Sunday, July 13, 2014

Hi, My Name Is Victor And I Don't Believe It

What does a vacuum cleaner, a patio door, an iPod, my PC, Jaynes Laptop and the electricity supply have in common? Absolutely nothing apart from the fact that yesterday they all featured in expensive or annoying problems. A continuing theme at the moment with a swathe of things going wrong, you won't believe all this happened in one day.

Let's start with the annoying stuff, my PC. After displaying no problems for many a month it decided to go on the fritz and no longer display flash content and to also decide my virus killers registration code was incorrect. Annoying at the best of times and spending a pointless hour getting everything running again didn't set me up for the day of days. Within seconds of fixing my PC Jaynes laptop broke. Bugger. The display had gone completely, a second monitor helped but it looks like the laptop was on its last legs. I pressed the on button on the newly installed monitor and it popped out. No really, it popped out spring and all, I don't believe it! Cue expense and so the tally started...

£400 at least for the laptop and a bit for a new monitor, oh hum.

I tell you what, I'll go to the studio and pop some music on. Wrong! Mr iPod decided that today it was going to bugger around with the volume control, one second it was at full volume the next it was a mouses fart. Barely audible but faintly annoying. I left the studio and made my way back to the house when it decided to wrench the volume up to nose bleed levels. Well, I nearly fell to my knees as I threw off my wireless headphones then nearly threw a wobbly in a fit of petulance. Needless to say a lot of messing about later I had sorted it and went back to the studio.

Oooooooeeeeeeeee!!!! BANG!

'I don't recognise that bit on the song' I though to myself then realised that the noise had come from the house. I removed my headphones and ran back to the house only to find Jayne wide eyed and covered in a black powder, in her hand was the remains of the vacuum cleaner, an acrid smell hung in the air. Dust had launched itself liberally over everything in the house whilst the motor in the vacuum cleaner had decided it had had enough of sucking and decided to blow instead. The vacuum cleaner lay in three pieces, Jayne walked away carrying the handle to it whilst the rest of the cleaner remained on the floor such was the explosion.

Oh my.

£400 & a bit + £300'ish?

We cleaned up the mess and decided to open the patio doors to let a bit of a breeze through. The patio door is of the sliding variety, very heavy duty as it pulls out of the door frame then slides to one side although this time it seemed to be jammed as I pulled it.

Then I found out why.

The whole bloody door came off as I pulled, no really, the whole thing come away from itself accompanied with a pinging sound as the metal tracks irreparably snapped. As it started to fall I tried to catch its weight, unfortunately it's a lot heavier than I thought and it pushed me backwards and into the side of an armchair where it proceeded to pin me down bent over the arm backwards like some crap crab. I yelped and Jayne come rushing in fresh from her explosive cleaning tasks to find her husband pulling squished faces through the glass.

'Geeht thhhes orrfff' I said, for the door had conveniently pinned my face down sideways too, you know the face, same as the ones where you suck your cheeks in and pucker your lips. It took both of us to lift it back up, the patio door was absolutely knackered, with no warning at all to its instability it had managed to snap every bracket and track metal work in one go. There is no choice, it's a replacement for the door and frame, a big job too. I bolted the door back in place and made it secure then went back to my tally for the day.

£400 & a bit + £300'ish + £lotsandlots = No life only work.

Now this you will not believe, I went back to the studio and sat down. The stool I use had worked a few screws loose on one side and today was the day it decided to shed a leg. Picking myself up I kicked the stool. Then went outside and kicked the remains of the vacuum cleaner around the garden. It didn't make me feel any better.

Not to worry, I'll settle down and maybe watch one of those new Come Dine With Me Couples programs on the television. Ahh, that's better.

Plink!

I don't goddam buggering believe it! The electrics tripped! It's like being a sodding real life Victor Meldrew! All I need now is the bathtub to crash through the ceiling and the front door to pop off clown car fashion. Oh, and whilst we are at it get a rambling club to trample through my garden, crash a car through the wall of my living room and get a passing drunk to urinate through my letterbox. Honestly, what a flip flippety flipper of a mother flipping day.

It's like living in a bloody sitcom, two days ago I got stuck down a country lane when an articulated lorry decided to try to turn around in a space that even a mini would have trouble turning in, that was compounded when a cycle club came careering through and surrounded our car. Later that day we had nearly completed a six mile walk and was on the last country lane bit that was quite narrow when around the corner came a tractor, a tractor with a wide cutting blade attachment at the back that barely fitted down the lane. We were the only ones there and the tractor had no inclination to stop. Like a poor Indiana Jones trap we had to take off our rucksacks and press ourselves against a high hedge so it could pass with only centimetres between the blades and it spilling the contents of our lunch with a quick slash to the stomach. The farmer never looked up.

It carried on. Getting to the end of the walk we spied a ice cream van and ordered two ninety-nines to celebrate not being cut in two only to be asked to pay an extra 30p each on top of the advertised ninety-nine price because they had a flake in them. Of course they have a bloody flake in them, they are ninety-nines for god sake! In small writing away from the ninety-nine price was a short bit of text, flake not included 30p extra. Ninety-nines in this particular corner of hell just refers to a scoop on a cone, I should have guessed. Stupid me. Anyway, I'm so used to it now that even when the phone rings or the mail arrives I greet it with 'I wonder what fresh hell this is today?'

Wine, I need wine. Ahh, bottle of cheap Cava come to daddy on this trying day.

Pop!

'What did you do?' asked Jayne as I sat repairing my spectacles the cork had broken after leaving a red mark above my left eye.

I don't believe it!

 

No comments: