Things wot stain affect the flavour. (said in best Bedforshire slang!)

Posted by David on August 13, 2010 · 1 Comment 

OK before we get into this post I need to put a disclaimer in place, the photograph to the left is NOT a photo of one of our mugs, it is a picture I got off t’internet click the image to see where I got it from. I just couldn’t be bothered to dig my own camera out and take a photo of one of our mugs.

That being said I can now get into the topic of this post.

As many of you will already know I am a coffee drinker, I drink real coffee, and where possible avoid the instant stuff that clams to be coffee, I will drink it if its offered, more out of politeness but I am a real fresh brew man.

What you possibly don’t know, unless you know us pretty well, is that Joy does NOT drink coffee, of any sort, she is a tea drinker, she does not like the taste of coffee, so we never partake of the same hot beverage, I drink coffee not tea and Joy drinks tea not coffee.

In our kitchen we have a vast array of mugs, just odd mugs we have collected from here there and everywhere, one of Joy’s hobbies is collecting mugs, anyhow, there are some mugs that are ‘hers’ and some that are mine, yet others that are used by either one of us. more out of ritual & an unwritten rule rather than out of a real insistence of us not sharing each others mugs.

The other day I made myself a coffee, well I think Joy actually made it and left it brewing in the kitchen, so I only had to pour it out (cafetiere, which is my favourite way to have coffee made) which I duly did, into the first mug I grabbed, which just happened to be one of Joy’s mugs, one that she got a couple of months ago for her 40th Birthday, says something like ‘I am not 40 just 18 with 22 years experience, but I digress…. the point being its not an old mug, but one she uses a lot.

Anyhow, I used this mug for some reason without paying much attention to it, until I started to drink the coffee, because I realised that the coffee had a very strange taste to it, after a few sips it dawned on me that it had a tea taste, on checking what mug I was using I realised that it was indeed one of Joy’s tea mugs.

Now, this mug looked clean, it hasn’t be around for years, she does have 1 mug that has obvious permanent tea staining inside it, but she loves drinking from that mug, we are not talking that mug but one that has been used a lot recently but still looks basically clean, yet it still had a tea taste to it. Of course you need to understand that we are a dishwasher free household, largely because there isn’t space for such an appliance in our kitchen, I am sure that cups/mugs washed in dishwashers come up as clean as new each time, but when you wash mugs by hand it is near impossible to rid it of all the tea staining.

I realise that many younger readers will not have seen things such as teapots with huge amounts of tea staining on the inside, partly because lots of people don’t even use teapots these days but if you have a dishwasher & wash your teapot in the dishwasher it doesn’t build up stains, but it is a long lasting memory from my childhood, seeing the teapot so badly stained, I am sure this is part of why I never liked tea.

But back to the tea mug I was using, it is incredible how that tiny amount of staining, visible yet not obvious, can affect the taste of my coffee, tea is generally considered to be a much more subtle tasting drink than coffee yet the tea taste overpowered the taste of coffee, even fresh real coffee.

So it is in our lives, if we have things in our lives that have stained us, it is going to flavour everything we do, everything else that we taste will have that subtle yet unmistakeable taint of the stain, unless and until we deal with it, a simple wash will not deal with the stain it needs a good dishwasher to get rid of the stain and the taste before it is suitable for use for another purpose.

Anyone for Coffee?

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there are mates and then there are mates!

Posted by David on December 5, 2009 · 2 Comments 

I decided I better put the record straight, as some of you will know, I have a new photography buddy, his name is Mike, I made contact with him via his blog initially but as he lives in my area I thought it would be good to hook up and go out occasionally together, with cameras, as we both share the same interest in photography, thinking too it would be a good opportunity for me to get some help an advice from a real photographer. Anyhow, having been out with him once, when we went down by the Embankment & Priory Country Park, I enjoyed it and apparently so did he, I reckon he is the right sort of person for me to get to know on account that he is one of the few people who actually makes me look sane (notice I said look!) well relatively anyhow. Anyhow, we arranged to meet up again and headed off to Harold, we ended up spending all of our time in the country park. You can hear his account of the trip here
Anyhow, in his account of the story he tells of the fact that I was apparently ‘nudging’ him periodically. If I just explain, in my defence, that this ‘nudging’ didn’t start until after an incident in which my ‘mate’ encouraged me to take a couple of steps further to the left to get a better shot, which I duly did without paying too much attention to where I was headed, well it turned out to be a few bits of leaves and twigs held up by bulrushes, so, had it not been for my quick reflexes I might have ended up in the pond, the muddy wet and deep pond, weighed down with a reasonable value of Camera Equipment, equipment which actually isn’t that fond of water, in fact less fond of it than I am! Anyhow, as you can imagine, after this incident I was quite nervous around my mate! so it figures that there might have been the odd twitch or 2 going on when I was in close proximity to him so inevitably this resulted in him being knocked (accidentally of course) whilst trying to take some photo’s, after all he did spend a fair amount of time taking photo’s, most inconsiderate of him anyone would think that’s what we had gone for, oh we had! Anyhow, I have attached some photo’s here from the expedition but I doubt that they are up to the mark of Mike’s photo’s but then of course he has been doing this lark a bit longer than me! Or at least that’s my excuse.
The following photos don’t actually belong here, they are ones that Nat took a month or so back at Grafham Water, I have left them here because I think they are worth looking at. I actually think her pictures are better than the ones I took at the same time.

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FIAT Ducato!!

Posted by David on July 8, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

We have had our vehicle (a FIAT Ducato) from new, for 2Yrs 8Months and it has done 40,000 miles, which considering it is a commercial vehicle (Transit sized vehicle) and is only being used pretty lightly loaded, its had a pretty easy life.

We have this vehicle as an adapted (wheelchair accessible) vehicle, supplied by Motability, including finance from the charity section to cover costs not covered by the normal hire agreement, it is ours for 5 years, which means we have a little under 2 ½ years left.

So, can anyone tell me why it has had to go into Glyn Hopkins in Milton Keynes twice so far, with the same symptoms? Apparently the first time it was the centre bearing on the drive shaft, but after they had replaced that it didn’t make any difference to the noise coming from the running gear which was then diagnosed as an ‘additional fault’ of the wheel bearing, and now I have it back they are telling me the other wheel bearing needs doing!! But as they don’t carry stock of anything it will have to take a 3rd trip to the garage, I hasten to add NOT Glyn Hopkins.

I have so far had to journey to Glyn Hopkins 3 times, first time was for the engineer to diagnose the fault then twice to have the 2 different faults rectified.

Now it wouldn’t have been such a major issue had it not been for the fact that the dealer is actually some 25 Miles from where we live, in Milton Keynes. This is compounded and made worse by the fact that they wont supply me with a courtesy car so that I can go there come back and then pick it up the next day, they will only let me have a car if I return it the same day, or at least by 8am the next day! Not really on, hence I have opted to waste, err spend, the day in CMK and collect the car at the end of the job, which today was quite late because they had some sort of trouble, I think it is just that they were too busy!!

I am frustrated that having had 2 full days wasted (spent) in CMK they are telling me that I still need to go back and it cant wait until October when the Service & MOT are due so I will have to fit in another trip and then back again for the same kind of performance when it is due for a service.

I am also frustrated because essentially the job they did first time round, stripping down to do the centre bearing axle, I am told, was pretty much the same as what they had to do to sort the wheel bearing out and then will have to do it all over again to do the other wheel bearing! And this could have been avoided if they had held the parts in stock instead of having to wait a week to get them in.

You would have thought that a FIAT dealer would hold stocks of FIAT parts wouldn’t you? well apparently not! As an ex-transport manager I would have been livid at the kind of incompetence being displayed by this dealer as the numerous taking apart and reassembling all adds to the labour cost, and increases the downtime over all. It seems pretty basic mechanics to me that if one wheel bearing is gone you check the other to make sure that’s OK as they have both done the same amount of mileage and wear and tear in exactly the same conditions and at the same time, therefore isn’t there a chance, if one is naff enough to have packed up so soon so might the other? Or am I being too simplistic?

Fortunately I am off work at the moment, sick, so its not costing me loss of earnings or downtime for my employer but had I been working it would have been so frustrating that I would effectively have lost 3 days work as a result of their incompetence and inability to stock items.

On the grounds of their inability to fully diagnose faults first, or even second, time around and the fact that I waste a full day every time I take the vehicle into them I am pretty certain that I will not be returning to Glyn Hopkins to do any further work. I have to say that to date I don’t care much for the other FIAT dealers in the area as they don’t give very good customer service but this seems to be pretty standard for FIAT dealers? At least the dealer in Northampton will let me take a Courtesy Car home and return it the next day, after the vehicle is fixed and when I am able to get back across, it wouldn’t be so bad if Glyn Hopkins could offer to collect and return the car for us so that at least we don’t have to do that journey each time. By October of course, when its due MOT & Service, I will hopefully be well back into work so to loose a day then just isn’t fair on work, especially after the length of time I have had off work.

I will also not be replacing this vehicle with another FIAT when it is due for renewal, if a commercial vehicle can have problems with wheel bearings, on both sides, and a centre bearing, all on a vehicle significantly less than 3 years old and having done just over 40,000 miles then it really isn’t up to much is it!

The frustration for us is that when we were considering which vehicle to go for, this was offered to us but we were advised to check that the local FIAT dealer could service commercial vehicles, which we did, in Bedford there WAS a FIAT dealer and we checked with them, explaining why we were checking, and they said yes they could do it, sadly what they didn’t tell us was that they would not be doing FIAT for much longer, within a month of us signing the contract, before we even took delivery, they stopped doing FIAT and we had to choose between MK &N; Northampton fro servicing, not really very helpful is it?

I hope that FIAT & Glyn Hopkins like the advertising I am providing them, it is all free of course I will make no charge for this advertising and I am willing to have your comments go up in response to this posting! IF you can find a way to justify the standard of customer care and explain why so many faults on such a new vehicle.

Moan off my chest now to get on with the rest of my life, will call Motability some time next week to see what can be done about getting it ser
viced by someone more reliable and nearer to home! I Don’t hold out much hope though!

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Coffee, Walking and Orchids

Posted by David on June 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

Last week I posted a photo of an orchid that I had found at Harold & Odell Country Park, whilst out walking, well I say I ‘found’ in truth we, myself and my wife, were walking round and another couple walking the opposite direction told us of its whereabouts.

Anyhow, the photo that I took is, as far as I am aware, the only evidence that a wild orchid was growing in the country park, I was round there again with one of the pastors from church, he had been in the office this morning and one of our office colleagues (Meryl) who had read about the orchid had told him to ask me where it was! So we set about walking round but also to have another look at/for this orchid.

Major issue!!! When I got to the spot where the orchid stood they had cut the grass and, with it, the orchid, the orchid is no more!! I don’t know enough about orchids, will it come back? Or is it now lost to the world? If there is this one does that not mean there must be others nearby? If there are none nearby how did that one get there?

Anyhow, for now I shall treasure that photo as it is the first, and maybe the only, time that I have ever seen a wild orchid growing in the UK.

Aside from the sad news of the demise of the Wild Orchid in Harold & Odell Country Park, I am having a reasonable, if busy, week, yesterday I meet Chris J, our youth worker, in town for coffee, followed by a rather long and tiring meeting with our family social worker (all families of children with disabilities have to have a social worker appointed if they wish/need to access any social service provision, such as respite care etc) to go through various documents and to see the children.

Today, as previously mentioned, I was out at coffee this morning with David G, one of our pastors, followed by lunch at Joy’s parents.

Tomorrow it’s the turn of the other pastor to take me out to coffee, followed (I think!) by lunch with Chris J and Hannah (his wife) but that really depends on how they get on with packing as they are having a house move this weekend, I say ‘having a house move’ because they are actually going to be away for the weekend, having won a free holiday, so Hannah’s parents and a few others are going to do the actual moving, well at least that was the last I heard but Hannah was getting a bit nervous about that idea and worried that it might all go wrong, so was trying to see if they could move their holiday, I say go for it girl, just go away for the weekend and leave others to sort it, its not very often you will have the chance to sit back and let everyone else do all the work! And its not every day you win a free weekend away.

Then Thursday we, myself and Joy, will have a day out of some sort, as we have made our practice once a week, currently on a Thursday.

And Friday, we have planned to go off for a walk, and probably a drink too I shouldn’t wonder, with Meryl, aforementioned office colleague and very good friend, the idea was to take a walk round HOCP to show her the Wild Orchid, obviously the wild Orchid isn’t there to be seen but I guess I could print a copy of the picture out and put it on the grass where the orchid once was, perhaps make a memorial plaque and have a formal ceremony to mark the spot where Orchids once stood tall and have now been mown to the ground, on the other hand perhaps not J but there is certainly no reason why Meryl cant come out with us, then that’s most of the people I would normally see IN the office that will have seen outside of the office, for coffee, in 1 week!

Talking of the office, I am really not sure that I will have the time to fit that back into my schedule when my period of sick leave ends, so may have to forgo that, do you think that anyone would notice if I just didn’t go back?

So, that’s about how this week is shaping up.

Although there are 2 other things I am mildly excited about, I mentioned Chris & Hannah having a free holiday well the reason is because they have managed to get picked to go and review the setup, Butlins, a bit of a sales thing, give people free holidays in exchange for honest and accurate (they hope positive) reviews of the place, the relevance will be clear in the next few paragraphs.

I have discovered that Tyndale Publishers, Christian book publishers, they are the ones who publish the New Living Translation of the bible, which just happens to be my favourite translation. Well they publish lots of books and they are after book reviewers, basically it works like this, you check out the books they have available, read a brief intro to the book, then decide on which grabs your fancy, you request a copy of it, which is sent out to you free of charge, you read then submit a review, the review has to be posted on your own blog on a book sales site that sells the book in question, e.g. Amazon and, I believe, a copy sent to Tyndale as well, a fair deal to me, I have requested a book and am awaiting its arrival in order that I can read and review it, now to me it will encourage me to read and absorb the info in the book far more, most of what I read I have forgotten about in 10 minutes but I will have to work a bit harder at that, we will have to see how I get on with that as my memory is definitely not helped by the depression but I think it will give me a good focus, they do have a good range of books and I was able to pick one that really fitted where I am at right now so it will be good to see what I get out of the whole experience, it also gives me something a little different to blog about as well. OK so its not like getting a free holiday but its still pretty good, something for nothing.

ALSO, and this is perhaps even better if I get it! I have applied to be the reviewer for a camera, a Digital SLR camera, they wanted to know what experience I had with cameras and how keen a photographer I was as well as having a couple of sample pictures to see the kind of standard of my photography, currently I use a Fuji Finepix f8000 which is like a ‘hybrid’ camera, its not got changeable lens but its much bigger than a compact, it has a bigger photo sensor and larger lense size so it does do a better quality job than the standard compact but its still basically a compact, so I don’t know whether I stand any chance of getting this opportunity, which would entail me being given a free camera in exchange for an honest and fair review of the product. But I thought it was worth a shot (if you will pardon the pun!) because I do enjoy photography and to have the chance to have some really nice kit is nice.

But that has started me thinking, what about other companies? Are there other organisations and companies who are giving stuff away totally free in return for reviews and commentaries on the products/services?

Certainly if there are such companies about I would love to know
how you get to hear about them more often as I would be keen on trying stuff out and more than happy to provide feedback on the product, as long as you accept it will be honest.

So, if you are reading this and you happen to be the decision maker at a company who might be looking for people to try out and review your products, why not get in touch with me. J

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