Back to Grey Skies

So here I am back in the land of grey skies, the droning of the BBC and, for me, seemingly endless bloody paperwork.

 

First I opened my parcels to see free copies of the American editions of some of my books and also a German edition of The Departure – I’d forgotten they were even doing a translation.

 

 

As discussed elsewhere I should have saved the parcel opening as rewards to myself for opening letters. As it was I spent all evening opening letters, discarding rubbish and trying to put the rest into some sort of order. I did discover a great load of letters from a debt collection agency. Seems I didn’t pay my last Asda bill though I thought I sent a cheque. I sorted that out too, chuckling when asked questions about my ability to pay.

 

Meanwhile I noticed that my central heating did not seem to be working properly. Sitting there with a house temperature of 17C after being of Crete and being tired from the journey might have been what brought it to my attention. I hit a reset button and generally buggered about with it and now it is working. I’ll have to pose some questions to my plumber when he comes round to service all this stuff in a week or so. I got an electric fire down from the loft and used that till I hit the sack.

The next day I intended to fully sort out all my mail and get onto filing my tax return online. What I actually did was shopping. First I thought it might actually be a good idea to have some food in the house so went out to my garage, reattached the battery on my car and started it up. When I tried to drive it out of the garage it stalled. The brakes were locked on and I actually ended up driving it out just skidding the back wheels along the ground. A couple of thumps with a metal bar and hammer on the back callipers sorted to problem and I headed for Morrisons.  

 

When I got back I’d obviously got the shopping bug because I continued online. Presently, on the ecig front, I’m down to my Vamo, one Protank and a couple of spare atomizers. I spent quite a bit of money on Fasttec and elsewhere behaving like a kid in a sweetshop and the first items have already arrived from Go-Liquids.

 

Next I noticed something wrong with my access to Google+ then to my blog and my account on You Tube. This drove me mad for quite a while. I got madder when I discovered that Virgin.net emails could no longer be used to access Google accounts. I don’t remember receiving any notification about this. I got madder still when I discovered both on Google and Virgin the solution to my problem was to use another email address to access my account. To change this other address I first had to log onto my account. The circle jerk lack of logic there is incredible, but there it is in black and white on their sites. I finally sort-of cracked it much later by getting myself a gmail address and somehow managing to log onto Blogger, then ending up with a new password and another email at gtempaccount.com. If you have the same problem please don’t ask me about this because the details of how I got there are vague. I now have conflicting accounts and that ‘tempaccount’ worries me.

Today I’ve managed to clear most of my mail and it’s time to start on my tax return. This is why I’m writing a blog post and will shortly be pissing about on Facebook and Twitter … and probably looking at You Tube videos about rebuilding ecig atomizers…