happy shopping

After the last bleak posting about the joys of dealing with big companies who don’t even get close to delivering on their customer service ‘promise’, I thought I’d better balance things up with news of a recent happy retail experience. And those are three words that don’t often spring from my lips.

customer service

First serious posting for a while and it’s got to be a rant hasn’t it?  I just thought I’d share a few recent examples of what we amusingly call customer service – the way that companies treat you especially when things go wrong. That said it’s not all bad; just almost all. First things first, we recently moved to a new place in Teddington in SW London. It’s rented again ( I doubt we’ll ever be able or indeed wish to buy a property in  the UK again), and as the landlord didn’t really want to have a satellite dish on the roof we decided to get get a bundled deal for tv, broadband and phone line through Virgin Media’s cable service, as the previous tenants had done. Have you ever sampled the Virgin Media service installation and after sales care experience? It is almost as impressive as Gordon Brown’s handwriting.

busy times

Well this is the first posting in a while. We’ve been so busy over the last few weeks – moving house within London, getting a new car sorted out, heading back to Italy to get the olive crop picked and any number of business issues tidied up and trying to make progress on my projects with existing and new clients. I’ve also tucked in a flying visit up north to see a client and catch up with my folks and we had a lovely week-end down in Cornwall with old friends Cindy and Keith plus spending any spare time with our grandkids and daughters and son-in-laws. I’ve got so much to write about I hardly know where to start but I think I’ll start with a rant (and some praise too conversely) about customer service standards. Not very sexy or stimulating I guess but a subject that’s really got me going recently. More in the next posting but in the meantime it’s good to be back in blogland again.

pp

names; it’s a drag

Well if you’re a regular reader you’ll know my liking for all sorts of odd and amusing names given to the likes of special edition cars, quintessential English villages, celebrity babies etc. On my many recent visits to Brighton to see the grandkids (they actually live on the border of Rottingdean and Saltdean to the east of the town), I’ve come across another rich source of merry monikers. After dropping the boys off at their Hove schools I tend to head back to my daughter’s place by going through Kemptown rather than endure the crawl along the sea front. This is the old mews area behind the grand Regency terraces and squares that fronted the eastern edge of old Brighton town and it’s a lively area with loads of small shops, bars, restaurants etc. To say it has a bohemian reputation would be an understatement. You’d be hard-pressed not to have a gay old time down Kemptown. Anyway I like the buzzy atmosphere even early in the morning and I invariably stop here to buy a paper, cup of coffee, some provisions and the occasional sausage sandwich. Now the place where I park is on a narrow side road, George St, because local wardens seem to ignore it, right across from a pub which I’m sure is called the Queens Arms. It’s an appropriate name because as the notices outside show, it is the epicentre for cracking karaoke nights and the best drag acts that breezy Brighton can offer. But it’s the stage names of the acts that always catch my attention because of the outrageous puns, rude malapropisms and their general suggestiveness. Examples include the quite lewd Betty Swollocks, the rather catty Kitty Litter, the unfortunate Miss Hap and the tasty sounding Lola Lasagna. If you know of any other drag artists’ names that press the ooh matron button, please let me know.

pp

football finances

It’s not so much a funny old game as a money-hole game these days. Today’s football’s finances leave me mystified  to be honest. A family of lookie-likey leprechauns from Florida, the Glazers, take on Manchester United by saddling the club with over half a billion pounds of debt. And the American comedy duo, Gillett and Hicks, performed a similar trick down the East Lancs road at Liverpool FC. But instead of building a new stadium as promised, the now-feuding G&H spend all their time hawking the club around the Middle East’s idle rich or re-financing the debt with RBS or some other bank which has been rescued from collapse by the British taxpayer.

the september sack race

Well it’s not quite the season for  mists and mellow fruitfulness just yet but it’s definitely the time when misses (by strikers) and shallow ruthlessness (by club chairmen) strike fear in the hearts of Premiership managers. Yes the football season is only a few games old but the knives are already being sharpenned as chairmen’s sphincters start to squeak. Who’s going to be  winner of the annual race to be first manager to walk down the road clutching his P45 and £multi-million pay-off?

much (too much) cassidy

Now those who know me well are well aware that my body shape isn’t as honed and cut as it was in my teens. Sadly that was more more than  40 years ago and time and the occasional glass of wine has added the odd inch to the waistline. Seven might be the appropriate uneven number. So I’m the last person fit to comment on somebody carrying a layer or two of surplus ‘energy’ reserves. But I feel unabashed about commenting when folks who should know better, dress in a way which not only fails to accentuate their better features but majestically succeeds, albeit unintentionally, in showcasing their chunky bits. Please step forward Miss Natalie Cassidy.

tv heroes and zeroes

It’s amazing the power that TV has to delight and infuriate in equal measure, and I’m not talking about the co-scheduling of X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing (though how a knackered old mule like Bruce Forsyth hasn’t been shot by now I’ll never know). But a few other things have caught my tv eye recently.