17 July 2018 (Tuesday) - Jubilee Clips

I had an early night last night; however that isn’t always a good thing. I was wide awake well before five o’clock worrying about my car’s tyre. I went and had a look at it and it seemed fine.
I then stood on the scales. I’ve rather left the diet slip recently. I am going to go back on the diet for a while and see how much more weight I can shift. Currently weighing in at sixteen stone I’ve put on six pounds since I last weighted myself.

Over brekkie (toast, jam and coffee, three hundred calories) I watched “Trailer Park Boys” who had gone to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida for no adequately explored reason, then I had a look at the Internet.
Facebook was awash with the usual racist lies and self-pity, but glossing over that I saw that I saw that Nick had posted up his photos of the weekend’s road trip. I particularly liked them; I always like someone else’s photos of something I’ve done. I like seeing the thig from a different point of view (both figuratively and literally).

I also had an email from the bank. How would I rate the way they dealt with the phone call I made to them on Friday?
Oh my piss boiled.
With minutes to go before our European road trip last Friday I realized that if I suddenly started using my credit card all over France and Belgium the bank might think something odd was going on and might cancel the card. So I thought I might tell them I was going on a road trip round Europe and I might be using my card overseas. It would take five seconds for me to say that, and it would take them five seconds to say “OK”. Or so I thought.
The person I spoke to was either incredibly difficult or incredibly stupid. A conversation which didn’t need to take more than ten seconds dragged on for over fifteen minutes, and at the end of it the bank wouldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t just stop the card anyway.
I gave their e-survey the big thumbs-down, and made great show of saying that had the branch not been so thoroughly useless on Thursday then I wouldn’t have had to have phoned them in the first place.
Mind you I doubt anything will come of this; what can come of it – it is all too late now anyway.

I settled the hounds and went out to my car. I was relieved to see the tyre was still looking OK.
As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were talking about a scheme to replace the nation's copper phone lines with a future-proofed fibre-optic system. Concern was expressed as (apparently) no one knows exactly what the current copper-wire system is plugged into, and more than a bit of concern was expressed that seeing how private companies are going to do the upgrade, bills will rise by about a fiver per month to pay for it.
Personally I can't see why anyone would be surprised at this. If a nation sells off its infrastructure, those who take it on do so with the intention of making a profit from it, don't they?

I seemed to catch every red traffic light as I drove to the motorway. The roads were rather busy today. As I drove up the motorway there was a lot of talk on the radio about President Trump's meeting with the Russian premier.
The general consensus is that for someone who has made a trademark out of being a loud-mouthed loose cannon, President Trump rolled over and sucked up to the Russians like a wimp. This has fuelled the rumours and speculation that he is in their pay, having got into office through the Russians alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential elections. Is it true? Somehow I doubt it, but you can't help but wonder why he acted as he did.

I got to work and did my bit. I came out only to get stuck in traffic. The Maidstone sink-hole continues to bung up the roads.
Once home I was met with disaster. There was no water circulating through the pond filter even though the pump was obviously working. The problem was obvious – the jubilee clip holding the water hose to the pump had worked loose. The fix was similarly obvious – replace the jubilee clip. A trip to B&Q and some time spent wrestling with a pond-slime encrusted hose and a screwdriver eventually had the problem fixed. Whilst I was at it I ran out the hose pipe – the recent hot spell has caused quite a bit of evaporation from that pond.
I can’t help but wonder why the old jubilee clip worked loose, but I have a vague recollection of it happening before. There is probably a blog entry about is somewhere…

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