Rosamundi's ramblings

So, I have finally persuaded someone to come round and insulate my loft in exchange for several English pounds. Many of them, in fact, but considerably fewer than if I’d done it myself, and with less risk of the Rosadaddy having a conversation that begins “daddy dearest, entirely hypothetically, how do you repair a hole in a ceiling? Oh, about as big as a size five walking boot… No, no reason at all, just asking, idle curiosity…” and goes downhill from there.

We have restricted parking round Rosamundi Towers.

I don’t have a car, parking restrictions impinge only vaguely on my universe, and usually tangentially, in a “argh, parking warden minibus is parked on double yellow lines again!” way.

I needed to buy a book of temporary parking permits for the man who will be coming to do my loft.

If you thought the transaction would go something like: “Rosamundi rocks up to local council services office, hands over £3.00, receives book of ten parking tickets, goes on her merry way rejoicing,” you’d be thinking along the same lines as I was.

Sadly, and it pains me to relate this, I was wronger than a wrong thing which was very badly mistaken indeed.

“Your address needs to be activated on the system. Go over there, and they’ll do it for you.”

I was there for an hour.

An hour.

A whole hour of my life that I won’t ever get back and I only left because not leaving would have resulted in me abandoning three people to their fate at Waterloo railway station, and that would have been wrong.

“It could take three days for them to get your address on the database,” quoth the man as I was leaving. “But I’ll call you when they’ve done it.”

“Three days?” I uttered, in tones of pained dismay. I’ve done data entry, and plenty of it, in my time, and it does not take three days to type four lines of address into a database. Not even if you spend seven out of every eight working hours sitting on your thumbs and staring at the wall and the other one on the phone to your latest light o’ love.

So I left, uttering Rude Words under my breath, and went to the Isle of Wight for the weekend with good friends and took umpty-cough* photos and had fun, and re-arranged our return travel plans so I could get to the local services centre before it closed and pick up the parking permits. The man at the council had phoned me as the train was pulling out of Waterloo to say it was all sorted, and three days was a somewhat pessimistic estimate after all.

I got to the local services centre, and the system crashed just as I was about to hand over my £3.00

I nearly cried. I debated biting someone, but the only person within biting distance was a security guard who looked like he hadn’t been born, but had, in fact, been welded, out of girders, in the Barrow shipyards.

I left.

I returned half an hour later, desperately praying “please God, let this work, I don’t fancy spending the night.”

My local council’s temporary parking permits are dark blue with black writing, which seems frankly peculiar, but then I’m not a graphic designer for a local authority.

*One thousand and thirty five. Oh dear.

Here’s a handy course of instruction for you.

Customer phones up.

Customer says “your storage compound is neither safe nor secure, because children are getting past the fencing and playing on the enormous pile of gravel you’ve left in the car park. I have photos.”

Now, is the appropriate course of action at this point:

(A) Make soothing noises, file complaint in round file, take no further action?

(B) Make soothing noises, pass complaint to site manager, take steps to secure site?

If you pick (A), your one-way ticket on the failbus awaits you.

And if I have to go through one more round of “no, you need to speak to the contractor,” “no, you need to speak to the council,” “no, you need to speak to Thames Water,” “no, you need to speak to the contractor,” the next person I shall be speaking to is my MP. And the local paper.

I’m sure there should be something in this post about “Christ Our Lord is risen, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life,” but frankly I’m enraged. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your corporate armpits.