60 Second News

First session of the course was fantastic, but I can't believe I have to get up at 7:30am tomorrow (Saturday) to go to the next session!

Cliffhanger is now on the way to Afghanistan. Why is it that we always think about things more when we're trying not to think about them?

I spent Tuesday in Cambridge for a work thing and loved it. Beautiful city. But then I like anywhere where you can hear conversations in five different languages within the space of a five minute walk.

I'm going to Brighton for a work thing in two weeks and I'll be able to snatch a quick drink or three with Jellie. Hurrah!

All I want to do this weekend is sleep, but I don't think I'm going to have any spare time to do so!

Teenage Kicks

Today is the day I return to (part-time) studenthood. What seemed like a great idea up until now is starting to feel like a rather bad idea in fact. I am, as my 15 year old nephew so charmingly put it, bricking a shit.

But I'm too scared to talk about it, so...

Saturday was MIL's sister's 60th birthday. I can't remember if I've talked about her before, but anyway she's a religious nutter, completely weird, and her whole family are vile and have no sense of normal human interaction or social niceties (this is the woman who told us, on our wedding day, that now "when you split up you'll have to get a divorce!" cackle cackle - and she really thought that was an amusing and appropriate joke...)

Well, because they are so weird and have no friends up north where they live, they came down here so that MIL could throw a party and invite people to make it look as though the woman isn't such a social misfit. This, obviously, was not an event that He or I had any desire to attend, but His sense of family loyalty is (as you well know) far stronger than mine. And anyway, He promised to buy me a pair of shoes if I behaved myself.

And personally, I do define behaving myself as hiding behind a bush in the garden getting drunk with my teenage nephew.

At least I didn't offend the birthday girl. Well, not that I remember...

Ask, and Ye Shall Receive

Remember a little while ago I said I was joining the new movement of reclaiming bank and credit card charges?

[For newcomers to the blog, it's worth mentioning that He and I had horrendous unemployment-induced debt problems last year, and are still climbing out of that hole. Also, I like to buy things, so I have credit cards of my own, particularly the MBNA one, which I cannot excuse other than to say that shoes exist outside of normal spending behaviour]

Well, I got a letter from MBNA today. MBNA, I should mention, are the charmers who set Global Vantedge on me when they 'didn't have time' (their words) to chase an overlimit amount for themselves. Global Vantedge, as well as being featured in my sidebar as people I hate, are a deeply unscrupulous and borderline unlawful 'debt collection' agency based in India. I could write reams about them, but instead if you just do an internet search enough horror stories should pop up.

Well anyway, I wrote a very polite letter to MBNA last month asking for a refund of all the charges they've ever charged me (the OFT says they're unlawful), a refund of the payment protection insurance I never asked for, and an explanation as to why Global Vantedge are c*nts.

Well, as of today they are indeed refunding all my charges, and my PPI, and this should pay off around £400 of my credit card balance. And they apologised for Global Vantedge.

Power to the people!

If you are interested in following my lead and reclaiming bank or credit card charges of your own, head over to the Consumer Action Group website where they will be happy to help you.
http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/bag.php

Lemsip and TV

I'm not well.

Seriously. I'm not just pulling a sickie (not that I'm admitting that I ever call in sick to work when I'm not. No, no, not me. I'm just saying, you know, that some people sometimes pretend to be ill when they're not, and that's not what I'm doing today. I'm not saying I'm one of those people... bugger, is this starting to smell of 'the lady doth protest too much? Anyway...)

Basically, His office apparently doubles as an experimental laboratory for breeding new strains of the common cold, and unfortunately since I have to sleep with him (as in, in the same bed. I don't have sex with ill people, that's disgusting [well, except that time when we'd just moved in together and both had flu but kept double dosing on cold capsules so that we could feel well enough to fight crime for half an hour before collapsing again]), it means that I end up catching whatever new virus he brings home.

So, my throat is so sore I've resorted to tapping twice for yes and once for no when He asks me questions, and my nose appears to be trying out an imitation of a leaking tap - quite succesfully. Oh, and let's not forget the first day of the illness, when charmingly it mutated especially for me and made me vomit for four hours - something which He didn't suffer from when he was in bed with this lurgy last week.

So yes, I am ill. And, having read this back, possibly slightly delirious from all the Lemsip...

What Are We Fighting For?

Nambo and Cliffhanger are being posted to Afghanistan for six months.

I am, of course, being a total cry baby about it (neither they, nor you, would expect anything less I'm sure).

The first time I met Nambo, he'd just come back from Afghanistan. After that he was in Iraq for a while during the first stage of the war, but not in the worst areas of fighting. Or so he says. It's hard to know what to believe when someone's trying to reassure you. After all, Cliffhanger refuses to admit that unlike in Ultimate Force, a land mine can't really be defused once you've stood on it...

I love them and I'm so scared for them, and we're just friends, so I can't imagine what it must be like for wives and girlfriends of forces personnel. I really can't.

Hideous, I suppose. Just hideous.