Lesson learned

I am always banging on about just how bad customer service is in this country.
But I have to say that yesterday I was on the receiving end of some very good service which was made more surprising, given the fact it was actually hidden away in one of the most deprived blue collar areas here in North Wales....a fact that made me shut my ever-so-snobby mouth with a crocodile snap!

Rhyl, a town way past it's best

I took myself off to Rhyl to buy a "cheap as chips" laminater from the discount store Argos ( I needed one to prepare a display of the voices of the past blog).....God, the place is a dump.......it's a dead seaside town with very little hope visible amid the charity shops, cheap novelty stores and fast food outlets, so in my true snooty form, my idea was just to shoot in to argos, brave the great unwashed then shoot out.

I was very surprised
The woman on the tills was polite, friendly and courteous.
She took the time to find out if the laminater came with plastic sheets,  and she passed the time of day with me with a semi amusing story of how she likes to chat to the customers when it was quiet
The smiling manager who retrieved my items from the "back" called me "sir" when he gave me my bag
and as I left the girl manning the discount jewelry counter gave me another smile and a "goodbye"

Message to self.......

"Eat a small slice of humble pie"

ps Rhyl is still a sh*t hole!

Don't you just Love YOUTUBE

YouTube is the best of ALL Internet websites
In a matter of minutes you can be entertained by the likes of

then throw yourself into
(Stuart Hall's hysteria is infectious)

spend a few minutes enjoying

stroll through your teenage years with

and end up with the intriguing

 which is "Mad as a box of frogs"

enjoy

Bingley returns

Bingley and the Sorrel the buff

To make room for the short lived Thomas, Bingley the American turkey was shipped over to my friend Eirlys' farm for the duration and because the high jumping goat had returned to his long suffering owner, Bingley has now been returned to me.
The short holiday has brought around a drastic change in the young turkey stag .
Before he was a somewhat aloof and dismissive character who was incredibly bland and notably unfriendly towards me, the person he always saw on a daily basis. Now after a time with the big hearted Eirlys, he has returned acting like a big fat brown budgie!!!
I offered him some corn from my hand (Eirlys said he liked to be "hand fed") and bingo.....he took the offering like a puppy.....a thing that gobsmacked me as he had never allowed himself to be hand fed before.
If I didn't recognise him I would have said that the poor turkey had died and Eirlys had brought into play a doppelganger to  placate me .                                                
Everyday I usually share my breakfast bagel with Boris...today Bingley had half.......
perhaps it was just a case of :- absence makes the turkey heart grow fonder!

Matt Alber "End of the World"

Very Sweet. Who needs Matt Cardle

More Motor Neurone Disease fund raising and Baby News

One of the donated cakes for Janet's Garden Open

I won't steal any thunder by writing too much about my sister's Garden open day, suffice to say that another impressive amount of money was raised for Motor Neurone Disease research.

see Janet's blog to read the story.........I don't want to lay eyes on another cake


ps congratulations to my friend Hazel and partner Alan on the birth of their son Dylan today!
great news!!!....mother and baby are doing very well indeed which is lovely! Just got off the phone with her and was just thankful that she didn't go into any details regarding "toilet parts"
(too much infomation)
xxxx

a "cute" and totally unrelated baby pic

Gargoyle

Apologies for the "snatched" photo.it's a brief post this morning
I just had to photograph my Birthday gift from Chris which he bought from a reclamation yard yesterday
I have always wanted a gargoyle for the garden...and officially on the first of June I will receive it
Busy this morning making cakes for Janet's open day

"Oh F*ck...it's that Mr Gray again!"

After several months of searching, the threat of being "outed" on my blog site, and several "colourful" encounters with "service "staff, Boots the Chemist has finally found the slides and photographs they lost.
It has been an irritating, "jobs worth"  experience all round , and one that has not helped the monitoring of my blood pressure, which I am doing four or five times a day ( I have a clinic appointment on Monday!)

Having said this, there is a wicked part of me ( yeap you have to remember that I am NOT Rebecca of SunnyBrook Farm all of the time) that kind of enjoys torturing those responsible for bad service. I cannot abide it, and boy to do I get on my high horse when I know I am in the right.
So every week I either phoned or (god forbid) personally popped in to the Prestatyn branch to see whether or not my lost photos had been found.
I pointedly refused to deal with one shop assistant who could not curb her tendency to babble, and when the manager informed me that my photos had been sent to their branch in the internal post three weeks  previously, I took some solace by loudly stating that if they had been sent by passenger pigeon they would have reached me earlier.
Of course my bad humour remains somewhat of a game......but bad service is endemic in this country and I have to say that this unnecessary stress is NOT good for my elevated blood pressure (which I suspect is a legacy from my father and grandfather)
Yesterday the manager of Boots rang me and left a somewhat disappointed  message on our answerphone
I say disappointed ,as I am sure she wanted to speak to me personally to give me the victorious news that the photos had been located (originally they had been sent to Oldham of all places)...
God knows where they ended up this time probably some poor old duffer from Bath was surprised to find a few old photos of a knackered Trelawnyd cottage among his holiday snaps ....
tee hee

Postscript

That post was written around 8am
It is now 11.31am
Boots have just called
They have my photos but have mislaid the original slides....
I told them I would be down to " see" them today
They are all shitting themselves

P.A.

Today I have been playing at being Melanie Griffith in Working Girl
Ok I don't have the big hair, the whispering voice and I have never said breathlessly
" I have a head for business and a bod for sin. "
But I have been putting digit to netbook in an effort to act a little like a personal assistant

In order to publicize the village Flower Show, which is under a bit of a threat from dwindling entry numbers, we have brought the big guns into play
Our Big Gun is Auntie Gladys
Single handed she sells over 300 hundred raffle tickets every year and when every household in the village has been cajoled into buying a one pound book, she just pulls up her stockings and marches around the neighbouring villages of Llanasa and Gwaenysgor..
For over 60 years she has worked consistently hard to provide support for the Trelawnyd Welfare committee and then for the Flower Show,,
The simple fact is that she ticks every news worthy/cinematic box:-

ie
she's a sweet old lady
who has bags of chutzpah
she sports a string of pearls 
and some Woody Allen spectacles

Think of Helen Hayes from Airport with a Welsh accent!

So I emailed every local paper, newsroom and even the BBC website, to inform them of Auntie Glad's  66 years of village work and today the first of the reporters (a businesslike young lady with a cracking shorthand) turned up to document Gladys' contribution to Trelawnyd and publicize our Flower Show.

Gladys was an old pro at all the fuss....while I farted around like a flunky, she enjoyed the chance to chat about her days "in service" before coming to the village just before the war...

I could listen to her stories all day....after half an hour I forgot the reporter was there........

The "official" photographer turns up on Tuesday.........already we have been discussing "outfits"