Saturday, 4 May 2013

Happy birthday to...er...this


Soul Battle

Oliver Nelson’s The Blues and the Abstract Truth gets mentioned alongside Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, and Kind of Blue is just about the de facto most must have jazz album of the must have jazz albums.

He also worked in education, composed some classical pieces, composed for films and television and has some great albums on his list. Soul Battle has the warmth and interaction of three tenor saxes, Nelson, King Curtis, and Jimmy Forrest. That’s it really, three saxes, piano, bass and drums kicking up a tremendous stink, and swinging like Tarzan’s nuts on tree-to-tree Sunday.

Which is just as well, because that’s on the headphones while I try to deal with Orange


Orange no-help line

This may seem trifling to get incandescent about, but I try never to let that stop a good incandescence. The Orange help line, after a load of menu options, tells me: “we’re experiencing technical difficulties leading to a large volume of calls, you may have to wait some time to speak to someone, please hold or call back later”, and that’s fair enough, sometimes resources get stretched.

Then I get the message: “our hours are eight am to six pm, please call back later.” It was about seven fifteen. That makes the first recorded message redundant and absolute rubbish. That annoyed me so much that I’ve ordered a free Tesco SIM card, and if they don’t perform after eight am when they finally get their sorry lazy butts out of bed, they can shove their Orange phone up their orange-arsed-baboon arses.

Of course, there’s been the hours last weekend, and more hours last night (including a full update of the firmware, mega-shutdown (battery out, SIM out, battery in, battery out again, SIM in battery in – the smartphone hokey kokey), registration, re-registration, re-re-registration, followed by frustration then resignation. Finally this morning it all became clear: no problems with the device, RIM, just Orange not activating what they told me they would activate. Last week.


Realisation has hit home…

…about this home made preserves thing. Mushroom ketchup, first ready, absolutely delicious, minimal cost ingredients, all going well. Then there’s the small print at the bottom of the lime pickle and pickled cucumber pages: ready in four weeks / three to four weeks. What’s going on here? I know the pace of life was slower in the olden, home made days, and expectations were different, but did people really plan chicken curry nights and whatever it is you have with pickled cucumber evenings weeks in advance? How am I to avoid fiddling with, or having sneaky samples after about a week and regularly from then? Do they do a PickleGuard ™ anti-tamper Kilner jar, with a timer, that sprays you with the food-dye of shame if you go too near before the due time has elapsed?

No comments:

Post a Comment