FreeSat

Recently, Keith and I have decided to get rid of our BT Vision, buy a £25 viewing card to use with our Sky box and stick to FreeSat. One reason is because, every day the BT Vison box becomes strangely unresponsive for a couple of hours but the main reason is that we are not able to get Welsh news. When BBC goes to the local station, for us it is deemed to be North West, rather than Wales.( In Chester, meanwhile. since the digital switchover, their main local station became - yes, you've guessed it - Wales!)

So this morning Keith rang BT and said we would like to terminate our contract for BT Vision.

"No problem," said the girl on the other end of the phone, "We can do that for you from October 25th."

According to my diary, 25th is next Tuesday but, with unerring efficiency, Keith had barely put the phone down when, hey presto! all our recorded programmes had disappeared and we no longer had access to 'on demand' or 'replay'. 

Let's hope they are equally efficient in adjusting our bill!

Paddy's walk

Today is one of those days when you just know you are going to have to get out the gloves and scarves very soon and argue with Keith about when to put the heating on. He likes it on sooner rather than later, whilst I benefit from my own personal 'central heating.' Paddy was in one of his 'pulling on the lead' moods, which necessitates frequent stops in an effort to get him to walk at my pace by my side, which, as he should know by now, is what all good, sensible dogs do. When he pulled madly to reach a couple of dogs ahead, he retaliated to being stopped by barking and whining, so all in all, I was quite glad to get home.

Generally, when we get home he gets a small treat. Today, I didn't think he deserved it but I got out his usual dental minty chew stick and he sat there expectantly.

"This is not a treat, Paddy," I explained, "You haven't been good enough today, so this is purely for your dental hygiene."

"Yes, I think he understood that," said Keith.

Radiators

Today is a truly lovely, classic autumn day, the kind where you look up into the cloudless, blue sky and find it difficult to believe the weather forecasts which speak gloomily of forthcoming rain, wind and plummeting temperatures. Paddy had been taken out for his walk and managed to behave like a sane and sensible dog around three westies and a border collie and the rest of the day...

well, the rest of the day could go well or badly, depending on Keith's diy skills.

For several weeks now, I have amused myself by saying, 

"Well, we'll be putting the heating on soon - oh no! We won't because the radiator by the window is still leaking!"

When the hilarity and helpless laughter has died down, I follow this up with,

"The bathroom towels will be lovely and warm when we have our showers this winter - oh no! They won't because the heated towel rail is still waiting to be fitted!"

(You think this is annoying? Yep! But such fun!)

So today, Keith has finally decided that life might be slightly more bearable if he put his mind to the two tasks awaiting him, hence an imminent visit to B&Q and then a degree of nail biting and finger crossing on my part, not due to a lack of faith in Keith's abilities but, well, you never know with diy...

And today's task is...

Actually, I wouldn't like to say how many hours I have already spent puzzling over this. The marriage certificate for Charles Ernest Perkins and his wife, Frances arrived. However, Sod's Law decreed that the one most important word on the whole document, ie Frances's maiden name, is pretty well undecipherable.

Frances, as you will see from the certificate, was a widow, although, as she was born in 1818, she was only 22 when she married Charles, so Tapscott was her previous married name and her maiden name is shown in the column for father's name. Unfortunately, it looks as though ink was in short supply that day, hence the poor quality of the print out. Either that or that's where I get my bad handwriting from. 

I can see the man was a 'yeoman' and that his first name was John and that his surname ended in 'eland' and I think the first letter is a 'G' as it corresponds pretty closely to the 'G' in 'Gardener' which is down as John's occupation at that time. 

I have trawled through endless lists of Devon names in an attempt to find something close to what is on this certificate, to no avail and I have not found any trace of Frances's first marriage, although, as it presumably took place before the coverage of the free BMD, it would be harder to trace anyway.

So, there we are, a brick wall. Not important in the grand scheme of things but a mystery I really wanted to solve in the hope that it would shed some light on the next step, which will perhaps be a subject for a future post...

Farewell, Jake

So Jake has departed, trotted off this morning with his little red spotted handkerchief over his shoulder, without a backward glance. If Paddy is missing their regular afternoon wrestling sessions, he is giving no sign of it and is mooching around very much as normal. I have to say, walking Jake was a much more peaceful experience than walking Paddy. He actually behaved like a normal, sane dog; no barking at other dogs across the field, no trying to lunge at cats, squirrels, rabbits... you get the idea?

On the plus side, no nasty little 'surprises' on the dining room floor first thing in the morning either!

A visitor

Yes, folks, it's me, Paddy and my pal Jake is visiting for a few days. 

On Wednesday night, I slept upstairs on the landing, as usual and Jake slept downstairs in his own bed, as he has before. Sometime during the night, I heard him moving around, so I went down to see what was going on. Would you believe it, he'd only had, not one, but several little 'accidents' around the dining room!

"Oh boy!" I said, "You're on your own with this one, pal!"

And I crept back upstairs back to my own bed. No-one's going to put this one on me!

Finishing things

Just got this from TK this morning but really, it could have been written by Keith! Chocolates, cheesecake, Pringles - yes definitely some of his favourite things!

Here’s a solution for so many things.  I am passing this on to you because most likely, we would welcome a bit more inner peace in our lives!

A doctor on TV this morning said the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the  things you have started.  I looked around my house to see things I'd started and hadn't finished.

I have managed to finish off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, a pockage of Prungles, tha mainder of bot Prozic and  Valiuminun scriptins, the res of the chesescke an a box a chocletz.

Yu haf no idr how bludy fablus I feel rite now.  Plaese sned dhis orn to dem yu fee ar in ned ov iennr pisss.