Bye, bye car

Having given over 140,500 miles of service (131,000 for me), my trusty stead sadly failed it’s latest MOT – by a full 2 pages of faults.

I can’t say I was surprised. In the 9 years since I got it, it’s had no major problems. Was did surprise me was that it sailed through it’s MOT last year with no problems. Suffice to say that everything decided to give up at once.

So, with a heavy heart I took it to be recycled yesterday. I did feel a little guilty as it felt a bit like “yep, you’ve been great for 9 years, no problem at all, but now I’m just dumping you” but it had to be done.

Now I’m officially carless, but I do have a cycle!

Potatoes in Pots

I really don’t understand why there aren’t more people growing potatoes in pots

I always have a few buckets on the go. I start them in the greenhouse in early March (when there’s nothing else in there and by this time of year they can spend their days outside and back in at night. You don’t even need a greenhouse – anywhere frost free is fine. Even a shed as they don’t need light until the pot is full of soil/compost.

I use old florist buckets (often available free from florists) not the expensive “purpose designed” rubbish you can buy. An inch of compost or soil in the bottom, a dollop of manure if you have it. The the spud (or spuds) go in and covered with compost/soil by 1 inch and watered.

When the leaves show, cover them with another inch. Repeat until the pot is full of soil. The water regularly, give the occasional liquid manure feed and sit back and wait for the earliest potatoes you’ve very grown.

They’ll be as early as the “new” potatoes from Jersey, but will have cost pence.

Call centres

Last week, I placed a fairly major order with a company online. I double checked the delivery date both before and after placing the order to make sure it was sent to the right address for that date. This morning, impatient little me decided to track the order (just to see if there was any likelihood of it arriving early ) only to find the delivery date had been put back, meaning the delivery address would now be wrong (not a good thing to find out at 5.30am).

So I phoned the call centre, stressed but polite. I got through to a quiet, polite and very helpful American who sorted everything out for me quickly and efficiently, checked if there was anything else that needed to be changed and wished me a good day.

I don’t know if it’s to do with the company I was dealing with, whether they are used to dealing with people who are less than polite and it made a change for them to be spoken to respectfully, or if I just got lucky with the person who answered the phone, but I can’t help feeling that if I was dealing with a call centre in certain other countries I’d still be trying to sort it out and my stress levels would have gone through the roof.

Are Americans trained to be polite? Do they get politeness lessons at school? Are they brought up to respect others? Or am I just wearing ros-tinted specs?