Month: March 2024

Hi Honey… I’m Home!

/ masher / 7 Comments

Not that you’d know I’d been away.

But I have.

We have just returned from a few days in the Big Apple… and we are knackered!

So much walking.

So much queueing.

So bloody expensive.

The current Mrs Masher and I have been several times before, but it’s been a while since we were there last.

2001, to be precise. The same year the towers came down.

Since then, not only has the pound dropped substantially against the dollar, but prices have risen dramatically.

For instance, for the four of us to have breakfast in the hotel – and trust me, although it was a posh hotel, the breakfast was exactly the same as you’d get here in a Premier Inn – it cost us $235.   That’s 186 pounds at today’s exchange rate.

A hundred and eighty-six quid!

For breakfast.

Jeez.

But – money aside – we had a great time and took in as many of the sights as we could, in the time we had available.

And we did some shopping – because it’s New York and you have to.

And we took in a show on Broadway(ish).

And we got lost on the subway.

But, we are back home now.

On the way home from Heathrow last night, Mrs M dropped me off in town and I met up with some of my old BT pals for the regular drink and a curry night.  “Just flew in from New York”, I told ’em.  “You can’t say I don’t make the effort.”

But it amazed me to think that only 18 hours earlier, I was in the Hard Rock Café in Times Square, and now, here I was in a Weatherspoons in Luton.

Long-haul travel and different time zones can really mess with your head.

 

 

A Good Night Out

/ masher / 16 Comments

Drop The Dead Donkey was a satirical comedy show, shown on Channel 4 back in the nineties.

Though it wasn’t an avid watch for me, I generally enjoyed it, if I happened to stumble across it whilst channel surfing.

So, when Mrs M suggested we go see it at the theatre, I thought “Why not? Let’s give it a go”.

With the same cast (mostly) and written by the same scriptwriters, it should be a good show.

And, it was… alright.

I didn’t find it as funny as I’d hoped and some of the more topical news jokes felt like they’d been crowbarred in.

But it was… OK.

It didn’t help that the audio was bit echo-ey (to my ears) and I struggled to hear some parts of the dialogue.

Similarly, due to the way the set was designed, our favourite seats didn’t afford us a full view of the stage.

But, overall it was… OK.

However, our night out at the theatre was enhanced by Mrs M sneakily upgrading our package. This allowed us access to the lounge area, where we had our own attendant who waited on us and supplied drinks and nibbles. No hanging around outside and queueing with the proletariat for us! And during the interval, we headed back to the lounge to find ice cream and beer already waiting for us at our reserved table.

Very nice.

Mrs M enjoyed the experience so much, I have a feeling it might become a regular thing.

Horizons

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Last night, I dragged the current Mrs M along to a lecture talk on cosmology given by Professor Brian Cox.

To be fair, she came willingly. “You never know, I might enjoy it”, she said.

It started with lots of pretty pictures of stars and galaxies and over the next ninety minutes he went on to explain formation and expansion of the universe, ending on black hole singularities and event horizons, even using some ‘simple’ maths to explain black hole temperatures and Hawking Radiation.

It was fascinating.

Mrs M held up surprisingly well and found much of it very interesting, but I thnk that by the time we had reached Einstein’s General Theory, time in the theatre was moving somewhat slower for her than it was for me.

Relatively, of course.

Bike

/ masher / 4 Comments

My bike insurance is due this month and my insurance company – with whom I have been fora few years now – have just sent me the renewal premium.

It has gone up from £146 to £255.  An increase of seventy-five percent!

Yes… 75%  !!

I’ve not made any claim in the last year.

I’ve not even contacted them –  at all – in the past 12 months.

And yet they have hiked it up considerably.

And it makes me laugh how, on the letter, it says I can ‘relax’ because they will take the payment from my bank account automatically.

Like fuck, will they!

When the time comes to renew in a couple of weeks, I shall  compare some meercats and will undoubtably secure a better deal with another company.

I will then phone my existing insurer to cancel my policy with them and the conversation will go like this, as it always does:

“I’d like to cancel my policy, please.”

“Sorry to hear that. Can I ask why?”

“Yes. I’ve just received my renewal premium and you have increased it by 75%… for no reason.”

“Unfortunately the cost of insurance is rising throughout the whole sector.  But, let’s see if I can get it any better for you.”

There will be a minute of silence whilst he taps away at his computer and then “OK, I think this is better. How does a hundred and sixty pounds sound?”

“That does sound much better.”

“Cool. I’ll just make the changes so you are only charged the new premi...”

“No. I want to cancel, please.”

“Oh. Is this price not acceptable to you?”

“Yes. But I have already gone with someone else. Maybe if you’d offered me that price in the first place, I wouldn’t have looked elsewhere.”

“What if I throw in free legal assistance?”

“No.”

Insurance companies will always do whatever they can to avoid paying out in the event of a claim, so I’m not going to give them any more than I have to.

And, with the abundance of Price Comparison websites available to us nowadays, taking your custom elsewhere to get a better deal has never been easier.

Car

/ masher / 4 Comments

Yesterday, I took the day off and took a drive over to that Swansea.

That’s a long and boring journey, I can tell you.

Took us over fours to get there (with a pitstop halfway) and similar to get back.

The reason for my visit to Taffyland?  To buy a car.

Not for me, but for Son.

Due to the extortionate insurance costs for someone his age (and gender) he’s limited to what he can afford to buy.

The make and model of car that he was looking at came in a 59 BHP version. That puts it in a Group 1 insurance category – the cheapest (although we are still looking at a couple of grand there). The next level up was 94 BHP, which puts it way up into Group 9… adding almost a thousand pounds to the premium!

Obviously, for this reason, Group 1 cars are very popular with new drivers and when a secondhand one goes on sale, it gets snapped up pretty quickly. We missed several opportunities.

So, when this one came up, we immediately slapped a 24hr reserve on it and hightailed it down the M4.

Took it for a test drive. Liked it. Bought it.

It’s a little bit more expensive than what he was looking for, but it’s low mileage and in almost-new condition.

Hopefully, it should last him a good few years.

And one for luck.

/ masher / 4 Comments

OK, another month over.

Another Blog-a-thon over.

As in previous years, this started off as a quite difficult challenge, which got easier as time went on.  I found that writing the posts became easier, the more I did it.

Which is what you’d expect.

And it’s also the reason why I started doing this stupid annual challenge, all those years ago. Eighteen years ago!

The biggest problem – as ever – is not in the writing of the post, but in the subject… trying to think of what to write. It has to be something that is interesting enough fto read.

Ideally for both of you.

Anyway, I’d like to once again thank our Welsh correspondant, Mr Jones, for keeping me company throughout the month, as his daily contributions gave ME something to read.

And thanks to those of you who took the time to not only read my ramblings, but also to comment on them.

Same time next year?