“Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.”
Benjamin Franklin
Click on any image to go to this month’s gallery for more/bigger/better ones
But, oh god, life has been nothing but expense of late.
First our clothes dryer gave up the ghost. I had the back off it, and rummaged around with a screwdriver, but to no avail. “Sod it, we live in bloody Australia, we’ll just use the washing line.” Ermmm.. no we won’t, it’s winter here.
Then the kettle blew up, blowing all the fuses. No way can we live without a kettle, so we bought a new one.
Then the food processor blew up. Well not so much “blew up,” as “had a rather bad reaction to Lee-Anne putting a wooden spoon in it while it was still running.” We decided we couldn’t live without a food processor, so we bought a new one.
Then our washing machine blew up. I took that apart too, and removed 15 hair clips, two clothes pegs, a small ball, and $14. 55 in change from the filter. “That’ll fix it,” I optimistically opined. No it didn’t. So we called Warren, our favourite little washing machine repairman out, at great expense obvs. He took it apart, and informed me that; “When the filter had been clogged it had overheated the electrics.” Or to put it another way, “It’s fucked.” He then charged us a mint for that opinion.
We spent a week or two doing our washing and drying at Mary’s. The thought of Mary’s invisible ledger being filled with even more of our debt to her, meant that one weekend we found ourselves down the industrial estate buying a new washing machine. We didn’t bother with a new dryer.
Then I got a pain in my side. It got so bad I couldn’t sleep, and was on painkillers, I hate taking painkillers. I went for a massage at Foot and Thai ($85.00) which cured it for a while, but then it came back with a vengeance.
So I went to see my GP. She gave me a form for a blood test, and charged me $70.00. I went and had the blood test, they charged me $180.00. I went back to see the GP to get the results, she told me there was something up with my kidneys, gave me a form for an ultrasound, and charged me $70.00. I went for the ultrasound, they charged me $220.00. I went back to see my GP for the results. She told me I had a kidney stone, gave me a form for a MRI scan, a referral to a urologist, and charged me $70.00. I went for the MRI scan, they charged me $550.00. I went back to see my GP, she told me the kidney stone had gone, said I was a walking miracle, and charged me $70.00.
Total cost of this way of finding out there’s sweet FA wrong with me? $1,315.00.
So thank your lucky stars you have the NHS, (unless you’re one of my American chums that is.)
(To this day I still believe it was the old wives cure of drinking lots of acidic drinks, in my case pure lemon juice, which got rid of the stone.)
But then I got a cricked neck. I went to see our chiropractor this time, as Foot and Thai crack your back but not your neck. Dorothy cracked my back, then got hold of my neck.
Imagine if you will, Motorhead’s PA system at full volume. Imagine someone doing a castanet solo through it. That’s what my neck sounded like. Dorothy charged me $80.00 and told me to come back the next week so she could do it all over again.
Getting home from work one night, I got out of the car and opened the garage door. I drove in and parked. Coming out of the garage I noticed something on the floor that looked like my Iphone. Only much wider and flatter. So I bought a new phone, one with a bloody big screen and 10 x the capabilities I would want or use. (More on this later.)
Then I reversed into someone’s car. Our insurance company are dealing with that one, but we do have $850.00 excess, and I’ve lost my fucking no claims.
So all in all we’re skint, spare 10p for a cuppa tea guv?
L-A as you may know is a relatively high ranking civil servant, with a hugely responsible job, (which is slowly driving her potty.) Luckily some light relief comes every now and again when her office do things for charity.
Which is why a couple of weeks back you’d have found her going into work dressed like this.
That’s my bloody tankard she’s pinched there!!
All in a good cause though, they raised a healthy sum for Give Me 5 For Kids
Now I know what they see in me!
Interesting. When I went for the ultrasound and MRI scans for that back pain problem, while at the reception I was asked; “Would you like to view your results at online?” Being a nosy bugger I snapped up the chance. So I got a registration form, and logged in when I got back home. I’d not come across this idea before, is it now common practice? Of course all the deeply worrying looking images and text meant fuck all to me, but it was fun to see inside me, (I’m dead pretty on the inside.)
It must give Dr Google, (the bane of my life,) plenty of work!!
One night at work, bored shitless, and praying the emergency phone didn’t go off, I was doing my usual stunt of cruising google maps again. I found this place; 168C High St, Egham TW20 9HP, United Kingdom
It’s an Oxfam shop in Egham, and is really important in “my story”. When Alan Harness and I worked at Thorpe Park in Chertsey*, long long long ago, when we were both penniless students, on my day off I used to walk into Egham and buy second hand books.
I bought three books in this shop which changed my reading habits forever.
“The Hound of the Baskervilles” by Arthur Conan Doyle
“The Spy who came in from the Cold” by John le ‘Carre
“The service of all the dead,” by Colin Dexter.
*I’ve got a huge range of tales from that time, of being a professional pirate for a summer, of running the Long Walk while training for a marathon, of being insulted by Bob Todd and insulting Dennis Waterman, and many, many, more. But I won’t bore you with them, unless you ask nicely that is!
As I said earlier, we’re in winter here. The overnight temperatures have been down to -5 degrees, and we’ve had the first snows. I did take our boys out for a walk in the snow after one fall, as they’d never seen snow before. They found it very amusing. Amusing until they got a cold cock each, then they weren’t so keen.
Well the farce and farrago which are Aussie elections came and went with no change of government.
The queue!
We did our patriotic duty and voted.
Mary and L-A vote
Not that we had much choice, they fine you here for not voting. Inevitability I voted for all the silly parties as my first choices as we have a “preferential voting” system here.
My voting sheet
Yes I did rank the “Sex Party” as number one choice. They are actually on the ball politically. (fnaaarrr…)
“The Sex Party is the political party for progressive Australians. We campaign on Marriage Equality, Euthanasia, Drug Law Reform and more.”
When I’m at work I park on-street, a 15 minute walk from our office. I do this mainly as I’m too fucking mean to pay the $9.00 daily parking rate outside the office. Walking to get the car one night, I was listening to an old CD of mine, (“Blood” by This Mortal Coil, if you must know,) which I’d ripped and put on my new phone. The new phone has 32 gig of memory, but I added another 64 gig too that. Do you know how much music, photo and book storage that is?*
“I wonder when this was released?” I thought, probably aloud. I was in the middle of Edison Park, which is a rather pretty inner city play park and gardens, at the time. So, I tapped into google on my new phone, and lo and behold, there’s more information on the album and artists, right there on my phone, than I could ever have imagined, (or wanted even.)
Turns out it was released in 1991, I thought it would have been mid-to-late 80’s.
So there I am, in park in the middle of the capital of Australia, listening to an album I bought a quarter of a century ago in the UK, playing it in a format that hadn’t been invented when the album was released (MP3,) which is being played on a mobile phone, while looking up infinitely detailed information on it, and all on the same fucking device!
We live in an age of wonder.
*It will hold 2000 CD’s worth of music as mp3, and still have room for my ebook collection!
One of the things that keep us poor is my inability to stop myself from buying tickets for gigs etc. But I’m so not happy with Bill Bailey!! He’s playing Canberra again this year, but priority tickets for the gig are being sold to Visa card holders only. We, of course, own a plethora of Mastercards.
Bill as a Corporate whore, what is the world coming to?.
So I put a plea out on Facebook; “Anyone got a Visa card they are willing for me to use? I’m good for the cash, honest!!”
Believe it or not some people, offered the use of their credit card details to me! It just goes to show what gullible wonderful, kind, caring-sharing, mates we have!! (Thanks again you know who you are, we’re humbled.)
In the end though we went with Bethy’s visa card. We still owe her. Getting “priority tickets” means we’re going to be sat 8 rows back, and in the centre of the auditorium, so that should give us a great view of the aging hippy bastard.
Our social calendar is looking quite good for the rest of the year!
Resident Alien; (Quentin Crisp): 30/6/14
Choir of Trinity College Cambridge: August 4th
Australia vs New Zealand ODI: 6th December
Bill Bailey “Larks in Transit”: 8th December
I’ve probably bored you to death with raving about his books by now, but in case I haven’t I’ll just repeat that I’m a huge John le Carre’ fan. I’ve got most of his novels in signed first editions etc. (Got any more for me Kelvin?)
So I was very interested in what they’d make of “Our Kind Of Traitor” as a movie. To my mind, the book is one of his more lightweight tomes, and would have seemed to be ripe for a movie adaptation.
I managed to persuade L-A to come and see it with me.
We did this at an afternoon showing, as L-A cannot stay awake if watching movies at night. I’m not taking the piss here, if we start watching a movie after 7.00 pm, by the time an hour has passed she’s out like a light, no matter how good it is. Don’t ask me why, voodoo I reckon. So we have a habit of going to see films during the days. This is actually quite pleasant, as the cinema isn’t full of kids and plebs then.
We stopped off at “Shorty’s” for a bite to eat, we’d not been there before and I wanted to get another Canberra review for Tripadvisor. It’s a pleasant enough place, usual bar meals served, usual range of beers. The serves were generous enough; I had fish and chips, (now there’s a change,) and L-A had a soft shell crab in batter in a bun. This damn near made me hurl, (“what you mean, they don’t gut it first??!?!?!”) The chips came pre-seasoned, and were frankly a bit odd.
The decor there was a bit random, (L-A wanted to nick an Art Deco mirror from there,) but it has no particular theme or style. Not a bad place to stop at, nothing to distinguish it from any other Canberra city centre watering hole though.
3 out of 5 stars.
It turns out that OKOT was on in the local cinema’s “premium movie” theatre, with booze and grub on offer. Unfortunately we didn’t find that out until we went in. We just had a couple of glasses, (Pino Grigo for L-A, Glenfiddich for me,) delivered to our seats, as we’d eaten our fill before the movie. I don’t know if I’d fancy watching movie while munching away on fish and chips in any case, (they had this on offer,) it would be a bit distracting to say the least. Have to say though that a couple of glasses of reasonable Scotch with a movie is a damn fine idea.
All told, a good but not great, adaptation of the book. A multiplicity of changes from the book, but none that detracted from the story in a major way. The ending was softened up a bit too much for my tastes. Good to see John Le Carre keeping up the tradition of his having a very minor bit part in it. (SPOILER: he’s the guy handing our the leaflets at the museum.)
I’d give it 4 out of 5 stars, would recommend. (L-A is not a JLC fan, but enjoyed the movie, if anything, more than I did.)
Ok, so last episode I reported that we’d paid off our mortgage on our cottage in Cornwall. That has been one major factor in our future planning. So now we’re awaiting our superannuation reports, they should be with us by the end of August.
Our hope, and it is just a hope, is this; if my super has enough in it, and factoring in a proposal that we will work another year, then in Nov 2017, next year, we will retire. Sounds neat eh? I will be nearly 59 yrs old, and L-A will be 54.
Ok, it works like this. We need enough cash in my superannuation to give us £25,000 a year to live on, until L-A hits 59 yrs old. If we have that, I will take my super as a lump sum, invest half of it in long term high interest accounts here, as Aussie interest rates are far better than the UK ones at present. Putting half into savings accounts means it’s not just sitting idly in a bank, but is actually earning interest for us.
The other day, thanks to information provided by “money savings expert forum”, I looked into whether or not I had any NHS pension from the years I worked for them, (1991 to 2003, with a small break.)
Turns out I have a small fund, which will pay £3463.00 pa and a £10,300.00 lump sum on hitting retirement age, or £3037.00 pa and £9,500.00 lump if I were to take it now. So that’s another handy £66.00 per week, once I hit 60 or so. We’ll probably leave this grow, and only use it if shit and fan collide.
When the time is ripe, we’ll pack up everything we own here, and get it shipped over to Blighty.
With the rest of the money in short-term, easy-access, saving accounts, I will move back to Cornwall in Feb 2018. Once there I will contract, and get a gutting and redesign/rebuild, of the interior of our house done, and possibly a conservatory put on the front.
L-A and the mutts will join me sometime during all this malarkey.
If we can survive on that ex-supperanuation lump sum until L-A hits 59, then her superannuation will kick in, and after that we’ll live like the proverbial pigs in shit.
That’s our hope. Fingers crossed for us eh?
PS. If this sounds a bit smug or gloating, believe me it’s not meant to. Tell the truth we’re actually shitting ourselves at the risk of it all, as there’s so many factors that could fuck up for us. In the worst case scenario, we’d end up not just with egg on our faces, but in a position of having to go back to work having had a snifter of retiring, skint, and without our superannuation cushions inflated. Not a nice idea.
Talking of finances and gloating, remember last episode I was filled with glee that I’d sent back $12,000.00 Au at 54.3p got us £6516.00 for it? If I’d have hung on until the 11th of July, just two more sodding weeks, I’d have got £7020.00 for it. £500 bloody quid down the tubes!
The swings and roundabouts of being an international financial idiot wizard eh?
Some lovely new photos in this month’s gallery. but be aware, there’s also a batch of new tracks of my bloody awful music which can be found here. Just warning you.
Well that’s all from me folks.
[sarcasm] Please feel free to leave a comment, send me an email, or ring me any time you want. [/sarcasm]
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– thought you were going to tell me the doc fished 15 hair clips, two clothes pegs, a small ball, and $14. 55 in change out of your kidneys..