all the news you need to know



News item 1: Vintage chutney passes taste test (you know, you could just go buy yourself a new jar at Tesco for �1.29)



News item 2: B&Q wrote back to us today, apologising for the "inconvenience" and their lack of customer service, and enclosed �20 worth of vouchers. I will go into one of their shops for future purchases, but will probably never order anything online from them again.



News item 3: No one has thrown anything at David Blaine today. My only question is: why not?



Thank you, and goodnight.

thanks, i think



We received a letter today from the Spawn of Satan, or as some people call them, Marks and Spencer. They apologised for not keeping us informed about our order, but said that "all furniture orders are subject to availability and occasionally we do experience delays". That wasn't really our point. We were miffed because not only did no one bother to keep us informed, no one could tell us why our order was delayed or give us an accurate date for delivery. Saying "it'll be here in 7-10 working days" every time we phoned wasn't particularly helpful. There was also the fact that no one really seemed to care, or offered to come up with any sort of compromise when it was apparent that we had been given the runaround. The final straw was when we were told that we'd have to go all the way back to the shop where we placed the order in Milton Keynes to get our refund (which is over 40 miles away). So after all of this, we get a letter saying "sorry for not keeping you informed". Oh yes, and an offer to send us a �25 voucher - if we ring the customer service department and request it.



So ring them I did (why they couldn't just send the voucher with the letter is beyond me), and our voucher is in the post. It also didn't help that the letter was just addressed to Paul, even though I was the one who wrote (and signed) the letter of complaint and the original furniture order was in both our names. No, the letter and voucher certainly doesn't make either one of us feel terribly compelled to shop at Marks and Spencer again. Well, except to spend the voucher.



But not a penny more.

beat the stuffing out of him



I go home at lunchtime every day to feed Jasper and keep him company for a bit. When I came home today, I opened the kitchen door and discovered this:







Doodles's head was attached by a thread or two, and most of his insides ended up scattered around the floor. Needless to say, Doodles has now gone to the big Toys R Us in the sky.

i knew that



I've been waiting two weeks for my mobile to be activated. I ported my number over to Vodafone, and was starting to get annoyed that my SIM card still wasn't activated. Every day, I checked my phone to see if the "inactive SIM" message was still displayed on my screen. I finally got fed up with waiting and rang the Carphone Warehouse to find out what was happening. I rang the department I spoke to when I first got the phone, and was told I needed to speak to someone in customer service. After waiting on hold for several minutes (and being forced to listen to "Connected" by Stereo MCs repeatedly), someone finally answered, listened to my tale of woe, said "Hold on a minute", and I was suddenly on hold again waiting in a queue to speak to yet another department. Getting my "fed up customer" hat on, I was mentally preparing the angry letter I was going to send to complain about the runaround I was getting. A few more minutes later, I got through to someone and explained that my phone still hadn't been activated. After a few clicks of the keyboard, she said "Is your mobile switched on?" "Yes." "Can you switch it off then on again, please?" Welcome to Vodafone, my mobile said. Alrighty then.



In my defense, I'm sure most people don't switch their mobiles off while they're waiting to be connected. I left mine on since I got it, expecting it to activate itself at some point. Anyway, I'm still in a huff because I'm sure I could hear this woman's eyes roll when I told her that my phone was working now. Perhaps I will forgo the angry letter, though.

we love john lewis



We love John Lewis, oh yes we dooooooo.







We ordered our chairs, we were told that delivery was supposed to be in 14 working days (it took about half that), and John Lewis charge you for your merchandise only when it's dispatched. As an added bonus, the delivery guys happily brought 8 chairs into the dining room for me and were extremely pleasant. Excellent.

gobble



This year, I decided, we would be having Thanksgiving dinner at our house. I haven't had a Thanksgiving dinner in years and now that we have a big enough house, we can host all those lavish dinner parties we've dreamed about. Or at least we can stuff relatives and friends with platefuls of turkey and mash, which is considered lavish in some countries, I'm sure.



Friends and relatives all happily accepted our invitation to Thanksgiving dinner, and we went on our merry way planning a menu and purchasing things like gravy boats. Figuring that everyone knew from watching American television what the day would entail (Canadians do pretty much the same thing, but with less football and a month earlier), I was surprised when the questions came. People narrowed their eyes, raised an eyebrow, and said to us "So what happens at these...Thanksgiving...dinners, anyway?", perhaps thinking that it involved some sort of native dance, Maritime sea shanties, and bizarre Canadian food (like poutine). I answered, "Um. Eating turkey, mostly. Turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and stuff like that." How anticlimactic, I know.



I like the idea of keeping up traditions like this; inflicting my wacky Canadian ways on my defenseless British friends and relatives. I went through a phase when I first moved here to try and be as British as possible with the words I used, my pronounciation, and even the things I'd buy in the grocery store (e.g. if I bought chocolate chip cookies, everyone would think I'm American and would pelt me with rocks). Now that I know people will think I'm American no matter how many times I say "jolly good" and wear my England footy shirt (only Americans buy my faux English accent), I've stopped worrying about being foreign. Every Thursday is "garbage day" where "garbage men" come and collect our "garbage", I bake chocolate chip cookies, I eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches at work sometimes, I fill up at the "gas station" (although refer to it as "petrol" most times), and I call it "or-EG-an-o" not "o-reg-AH-no".



Then again, in keeping with our family tradition, I'm making sushi with Thanksgiving dinner. Culturally diverse, me.

such a chicken



So I've got this chicken carcass in my freezer. This isn't the result of some grisly homicide and attempted cover-up, it's the leftovers from the roast chicken lunch Paul made on Sunday. So anyway, I've got this chicken carcass in my freezer and I'd like to make stock. No problem - been there, done that, and it always turns out well. My dilemma is trying to come up with interesting culinary uses for stock. Yes, I'll use it to make soup and risotto, but what else can you do with really good stock?



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