa Sun Life said he didn’t need to see the copy of our marriage certificate. I’d only got the thing for him (!)

Canada Life wrote to me to tell me that the payments on ‘er indoors ^TM pension were going up. And Aspinalls wrote to me – I donate monthly to their zoos. They’d sent me a money off voucher in November which I opened today. I have a couple of weeks to use it. I bet I don’t…

Yesterday I mentioned that I phoned English Heritage to complain about their website. A very contrite sounding lady phoned me today to apologize for their failings. She offered no excuses, but openly admitted they’d stuffed up. Apparently they had some big revamp to their website last year which had stuffed up some of the dates. I took the opportunity to point out that for a lot of their venues in Kent and Sussex, their websites only have opening times for last year. She again apologised and said she’d look into it, but asked me to be patient. Apparently their web team usually make a big effort to update everything in April. I tried to suggest that having a web team meant that surely they could sort it out today, but she wasn’t having any of it.

And the just as I was about to leave for work, Eon phoned wanting to save me money on my gas and leccie bill. They got quite snotty when I told them I wasn’t interested. On the one hand I suppose that the bloke phoning me up is only doing his job. On the other hand I have specifically told BT that I don’t want people phoning me up trying to sell me things.

To work via Sainsbury’s Being on a late I thought they might have got round to putting out their salad bar. They had – it was nice (as far as salad goes!) And while I was in the area I filled my car with petrol at their filling station. I shall go there more often. I usually go to the Tesco ones, where the petrol pumps are much closer together. You can drive through the Sainsbury’s filling station without worrying that you’re going to scrape up against other cars.

Work was much the same as ever, and then home. I wasted about half an hour trying to find somewhere within half a mile of my house where I could park. The roads were all parked solid – eventually I saw a car pull out and I had his space.

And then I came home and went mad. Last night the parrot got back into my good graces. This evening every time I tried to speak she screamed as loud as she could. I gave up trying to have a conversation. And trying to watch the telly became a rather futile exercise too.

I may mellow overnight, but my plan for tomorrow is to take the parrot back to her owners before I wring her neck…