Category: Witterings

Witterings are, well they’re witterings really. They’re not uncategorised posts but don’t really fit into anything else

Ahhhh – Life Returns to Normal

Well life in Cheltenham returns to normal. All the race goers who piled into town for the Gold Cup have now left, or are in the process of leaving. There were 52,000 for the first 3 days and 65,000 on the last day – still they had good weather for it, and I’m sure they had a good time. But I for one, am glad that they have gone.

The houses behind us are coming on at a speed so it will only be a couple more weeks before the excessive amount of light pushed out by the Sainsbury’s store, which currently lights our bedroom up like there is a full moon outside, is blocked by the new development.

More Cheesy thoughts

This is a sort of a follow up to my previous entry about Cheese – specifically Americans and Cheese

I was over in the US for the past couple of weeks and had the rather unfortunate experience of eating some American cheese. Its not something I’m going to repeat in a hurry.

Lets take an example: Coopers Sharp Cheese. The only thing sharp about this was the blade on the cutter used to slice the stuff. Sharp cheeses should be tangy. This smelt, looked and felt like a Kraft Single – and if you know what those are then you’ll know what I’m taking about.

I also had some smoked “cheddar”. OK it was smoked – I’ll give you that. Smoked on the outside to the point of being more like a kipper than a block of cheese. The inside however was another story completely.

Ever eaten Candlewax? No neither have I but I suspect its rather like the smoked cheddar – waxy, bendable but brittle.

Kitchen DIY

I have to admit that the kitchen renovations had stalled in a pretty major way. This was mostly down to the fact that house was obviously built by people who knew very little about plastering which led to a major problem with all the plaster falling off round the window (see http://www.tty.org.uk/album/thumbnails.php?album=8 for some pictures).

Anyway today Nick came round and armed with his rather large drill we drilled into the concrete cills and screwed some wood into place. Then we fixed on more of the MDF boarding that is in the rest of the kitchen.

All that remains now is to box in round the boiler and fix up a couple more pieces of MDF.

So I’m off to the pub 😀 via a friends house – he bought a home cinema system but something isn’t working right so guess who’s been asked to help out 8)

Mortgages

If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways

Never, ever, ever try what we have just done.

My previous Blog covered the problems with getting my wife’s name on the bank account. Well to that we had to redo the mortgage because the RBS Current Account Mortgage scheme is now dead and they do “OffSet” now which is basically the same but uses two accounts.

The CAM basically ran the mortgage as a huge overdraft with your account balance being negative. Mind you there was something good about going to an ATM and it saying Your Account Balance is £100,000DR. You May withdraw £400 today

Anyway CAM is dead so we have to set up a new joint account (which was fun) and then redo the mortgage.

So then we get a letter from the Offset Mortgage team asking for EXACTLY the same things as we had already provided for the account (Proof of ID, residency etc.). So I tell them – that the bank, their own bank has all of that so why don’t they try to talking to other parts of their company.

In the Middle of all this process we go off to the USA for Christmas. Bank is happy – they will fax us the paperwork that needs to be signed (as long as we sign the originals when we get home). So we sit and wait for a fax.. it “will be there on Monday”, it doesn’t turn up.

We phone them.. its “on its way”, nothing, we phone again, its “on its way”, nothing.

We phone again. The Offset Mortgage team have cancelled the joint application because “the bank told them it was a single application”.

By now we are both pissed off – we now have two bank accounts : our pay checks are going into the new one BUT everything else (bills etc) is still against the old CAM account… you can just see whats coming cant you?

Angry words are exchanged with the bank. They say that they will process it as a single application and then migrate it to a joint application afterwards. OK I guess thats acceptable. So they fax it through to us and I sign it and fax it back.

Now here comes another curve ball. When I moved to the CAM account my old RBS account was never removed from the system for some reason – it sat in Wigan containing no money but with a £1000 overdeaft facility. We never touched it (~more fool us!). The bank in Gloucester said they would delete it for us.

So the Offset Mortgage team settle the outstanding amount on the CAM and then where do they put the rest of the money? Yup thats right – into my OLD account in Wigan, and not the new account in Gloucester.

So we now have my salary in the new account in Gloucester, some Mortgage money in the old account in Wigan, and the CAM account has GONE with all the bills transferred over to the new account

So there we are in the USA doing digital banking shuffling money round from account to account before they decide the close the old Wigan account (which we can only access via Digital Banking).

To be honest – the Royal Bank of Scotland have been useless. It would have been easier to move to a different bank.. it certainly could be any more difficult. It seems that the Offset Mortgage part of RBS is totally disconnected from the rest of the RBS and they deal with them in exactly the same wasy as they would with another bank.

Crazy, Crazy.

Still I did have fun in the US.. Never eaten Deep Fried Turkey before 😉

Things

Its lunch time – I’m sitting here watching the horses canter round the field and I can see a small group of tourists walking along the top of the Malvern Hills.

Its so much quieter here than in the Birmingham Business Park, the scenery is much better too, and there are several good pubs within a short commute.

So apart from work what have I been doing? Not doing the kitchen renovations if you must know – the disaster that is the window (Thanks a bunch Cheltenham Council for using jerry builders to build the Priors Farm estate) really is a big disincentive. I’ve also been doing some coding on an extension to CanalPlan which should implement social networking, blogging and “tracking”. OK its not going to do all of that to start off with but…

Of course this means me learning how to handle sessions in PHP and interfacing PHP with a Database. Still its all good fun (!).

Pickles

I guess this is a follow on from my bit about the American fixation with cheese. Its the American fixation with pickles.

Try to get a burger.. and if you are lucky enough to get one without cheese then its a sure bet that it will have pickle on it. Pickle seems to have seeped into the diet as a mandatory, yet mainly unnecessary, food stuff (in a similar way to sprouts are to the standard UK Christmas meal).

The “restaurant” in the Interstate Bowling Center in Augusta, Maine actually states on its menu for burgers that they are “served with the infamous pickle”. Served with it yes, but does anyone actually eat the things.. I think not.

Anyway who would want to pickle a cucumber anyway?