Two tree fellers are arriving this afternoon.
Make your mind up, will you - are two fellers coming round, or tree fellers?
Number 1 son has just texted me from the Philippines. He's in a pickle. His debit card has been blocked - he forgot his PIN number and guessed wrongly. He has run out of money. Barclays will not speak to me about his account. He has called them with the last bit of credit on his phone and they suggest either (i) he goes to a Barclays to correct it - I don't think there is one any nearer than 1,000 miles away (ii) he goes to an international ATM which might allow him to reset his PIN (over three hours travel away and might not work) (iii) they post him a new card to his home address in Finchley. I know it's his own fault but I'd like to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Barclays for being so helpful and understanding in this case. I wonder if the MD of Barclays has ever had a child who is stuck somewhere without any money......
I hope he gets sorted out ASAP!
My opinion of Barclays has been extremely low since my niece was crippled by RSI when working at one of their call centres.
She came up with her b/f to visit me and was moaning every time she moved her arm. I thought she was laying it on a bit thick and made a stupid remark about how trendy it had become for people to develop
"RSI" and how many people were claiming compensation for it. So she took her jacket off to show me her arm ...
It was black and blue from wrist to armpit - it looked like somebody had taken a baseball bat to it!
She demonstrated to me how her workstation was laid out. I simulated doing her job and was suffering discomfort in my arm in less than 2 minutes!
She tried to get reassigned to other work, but Barclays fought it. She tried to get compensation, but they spent thousands of pounds fighting it until she eventually gave up. She ended up without a job, and with a permanently damaged arm. Over 10 years later the problem keeps flaring back up and she has to pay a private physio to work on it.
In other news ...
The BBC News Channel lunchtime news, in fact. I put the TV on to catch the headlines and at that moment a signer appeared on the right-hand side of the screen.
The signer somehow coped with signing
"Tensions continue to increase in the Korean peninsula. Increasing pressure is being placed on China to control her long-time ally."
He did a sterling job with
"The BBC are considering whether they will play 'Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead!' on the chart show on Sunday."
But ... (no offence intended to the deaf!) ... I cracked up watching him sign a news report about a 10 foot long python in the Florida Everglades!
The words spoken were
"Tourists on a boat trip in the Florida Everglades were shocked when one of their tour guides suddenly dived overboard and began wrestling with a 10 foot long python!"
He signed the shock as the facial equivalent of
"O.M.G.- W.T.F. is that!"
Diving overboard, was like, well, diving into a swimming pool.
It was the python-wrestling that almost had me spitting my tea out over my laptop keyboard! It was like watching Rod Hull/Emu attacking Michael Parkinson! The thing that made it so ludicrous was that the main picture was showing a video of the incident taken by one of the tourists.
Instead of watching the actual snake being wrestled, I watched the signer who had hold of an invisible python by the throat and was trying to choke it to death as it thrashed about and wrapped itself round an equally invisible third arm!
for wocky.
