A couple of weeks ago I managed to get myself locked out of our house. Carol was going out to play somewhere and I decided to go for a walk. I left first and, since we have very pleasant woodland behind us, I left via our rear entrance door. Then Carol left and locked up. After my walk I returned to discover a complete lack of keys in my various pockets. Brilliant, John! Our immediate neighbours have a set of keys but they were away at their house in Spain. Fortunately, folks opposite us across the road were in and they had a set of our keys. Phew! I was in.

I refitted, in a less-than-obvious location, a combination lock-box containing a spare house key. (I had previously been encouraged (i.e. ordered) by Carol to unfit it because she thought someone had been tampering with it in its previous location near the front door.)

Today, Carol was off out playing again with her mother and skin-and-blister (sister) leaving me to pack the caravan for our imminent trip to Devon and Cornwall. Part way through the morning I wanted to open our garage and … where were my keys? Search as I might, keys were there none. I’d had them yesterday when I fetched the caravan and hadn’t worn a jacket since so they weren’t lurking in a pocket. I was wearing the same trousers as yesterday and they contained no house keys. A Mazda key dangled lifelessly on its hook but it had no buddies; there were no house keys at all.  The Mazda key was no good ‘cos I didn’t have a garage key; that was with my house key, wherever that was. I had gone from being locked out to unlocked and in.

I suspected that my trouble-and-strife (wife) had both her set of keys and mine. Two phone calls to her new mobile simply produced a message telling mine that it had been impossible to connect my call. Isn’t technology wonderful?

I did manage to lock up the house using the spare key in the lock-box and walked to my mother to say adieu prior to our trip. I had to walk ‘cos the Mazda was locked in our garage. The walk was well worthwhile, though, ‘cos mother made me a very nice bacon roll washed down with some Stella Artois. 🙂 A third call was more successful. Sure enough, you-know-who had my keys as well as hers. No damage done but I’ve never been unlocked in before.

I’d better add a spare garage key to the lock-box when we get back from Devon and Cornwall.

It’s been a pretty poor Easter, on the whole. First of all, our weather was drab for all but one day (Easter Monday). Drab seems to be the most appropriate word in that we didn’t get dreadful weather but it dripped frustratingly with rain for most of the time. Perhaps this was the tears of Christ? Anyway, we thought it was a good time to do indoor things like renew some technology. How wrong we were.

Carol has been harbouring concerns about her existing laptop dying for a while now (the screen flashes off occasionally) and she’s been fancying a new, smaller, more portable device. After a few visits to a few purveyors of such devices, Easter weekend saw her return excitedly sporting a new HP machine with a 12 inch widescreen, 3Gb of RAM and, of course, Windows Vista. I’ve been studiously avoiding Vista for some time but there really isn’t much else available now so the first step was taken. This was a very neat little machine and all seemed well. Installation of some useful software proceeded.

The first glitch was nothing to do with the new machine. I’d heard vaguely about problems connecting Vista and XP machines and here they were in all their gory glory. I run an XP desktop with a shared folder for our photos etc and a shared, attached printer. Carol’s new machine was wired into our router but couldn’t “see” my machine. That is, it couldn’t see it for a v-e-r-y l-o-n-g time. According to the Vista documentation it can take 15 minutes for a back issue of Windows to become visible to Vista. 15 minutes! That’s an absolute eon when it comes to computer time; what on earth could be going on for 15 minutes? The estimate was accurate, though, that’s about how long it took. So, the shared printer is effectively pointless and a different solution involving data transfer on USB memory sticks would have to be employed. Whereas XP will run happily on 500Mb of RAM, Vista seems to require at least 2Gb – four times as much. Other than being practically unable to communicate with older systems, I’m yet to see what it actually constructively does with this vast memory increase. One small step for Microsoft, one giant leap backwards for mankind.

Downloads of various system updates were eventually complete and it was time to reboot and go wireless. Has the router broken? No. Well, why are web pages now taking minutes to appear, then? Beats me! The wireless connection was fluctuating to as low as 1 m.b.s. After some checks and a support call to John Lewis, Carol grabbed and installed a new driver for the WiFi card. No difference; graphics were still painting their way across the screen in strips in much the same fashion as a slow dial-up connection. The new driver now displayed the maximum expected wireless connection speed but it still performed like crap. Maybe the fix was just to display an optimistic number. Cynic! Wired speed fine, wireless speed utterly useless.

Easter Monday saw a very disappointed Carol back at John Lewis, where it “performed” similarly. She swapped it for her money which would prove much more useful. Judging by all the heaving crowds spending in JL, the recession is a media-induced myth. They could all have been there returning stuff and taking their hard-earned cash back, though.

We have now found pages and pages on an Internet bulletin board of other poor folks suffering similar/identical WiFi problems. It may or may not be related to clashes/incompatibilities between various WiFi cards, routers and the multiplicity of wireless protocols (a, b, g, n) but we found nothing definitive. It’s clearly a current nightmare.

A brief aside: we learned something fascinating on our way back home having detoured into PC World for more laptop pain. There were lots of laptops of various sizes on display, some of which, courtesy of the modern, and in my view idiotic, widescreen approach, are now so big that they would more appropriately be termed foldable desktops, or some such phrase. Anyway, having engaged a nice Hewlett Packard man in conversation, he showed us that some prices ended in 99 pence whilst others ended in 97 pence. Items with prices ending in 97 pence typically also had a label saying “temporarily out of stock”. 97 pence is, apparently, PC World code for “and we aren’t getting any more”. Half the shelf space must have been displaying unobtainable items. Wonderful! Assuming this is true, I just wanted to share it because I didn’t want anyone else to agonize for hours prior to making a pointless selection.

Further disappointment arrived on Tuesday in the shape of a purchased previously-owned (by Carol’s niece) but posher mobile phone which was said to be “unlocked”. SIM card inserted, power switched on and, of course, a raspberry was blown in the form of a message requesting a valid SIM. My recently acquired new 3G SIM produced the same result. The phone wasn’t unlocked. However, after another day’s worth of a little more frustration with a local mobile phone shop, mercifully it now is unlocked; furthermore, it actually works. It also appears to take half-way reasonable photographs which was Carol’s main point behind getting it. (Useful for photographing dusty documents in records offices.)

I must purchase a wig just so that I have some hair to tear out. What have we done to the world to create such technological trauma? Never mind Christ, it’s enough to make anybody weep.

All interest rate prostitutes need the occasional day for a spot of financial management; this was one of mine. I get notified by email whenever there’s an interest rate change (read reduction!) at cahoot so I was well aware that their savings account was down to the less-than-significant base rate of 0.50%. It was not, therefore, the appearance of the following cheerful log-off screen that surprised me, rather it was the wording.

Before you go, here’s another great offer:

“Great offer”? I don’t think there are any circumstances under which I would regard the bank base rate as a “great offer”. I would class that as a standard offer; pretty much minimal, in fact.

For some reason this irritating screen made me spin off to the cahoot interest rates page where I began to think either that my eyes were deceiving me or that the cahoot interest rates page was, shall we say, less than up to date. Cahoot offers two options for their current account for day to day banking, either with a cheque book or without. The two options pay a slightly different interest rate. I can only assume that the reduction with the cheque book is to cover the cost of said cheque book. (I’m being generous.) Anyway:

• cahoot current account without cheque book: 1.10%
• cahoot current account with cheque book: 1.00%

They have to be kidding. Can this be right? I invested in a reasonably quick 0844 phone call to validate my findings. Sure enough, the pleasant but seemingly embarrassed lady on the other end of the phone at the cahoot help desk confirmed my findings: the cahoot savings account really does pay only half as much (or less) as the cahoot savings account. Ye Gods! Never mind a sane human being, I wouldn’t have thought that even an IQ-challenged banker could consider that to be a great offer.

There we were, studiously managing our working capital by salting away any so-called excess from the cahoot current account into the cahoot savings account thinking that we were maximizing our interest when the paragons of professional banking at cahoot are now paying twice as much interest on their current accounts.

In case any other misguided cahoot savings account folks out there stumble into this posting, listen – stick it all back into your current account. Bloody Hell!

Better still, look for a better savings account; there are still some out there.

It’s those darn ISAs again. For the benefit of foreign nationals, ISA = Individual Savings Account, the interest (or lack thereof) on which is supposedly tax-free.

Today’s focus falls on Marks & Spencer Financials. We’ve had a pot of cash each in a fixed rate ISA account enjoying 5.17% over the last year – a huge interest rate by today’s standards. In retrospect it would have been smart to fix the account for a longer period but 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing which we all possess. Our accounts are about to “mature” so good ol’ M&S has been in touch asking what we want to happen next to our accounts.

First of all, it must be said that non of the M&S rates are actually derisory, unlike the Nationwide. Having said that, the Nationwide’s fixed rates are very slightly better. However, back to good ol’ M&S who you’d expect to know a little about interest rates, my boy. M&S is offering 1, 2 and 3 year fixed rates varying between 2.50% and 2.75%. According to their literature, “we understand that the unexpected can happen” so it is possible to withdraw completely from a one of the fixed rate deals but there’s a flat charge of £50, £75 or £100 depending upon the term. Hmm.

Alternatively M&S offers a so-called Advantage Cash ISA with a variable rate, currently 2.10%. However, if you leave your loot untouched for 12 months there’s a 1% bonus making a total of 3.10%. Furthermore, there’s no penalty for any withdrawals and it can be transferred to another manager should a miracle occur, the miracle in question being a recovery of the global financial cock-up resulting in a decent interest rate turning up.

So, if we’re not going to touch our money, we can fix for a year at 2.50% with a penalty for emergences or we can go for 3.10% with no penalty for emergencies.

Admittedly, being a variable rate account, the Advantage Cash ISA could have its rate reduced but we’re getting used to gambles in the modern financial mess, aren’t we?

After what is traditionally a stressful and long winded process in England, Carol’s mother, affectionately known to me as RM (Rhoda Marjorie, lest you try to supply any variations), finally completed her purchase of a sheltered retirement flat on Friday of last week. Cheers and congratulations all round. Carol and her sister have been occupied organizing and helping with the moving-in process for much of this week.

On Monday morning new carpets were being fitted throughout and then, in the afternoon, it was time for the odd job man (yours truly) to step up to the plate and fit a few necessities including a replacement fridge (hard-wired), curtain tracks and sanitary ware such as towel rails etc. Naturally, this meant messing up the new carpets ever such a little bit. So, on Monday afternoon I got my first sight of the new property.

I must say that I was quite impressed; the establishment feels secure, generally welcoming, is light and airy and pleasantly decorated and presented throughout. The unit itself may be very bijou but I’m sure it will fulfil it primary purpose, independence, admirably.

Having called in en route to do a little shopping for some last minute necessities, by the time we arrived at the new establishment for my first look and before getting down to the jobs for which I had been engaged, I needed to make myself comfortable by checking out some of the plumbing facilities. 😉 All was well until I went to turn off the light/fan in the bathroom. Hanging from the ceiling by the end of the bath tub, just where I’d have expected it to be, was what I took to be the light switch cord. In retrospect, alarm bells should have rung in my mind since the cord was orange rather than the more usual white. Nonetheless autopilot kicked in, my arm reached out and I tugged the cord to extinguish the light and silence the fan.

Alarm bells did ring; not metaphorical ones either but real ones. Actually, it was more of an intermittent beeping noise that sounded but the message was clear. This being his first experience of sheltered retirement accommodation, Mr Handyman had rather unhandily yanked the I’m-in-trouble-please-come-to-my-aid alarm cord. Whoops! 😳

Moments later a disembodied voice, seemingly from The Almighty (a woman after all), rent the ether and filled the flat enquiring after Marjorie’s well-being. Nobody, least of all Carol’s mum, seemed to know where the voice was coming from but it sounded as though it was in the bedroom. Sure enough, there on the wall was something resembling an intercom device. RM calmly explained (she does everything calmly) that her bozo son-in-law had been trying to turn off the light in the bathroom and had pulled the wrong cord – humble apologies.

Had I paid more attention prior to checking out the plumbing, I might have noticed that one of these orange emergency cords dangled in each room whereupon the penny might have dropped. (Nah! OK, that was wishful thinking.)

Blushes subsided, the curtain tracks are up and the sanitary ware fitted. On Tuesday the furniture went in and RM took full possession of her new domain. We hope she’ll be very happy. She should be – there’s a Waitrose going up close by. 🙂