I thought I’d do some tweaking with the blog earlier, thankfully I also had an inclination to back up the entire server space. My tweaking totally screwed things up and my blog looked like it was written in notepad!

The back-up file did the trick though and everything should now hopefully be restored!

Meanwhile … earlier on, at a brief loose end I found myself in M&S at Sixfields. I didn’t even know they had a café but they do so, fancying a slice of bakewell and a flat white I wandered over. The general conversation was as ‘one’ might expect. The ladies before me had ordered some Earl Grey and some Green Tea and spoke like they had horses outside, the ladies behind me were similar, beige coat, fur hat sort of thing and a handbag, his wife was dressed similar  😉

I found myself automatically dropping in to posh speak when I ordered my bakewell and coffee, quite relaxed and enjoying the moment. The lady serving, lovely woman, somewhere like Sheffield she came from if I had to guess. Well, she had that put on well spoken voice too. She told me the amount but was a little hesitant until she realised I was paying by card.

“Put your thing in the hole” she said

I replied, “I’ve not had an invitation like that for a while”

Oops, it just seemed to slip out (no pun intended). Seemed to be a bit of an ice breaker as the place came to a standstill for a while whilst both staff and customers composed themselves from laughing so much.

It was good to cross the social divide and create some happiness.

By the way, they do ever so good bakewell tarts and flat white.

Additionally meanwhile … The new SD card for the SatNav should arrive in the morning, about time and let’s hope that works AND, my originally ordered pair of glasses should be with me by next Wednesday, they’ve just taken two months and seems high level, beyond branch management are now involved.

In my next blog entry I am hoping to post some pictures of the newly decorated office with all the stickers and licence plates I’ve been building up here.

One Direction confirm Zayn Malik has left the group | Music | The Guardian.

I guess this news isn’t going to impress many either.

It’s a brave decision though, hope he understand what a normal 22 year old is else he’s going to have a lot of trouble being one.

Jeremy Clarkson dropped from Top Gear, BBC confirms – BBC News.

How typically BBC and it’s Old Boy network that regardless of who Clarkson has attacked over the years they’ve made their excuses and let him carry on yet, he attacks one of the ‘Boys’ at the BBC and he’s sacked!

It says way more about the BBC than it does JC. Even when announcing the news the man from the Beeb was practically apologetic as though, if he could find some way of letting it go he would. I’d not be at all shocked were JC not back on Top Gear in 2016

Now, sadly, this does leave rather a lot of confusion for those booked for a ‘Top Gear Live’ event. I am not entirely sure what is going to happen there but, surely all must be cancelled now? As of the latest I’ve been able to discover, the organisers and promoters are certain the shows will go ahead as planned with the Top Gear presenters, May, Hammond and Clarkson. Whether they can legally use a man sacked from the show to represent it internationally is another question, one which would be a major embarrassment to the BBC.

But, good old Jeremy eh? A bit of a knob says James May, well, that’s kind of an understatement mate. He’s a sexist, homophobic out of touch snob is what he is coupled with a large degree of racism thrown in and total disregard for anyone who doesn’t think how he does.

My personal experience of the man was when he unusually refused to meet the guests on a show he co-hosted with Ruby Wax and his reason was that he didn’t want to spend any more time with that sort of people than he had to … the show was about gay parents.

Perhaps now Top Gear can get back to what it used to be really good at, presenting cars in a fun and entertaining way across the broad range, not just Super Cars. Perhaps it can get back to letting the cars be the stars and not how Clarkson and crew now have it that the cars are almost an annoying interruption to their version of entertainment

I cancelled them nearly 2 months back because they were costing too much … I look at my account with them and it seems they overcharged me, on average, £20 a month based on actual usage. When I left I got charged a £60 fee for leaving and that still left me in credit by nearly £40!

I’ve been trying to get the money back for a while but they say they won’t pay until a 3rd party organisation verifies that the switch was all above board and my meter readings are likely to be accurate! They already done this for gas and I was ‘honest’ there, my last meter readings for electricity were slightly higher than the estimate OVO made so, you’d think they’d take it as a given I am not trying to commit fraud but, anyway …

Stupid me didn’t cancel the direct debit with them, today they took another £163 from my account!

Spoke to OVO, they said they’re entitled to keep taking payments until they finalise everything and they’ll refund me with my last bill which can take up to another 3 weeks!

I mentioned that they are not agreeing with my current viewpoint on the matter (or words to that effect). I then spoke to a manager who said they’d made one or two mistakes and agreed, taking the money was in error as they’d agreed to take no further payments. She suggested I contact my bank. Did that and the money should be refunded this evening. How much longer I have to wait for the final amount OVO owe me is anyone’s guess ….

That said, the council owe me nearly £400, have done for a couple of weeks and I am still waiting for that too. When I pay people, my lovely bank gets it into their account within 2 hours and often within seconds. Strange how many companies ‘cannot’ do the same thing.