Not a good start – we’re an hour later than intended and it’s bucketing down. I hope that things improve when we get the other side of the severn bridge!!
Mind you, if I wasn’t blogging now we might have just left a little earlier. So I’ll stop waffling – before incurring the wrath of Mrs DDWT – and catch up with the blog later in the week. Adios amigos, Center Parcs Longleat here we come!
Not much to report really as our day has been mainly a case of getting everything ready for our week long stay at Center Parcs Longleat. It’s quite funny that DDWT Junior says that he isn’t going on holiday, he’s going to Center Parcs! No doubt this is partly due to the fact that there are so many CP adverts on the NickJr tv channel all the time.
Surely the marketing people can’t be targetting the kids tv channles can they? I mean little Johnny see’s holiday place x and then nags Mammy and Daddy about it incessantly (replace holiday place x with toy called y if you want – same difference). You can call me a cynic if you want, but hey c’mon.
16st 5lbs was my tale of the bathroom scales today, so it’s been a good week on the weight front. Must have been all those runs*wink*
I took delivery of my much anticipated new toy today, a TomTom One Great Britain GPS – all for the exceedingly good price of £162.99, inc. delivery from my good friends at Amazon.co.uk.
Whilst we don’t do a huge amount of driving during the winter months, the summer often sees the house of DDWT galavanting to various far flung places around the UK. Besides as DDWT Junior gets older and his passion for the Swans gets as intense as his Dad’s – we’ll be touring the various football grounds that the Swans visit I’m sure.
For those of you reading this and thinking – “Yeah right! What a load of bollocks, he probably just wanted a new technological gadget to play with” – there is probably an element of truth in your thought process!
After the excitement of testing the TomTom (oo-er missus) out had passed, I proceeded to spend the best part of the morning helping DDWT Junior make animals with his treasured box of Lego Duplo.
That’s a giraffe and an elephant in case you didn’t know! Fortunately for me, I managed to avoid spending all day doing Lego by a story telling session – mainly around the Julia Donaldsonbooks – The Gruffalo and Gruffalo’s Child. If you’ve got young children (between 3 and 6) believe me, they will love the whole range of books by the same author.
Do you ever get cheesed off at the about of junk mail and unsolicited telephone calls you get? Well if you’ve tried the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and/or the Mailing Preference Service (MPS) you’ll know that they’re a good place to start in terms of fighting back.
But, my mate Lance has sent me some other interesting stuff, which is rather interesting and cheekily funny at the same time! Read on…..
REVENGE ON THE TELEMARKETER
Three Little Words That Work!!
(1) The three little words: “Hold On, Please…”
Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that sales would practically grind to a halt.
Then when you eventually hear BT’s “beep-beep-beep” tone, you know it’s time to go back and hang up your handset …. You have efficiently completed your task.
These three little words could help eliminate telephone soliciting.
(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?
This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone
Calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.
This technique is then used to determine the best time of day for a
“real” salesperson to call back and get someone at home.
What you can do after answering: If you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialled the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!
3: When you get those “pre-approved” letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope.
Most of these come with postage-prepaid return envelopes, right?
It costs them more than the regular postage “IF” and when they are returned. It costs them nothing if you throw them away! In that case,why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-prepaid return envelopes?
Send an advert for your local chimney sweeper to American Express … They might need one!
Send a pizza coupon to HSBC … In case their canteen packs up. You get the idea.
If you didn’t get anything else that day, then just send them back their blank application form … After all, it is their form!
If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn’t on anything you return.
You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them, and it is their envelope after all .. You are just returning it!!!!
The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the post, but folks ….. We need to OVERWHELM them, in order to stop them.
Let’s let them know what it’s like to get lots of junk mail,
And best of all they’re paying for it … Twice!
Let’s help keep Royal Mail busy. Since the Royal Mail are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, let’s help them so they will not need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!
Well I know one thing for sure, I’m going to be using some of those little gems from now on – it’s payback time.
It was a great feeling leaving work at 4pm today, especially in light of the fact that I’m now off for a whole week – and making the most of it with a visit to Center Parcs Longleat. Cooool.
My lunchtime run with Razor today – along our usual seaside scenic route known affectionately as SA1 – took us 23 minutes 40 seconds, a wee bit quicker than Tuesday’s effort. However, it was instantly forgetable due to me, ahem, being taken short – pretty much as soon as I’d finished the 3 mile run.
It’s not the sort of runs either of us want to become accustomed to in all honesty. But it’s my own fault really as I’d decided to take on some fluids and a banana some 20 minutes or so before starting the run. I should have learnt my lesson by now, as it’s not the first time my legendary metabolism and digestive system have come up trumps – albeit at the most inappropriate of times.
The p*ss taking from my comrades in the changing rooms afterwards was quite intense as well, with comments such as “hit the fan will you”, “you were poetry in motion today”, “Have you lost anything?”, “You could have waited until we’d changed” and “that’s lunch down the pan then”.
Charming eh.