Telstales

Tag: humour

  • Automatic means mayhem to me!

    So, I love doing recycling.

    It all helps, reduce, reuse, recycle.

    Here in Selby North Yorkshire we have four big wheelie bins for the rubbish which is collected on a revolving weekly/ fortnightly basis.

    One week it’s non recyclable stuff ( BOO….it should all be recyclable but single use plastic is a BOO from me) and once collected is repeated every fortnight thereafter.

    Then the exciting second week “recycling” collection kicks in, a little bit more complicated. On one of the fortnight’s it’s Green bin for garden waste and Brown bin for cardboard and paper. ( Oh my….how much cardboard waste is produced in a fortnight!). Then the following fortnight’s collection would be Green bin for garden waste and Blue bin for glass, cans and plastics.

    What a great collection service we have here, we are luckier than in other parts who use stupid little plastic crates and containers for cardboard glass, tins and plastics, which on a windy day end up on the other side of town when you go out to retrieve the ’emptied’ containers!

    Anyways, the glass, cans, plastic bottles and cardboard recycling process starts in the kitchen. We have a multi bin there so two smallish bins are for recyclables, the third, for the BOO waste which goes to landfill or incineration after collection.

    Now here’s the bit….it’s the process of taking two full bins of recyclable stuff from the kitchen and placing it into the correct Blue or Brown bin….it’s impossible for me!

    I’m no good at working on any form of production line type of work. Now if family did as asked of the two recyclable waste bins in the kitchen, which had one containing only cardboard the other holding glass, tins and plastic, then the emptying into the ‘outside’ bins would be a doddle.

    But nope.

    So my two indoor kitchen bins meet up with the outdoor big bins and as it’s always now mixed recyclables I have to pick each item out and chuck into the correct Blue or Brown bin preventing contamination from ‘wrong product in wrong bin’… Simple really…nope! Well, not for me. Maybe it’s repetition, although in my gardening business and work there is a lot of repetition which I cope with admirably.

    However, even this two to three minutes selection of right waste right bin so confuses me. With big bin lids open (obviously) and holding the kitchen bin with one hand I dip in, pull out an item…cardboard…ahh plastic bottle…ahh glass bottle…cardboard, cardboard…. plastic bottle. Simple..nope, as I dip further in seeking out the next item.

    I get so into my ‘automatic’ mode I don’t even look where my hand holding an item is being chucked into which bin. I know where the bins are. I tell my brain “cardboard to the right, glass, plastic and tins to the left” as I chuck the waste into the big bins. So, what interference gets in the way of this so simple process?….

    Completed easily, look in big bins and, nooo, it’s all mixed up. Somehow I’ve forgotten which goes where and started chucking all the items into the wrong bins….ending up with mixed recycling in each big bin…. Soo frustrating. Looking in each big bin now just looks like a bigger version of where it all started in the kitchen!

    So as these big bins are about four foot tall….I have to lie them on their side kind of climb in seek wrong recycling and rectify…. I bet the Government don’t even realise the lengths I go to to make sure it’s right!

    But it’s the automatic production line approach…well..in this instance is just not for me!

  • It’s me and it’s an age thing…I think!

    It’s easy.

    It’s just a case of removing the battery from the cordless hoover (10% charge left), and replacing it with the charged spare battery.

    So, almost drained battery away from the hoover and replacement one fitted.

    Yep, the battery charge levels flashing away on it’s charger like it’s consuming a huge meal.

    Hmm, as the cordless hoover fires up, oh, 10% charge left on the replacement battery too!…. Nooo, how have I not charged up the battery when it needed charging last time?….. That’s the process I stick to every time. Drained battery off, charge it up again ready for next time. Simple process. And charged battery back onto hoover.

    So wandering back to the charger where the previously charging battery was flashing away, I noticed it had eaten all it’s electricity it could and was fully charged. “Woah, that was quick this time, usually takes a couple of hours, not the three minutes that had just passed”… Then of course, the proverbial ‘penny’ drops…’Clunk’

    Now, how on earth have I managed the mix up the uncharged verses the charged batteries up?…. Yes they are identical but heck the uncharged one went straight into the charger and the charged one is taken out of a storage box and fitted back on the hoover. It’s such a simple process, it just can’t go wrong!… But this is me…yep it can, does and will continue to in my life’s challenges that come along!

    Anyways, I do enjoy a good hoovering sesh, hoping it is my house I’m hoovering in, as you never know!

  • Shhhh…you woke me up

    So it was 3.20pm yesterday afternoon (or 15.20 in metric time!) and completing the initial strim round of two lawns in one of my customer’s gardens, I returned to my van to replace my ‘battery’ operated strimmer ( quite a quiet bit of kit) for my ‘petrol mower ( lot more noisier piece of kit!)

    I was greeted, as I was doing this turnaround, by the lady next door who suddenly decided to wipe over her window ledge (seemed to me like an excuse to be out there) as she turned to me and said…

    ” Do you know that you’ve just disturbed my afternoon nap with that thing?” ( I was hoping that she was talking to me and not my strimmer!)

    Now normally comments like like make me decide….

    -ignore it

    -comment back flatly

    -reply with an edge to it

    -engage in discussion mainly about the glorious weather day we were having

    -reply pleasantly

    …..I chose just to be pleasant.

    Then I thought, should I really have been pleasant?…. Well, yes if course I should, but it’s the middle of the afternoon not the middle of the night, I’m busy working and this neighbour has chosen to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon and just made me think, noise can be annoying to folk, yet things do need to get done at times (this garden takes half an hour once per fortnight!)

    In the end, in a light hearted manner, I just said, “oh, I’m sorry, it must be really nice to have an afternoon nap. And if my strimmer hadn’t woken you up then I’m sure my big mower would have!…. It’s really really noisy!

    Strimmed, mowed, brushed up (presumably my hand held, non motorised wooden brush would probably caused her distress too), quick chat with my customer and disappeared into the late afternoon returning home shortly after thinking, shall I grab some lunch or just take ‘my own’ afternoon nap, hoping no one disturbs me!

    now for a cup-of-T

    ( or maybe another nap later on!)

  • Well, she’s still here!

    So, arriving at a customer’s garden today and when I know my customer is in, I always knock or bing-bong at the door in my usual pre-work chat routine, one to say “hi”, the other to find out what gardening they would like me to do.

    The meaning of my usual ‘Hi’ is always followed by “how are you today?”

    Well, today my elderly customer replied, “Well, I’m still here!”

    To which I replied, “ahh….that’s what my elderly mum used to say every time I spoke to her” ( it brought back instant memories to me as those words had just been said by my customer, of the very same words my mum always said to me)

    And in an instant without thinking I then said “she’s dead now.”

    And as my words auto-fell out of my mouth (and I thought, nooo, what have I just said) my customer just smiled back at me and quietly said ” I will be soon too”.

    A moment’s brief interlude brought me bounding back with “nah, you’ve got years to go”, knowing full well that she hasn’t and her also knowing that too!

    Anyways, after a continuing chat about the freezing cold weather and looking at her pots of Iris, Daffodils and Crocus flowering away in their multicoloured and blooming fashion, she guided me to an area of weediness needing my gardening attention.

    Well, all in all, my customer is ‘still here’ and I’m ‘still here’ too!

    now for a cup-of-T

  • Fairy lights don’t twinkle anymore

    Working in customer’s gardens is great.

    Full satisfaction when completing and looking back over a customer’s garden, on the tasks completed, mowing, edging, brushing, dead heading, planting, weeding, watering and all those usual gardening tasks to do.

    Oh, and including the repairing of fairy lights!

    Yes, those three mile long strands of almost ‘invisible’ (you know what’s coming) wire with trillions of twinkling lights which appear in the hours of darkness generated through a tiny solar cell in daylight hours.

    Lovely!

    So why aren’t they secateur resistant of  about six inch thick armour plated cable? It wouldn’t be that hard to develop!

    Customers love them. They are everywhere festooned on gateways, fences, tree trunks and yes stems of plants. I guess it’s a ‘hang up’ (no pun intended) and carry over from Christmas?

    “hey, we can have these twinkly lights all year round and not cost us a penny in electricity. Let’s go get miles and miles of them for our garden!”

    Now I’m not a party pooper. I bet they look lovely and create a ‘Blackpool illumination’ theme for your garden all year round. I just wish I knew where they were.

    “can you just prune back those shrubs please, they’re getting too big?” I do ask now…..but….before I would just snip away and then think.” Oh my gosh what’s this?…( or similar). Oh, another pruned fairy light cable (Cable?.. I think not..more like a strand of cotton entwined through the shrub I’m pruning. And why is it that I couldn’t see it before the secateurs went ‘snip?’

    I do ask now though if there are any fairy lights within plants. I say within plants as at the time they are placed on a plant they are no doubt hung in it’s outer edges only to find as the plant grows the fairy lights become hidden more inside the plant, probably less effective at night and obviously less visible.

    So, my first ‘snippit’ occasion, my shock and horror that I’ve cut through a customers fairy lights. It’s one of those ‘ I can’t undo’ moments realising that eventually retrieving two pieces of microscopic wires and thinking ‘ best act quick here before the customer finds out.’

    Now I’m not one to just whistle and walk away. I just own up if I break something of a customers in their garden..accidents do happen… so it’s easier to say you’ve broken something and pay for any damage caused than just try to ‘cover my tracks’ only for the customer to do their ‘Sherlock Holmes impression’ and deduce it was me who did it ‘in the garden with the secateurs!’

    So, off to the local DIY store I wizzed…connector block, electrical tape purchased. I didn’t have any of these in my van as I’m a gardener not an electrician, however I do now just incase!  Already have suitable screwdriver and pliers. Wizzed back and after a few more minutes fairy lights reconnected and ready to blaze away in the nearing hours of darkness.

    As I said earlier I always say if I’ve done something ‘bad’ in a customer’s garden.

    “hi just letting you know, on pruning your shrubs I didn’t realise there were fairy lights hung inside the branches. Sorry. But I went to the DIY store and bought stuff to fix them with. Obviously, no charge, it was my mistake.”

    and the reply came….

    ” oh thank you for being so honest and taking the time to get them repaired but not to worry, they haven’t worked for years!”

    Now, outwardly I smiled, inside I ‘smiled’ too or something very dissimilar!

    So, my way since then has been to ask “are there any fairy lights inside the plants that I ‘can’t see’? Do they work?!

    Every day’s a learning day in my gardening world!

    now for a cup-of-T

  • New ouchy moment x2

    Well, I’ve worn my safety glasses all day over the last two gardening days…. didn’t even knew I had them on, so comfy, and, well, see through ( well I guess they need to be!)

    So much so that setting off from one customer to the next, I tried to put my driving glasses on over my safety glasses as I forgot I was wearing them.

    No inci dents, no pokey eyes out, my safety glasses work.

    So, now I need safety glasses for the top of my head! Twice today I stood up from a kneeling gardening position clearing weeds completely forgetting there were low slung tree branches directly above my head. Not once but twice I managed to bang my head causing pain, some blood and more “ohh my gosh” comments or similar from me!

    So, head protection is my next challenge to find.

    Time for more plasters….

    and a cup-of-T

  • Is it the adult version?…

    So, I’m 66, I loved playing board games when I was younger.

    I suppose for simplicity and knowing that you can play by yourself or with folk from all over the world, all is online nowadays yet the thought of just getting out a ‘real’ board game, settling down and being in charge of actual pieces of what ever the board game consist of is always the way ‘I’ would want it to be.

    Now take chess…. I’m no good at chess, but love to be in charge and making decisions in moving pieces about a checkered board trying to beat an opponent by reaching check mate as quickly as possible.

    However, here, no one likes chess, so I ended up just resorting to finding an online chess game to play whenever I felt the urge.

    Brilliant! I found one which worked really well…. So set off on my chess journey enjoying every game, playing against the ‘app’, and, surprisingly, winning each game!

    ‘Woah’ I kept saying to myself, I had forgotten how ‘good’ I was at chess, even though I’m not good at it really!

    So, continuing through several games and winning them all, a flash of a ‘star’ with a message ‘Congratulations, your doing really well’……’ You’ve reached level 2….now you’re at the 9-10 year old level’….😮🤣

    I mean, I’m 66!….. Now, I’m no good at chess….. So embarrassingly, I deleted the game, never to play again!

    now for a cup-of-T

  • Goggles on, how about gloves?

    Eye has healed..yaay!

    Goggles bought and worn twice last week and thankfully doing their job whilst cutting away brambles from an old fence and yes, a bramble stem did hit my face so, thank you goggles, you’ve already paid for yourselves!

    Now it’s the turn of gloves.

    Not being a glove expert, but I’ve tried various types of gloves to try to protect at least my hands and fingers from being pricked, stabbed, popped and scratched and yes no matter which pair I buy they all fail….And for those pairs which are of thick leather or classed as welders gloves, they are so stiff to wear, they become difficult to hold plant stems and the secateurs to do the ‘job in hand’.

    It’s easy when gardening to be as careful as possible to negate the bodily damage done working around prickly plants, but when working in customer’s gardens and wanting to be as efficient and effective at clipping, pruning, restoring and removing said prickly plants it’s such a challenge also not to end up leaking the red stuff contained within my body, mopping up with tissue as I garden along. Not to mention the later evening discovery of broken off tips of thorns lodged firmly in my hands and fingers causing pain and swelling. Oh, the joys of gardening!

    So I thought I had got that ‘eureka’ moment last week in the discovery of a “guard glove”, a gauntlet type of glove for my fingers, hands and even my arms upto my elbows!

    Fantastic, or so I thought. Now, I’m not one to impulse buy, I researched these gloves before pressing that all familiar online ‘purchase button’ making sure that this company (never used before) was genuine, which it was.

    Reviews stated they were “just what I needed” “worked well” ” brilliant purchase for the gardening I do” and the photos of someone grabbing a length of barbed wire and stems of thorny roses made me ‘believe’ they were the ones I desperately needed. And to cap it all they looked so good, I bought two pairs!..hmmm.

    Arrival within two days of purchase, wow, impressive delivery!

    Gloves, well made, good fit for my fingers and hands right upto my elbows, yep as described in the advertising info.

    Ran out into my garden with glee, now, I really should have tried carefully, but I got caught up in the moment, as I thought I had solved my problem, I just grabbed the most prickly rose bush I could find.. and …”ouchy, woah, that hurt so much”

    Did they work and protect my hands and fingers as described… did they heck! They were terrible! But not to be defeatest, I put two pairs on each hand just to test their resilience to thorns and yep as thought, they were just as terrible!

    And not to be put off totally, the bramble clearing the next day for a customer, I tried again, and within one minute of wearing them they were off again! They were really worse than the cheapo ones I usually wear knowing that ‘they’ were no good when working with prickly stems.

    So, I contacted the supplier explaining my prickly predicament and they very quickly offered a full refund. I wonder why? Did they also know that these ‘anti thorn gloves’ really didn’t work?

    In my emails to the supplier I asked them to get a pair and try for themselves, only to be told they didn’t have any rose or bramble stems in their office!….. I’m still thinking about sending them my failed ‘guard gloves’ back to them with a selection of thorny rose stems and brambles for then to try.

    So, my journey continues to find gardening with prick and pain free hands and fingers!

    …. now time for a cup-of-T

  • After the event…

    It can’t just be me?

    I’m an eyesore..well..I mean my eye is still really sore and red although it’s starting to get a little bit better.. Guess these kinds of accidents do take time to repair.

    Good job I have two eyes ( I’m lucky there I guess)… At least one is in focus, the other is on its own way to refocusland!

    However, following this minor accident, it can’t just be me that does things after the event?

    Like simply buying eye protection which if I had worn, then wouldn’t have been in the predicament I’m currently in!

    It’s all about risk…. All I was doing was cutting down to ground level some 3 feet tall bracken, which had died back anyway as it usually does over Winter, using my long reach hedge cutters which I find less brutal to use than a brush cutter especially as the area had loose stones on it and a timber fence behind it.

    And easily munching its way through the dead bracken, it found (see how I blame the tool, not me the operator!) a long Raspberry came (alive) which was some what taller than the bracken and before I even had chance to think “best avoid that”, it had already cut through it, hurling it back to my face like a whip and so smacking across my head, oh, and eye…grrr.

    Now, this has happened before and you would think that I would have learnt after a previous and similar event and on that occasion I ‘was’ wearing goggles!

    So how did that happen you may wonder?

    Well, stupid as it seems the goggles I wore then keep misting up whilst wearing them (obviously) and they were supposed to be anti mist type, well, hmmm.

    So the two little air vents underneath the goggles had covers over them which I thought “good idea… I’ll remove them”

    “Ahh, that’s better”…not!

    Somehow the long stem of a plant found it’s way inside my goggles through the tiny hole where the air vent cover was and poked me in the eye!…. You couldn’t make it up!

    Any yes, I do wear safety glasses when using the strimmer for ‘obvious reasons’. Yet, somehow I seem at times to only react after the event!

    Soon my sore eye will be ok and must keep telling myself… ‘safety first!’

    Now for another cup-of-T

  • January’s date is wrong way round surely?

    Today is Monday 13 the January apparently…feels more like 31st January or even the 131st January…. It’s like that old saying:-

    30 days have September, April, June and November.

    All the rest have 31 apart from February which has 28 and 29 each leap year.

    Oh and not forgetting January, which has 10042!

    Time for some biscuits and a cup of T