End of saga?

Welcome back to the furniture saga. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin:
Having tried and failed last night to get any more information about the approaching delivery of our suite, I rang the delivery people this morning to be told that, yes it would be delivered tomorrow (Thursday) between 11.30 and 3.30! You see! If I'd put money on it I'd be quids in now! "No, sorry, I have informed the company several times that delivery needs to be in the morning. There will be no-one here in the afternoon." (In how many languages do I need to say this???)
"Well, that's the slot we have for you," was the reply, whereupon I told her to cancel it as I was now about to cancel the order. My impression was that she was severely underwhelmed by this news.
The shop doesn't deign to open its doors till 10am so I contained my impatience till 10.05 and then rang and was finally put in touch with someone in the furniture department. She told me she needed to refer to her manager on the question of a refund but that there would be no problem and she would ring back. After 40 minutes, I decided they had had long enough to confer and rang back. The man who spoke to me was impressive in his indignation on my behalf. "It is Head Office who have to refund you" he said. "I have explained everything and told them someone has to get back to you within the day." Just in case, I asked him for the contact name and number, as the trend has been increasingly for them not to get back to me.
After a few hours, I rang this number and asked for the person named. After 2 tries, I got to speak to a girl who told me I was actually through to the Customer Services dept; the named person was only a clerk who had no authority to deal with my refund and, furthermore, it was my local store who would have to do that. (True! - I wouldn't have the imagination to make all this up!)

By now, I was beginning to see red and rang my local store back. In touch once more with 'he of the vain promises', I asked him why he had given me a contact number for Customer Services instead of Head Office, as he had led me to believe and why he had told me that he could not deal with my refund.
"They have misinformed you," he replied, when he could get a word in.
By now, red was turning to full-blood scarlet and I let him have it, both barrels in my best Deputy-Head-dealing-with-recalcitrant-pupils mode and 'suggested' that he might care to get things sorted and get someone to speak to me about it before the end of the afternoon - only I didn't quite put it like that!

An hour later, someone else rang and informed me that my refund had been authorised and I would get it by cheque but it would take 10 days. "I have arranged it because we couldn't guarantee a morning delivery for you," he said.
"Not only that," I said, "Are you aware of the full story?"
"Oh, there's no point going through all that again," was the answer.

OK, so...wait a minute.... I can tell you are waiting for something else. Oh yes, an apology? Dream on!
I would also have liked to know why it takes 10 days for me to get the cheque but I was feeling too battle weary by then to bother.

However, the large store in Boughton, outside Chester, whose name begins with A will definitely not be on the receiving end of our custom ever again!

Very last photo request

Some nice sheep from the Clwydian mountains.
These 3 photos are in reply to the request from Magz. Sorry about the delay - I've been a bit busy.

View from the shower 

Car dashboard. The fitting on the window is for my PDA. Impressed??? 

Furniture part deux

Just in case you all thought the furniture saga was at an end, it isn't. we are still waiting.....
Last week we had a phone call one afternoon saying that the suite would be with us in an hour. "Oh, no it won't," I said, " There's no-one there, we haven't had any notice and the old furniture is still there so there's no room."
"Oh, no it isn't," they said, after further checks. "That was a mistake. Ha, ha!"
So, EDA is the day after tomorrow, but we were promised a text message again to inform us of the time. That should have arrived today. It didn't so I rang the store. They didn't know so they said they would ring the warehouse and call me back.
They didn't, so I rang them myself, or tried to. After listening to a disembodied voice telling me everyone was busy for 10 minutes .... twice, I gave up.

So tomorrow, I'll start again........... and just wait for them to tell me they will be delivering on Thursday afternoon, when, as I have told them repeatedly, there won't be anyone there!
How these people manage to run a business, I'll never know.

Dixon of Dock Green or The Bill?

We had what we thought was a good idea today. Our first school software fair is on Thursday and we decided it would be a good idea to take some leaflets about staying safe on the internet which the local police had left in the shop a few weeks ago. I rang the police to see if they had any other related leaflets or posters that we could also use. The officer who got returned my call was very pleasant but not particularly pro-active. "Well, there is a leaflet you can download from the internet, he suggested. In other words, if we want to use it, we will have to print copies ourselves, with the attendant costs.
It reminded me, for some reason, of a phone conversation I had with a police officer a few years ago when I was acting Head of my school and we had ongoing problems with local youths on the school roof every evening. The roof was gradually being more and more vandalised and was leaking in places. I must mention that the grounds were surrounded by a four and a half foot hedge and gates of the same height - so not exactly the Berlin wall. However, when I asked the policeman about the possibility of actually coming into the grounds to investigate when there were obviously intruders present, I was reminded that the gates were locked.
"Surely your officers could climb over the gates?" I boldly suggested.
There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the phone, followed by....
"Ooh no, they can't do that. They might have an accident."
I put the phone down with an increasing sense of disbelief, followed by regret that I had not thought to say,
"Well, that's not how they do things in 'The Bill.'"
Don't suppose it would have done any good though........

Anyone for conkers?

Do you remember playing conkers in your youth? Is there anyone who didn't? Do you have any recollection of anyone being carried off to hospital either because they had been blinded or were allergic to the things?
No, neither do I - either as a pupil or a teacher.
But looking here and here will show you two examples of health and safety gone mad. All a result, no doubt of the current 'claim culture' gone mad. It seems that nothing is allowed to be recognised and accepted as an accident any more. Someone must always be to blame and so someone must always be made to pay in one way or another - usually in the form of substantial amounts of money. And so, the range of activities accessible to our children today is being insidiously eroded.
A couple of weeks ago, OFSTED issued a report claiming to be concerned at the unwillingness of teachers to take their pupils on adventure activities or even the traditional days out. Look at Gemmak's blog for an excellent piece of writing on that.
Oh, and then talk to teachers to see if they believe the claim that if everything has been done correctly, the staff involved will not be answerable!