trouble at mill

The variants of the English language, and the dialects associated with different cultures and regions was brought home to me at the weekend.

We had flyer from a new curry house through the door, the Himalaya, and they had some interesting sounding dishes on the menu. Consequently we decided to give it a go at the weekend.

SWMBO had her usual biriyani, with madras hot sauce, and I by way of a change ordered the Chicken Naga.

It took ages to arrive and I had to ring to remind them, not a good sign. Eventually the food arrived and the biriyani looked great, but imagine my suprise when instead of Chicken Naga I opened up Chicken nuggets and chips.
When I rang up again they said they had trouble understanding my accent...great, like, ay pal.....

"Parker?" "Yes m'lady"

A school in Stockport has withdrawn the use of fountain pens from their students as the school scanners are struggling to interpret the decimal point in maths papers.

Is this the end of yet another traditional and important aspect of communication, the hand written letter or report?

I have been a keen fountain pen fan, from times far back where I am fast struggling to remember. My father had a classic gold cased Parker pen and pencil set, and signed his name in a flourish which resembled a caterpillar, the P of Paul being the head, and the continuation with a (for Alexander) and weathers with a small w making up the body.

I had several pens presented to me on my 21st birthday, the Parker with the italic nib I still have 35 years later. It was a present from the kind couple who lived below us in the flat in Balham when I was a student which I shared with three other chaps.

I have wheeled and dealed fountain pens on eBay over the years, selling some I have found about the house and some acquired from car boot sales. Parker continues to be the sought after brand, although Cross are a more modern collectible, and Mont Blanc have more recently established themselves as market leaders in the 'poseur' market populated by estate agents and bankers.

That said, each of our children was presented with a Mont Blanc fountain pen for their 18th birthday, and I do have one which I use myself for special communications. On a day to day basis I use a Lamy or one of my two Rotring Core pens. They are all cartridge powered now, although i do still have an ink converter for the Parker.

There is still no better sight than seeing a hand written envelope in the daily post tray, an image which leads to it being the first item opened. I do hope the fountain pen survives into the future, I wd h8 it 2 b ex'd

Careful, careful.....

I am delighted the Savoy is reopening in stages over the next few weeks, and will make the point of dining in the Grill and having a few cocktails in the Thames bar when I am in town and able to do so.

It always fascinated me as a lad that Savoy Street was, and still is, the only street in London where traffic drives on the right hand side of the road. It was to ensure the drivers could alight on the pavement and open the door for their clientele to do the same.

Such style.

Bah! bumbug!

I don't believe it. Two Christmas trees have just been erected in one of the offices I am using in London. Our finance team have a weird approach to the festive season and seem to do this sort of thing every year.

Its gloriously sunny outside, and here I am faced with one artificial and one real tree. They have even started humming carols as bemused salesmen and women look on with expressions crying out 'get a life chaps'

I am a bit of a stickler at home, having educated the kids to mention Christmas only after bonfire night has passed, but with the increasing commercialisation of the festive season by department stores and the like it has been a struggle. The rule used to be that anything they asked for before 5th November they would not get.

After a few tantrums, they soon worked out that the stuff they definitely did not want was the stuff they asked for early...crafty buggers.

Anyway, the turkey and tinsel season has definitely started early here, I must hang my stocking up.

Tarmac yer path guv?

We are very nearly the owners of a brand new kitchen. It has been a long journey , about two months in total, and we still await the covings from Poland, via Spain....yes really, and a new tap to replace the leaking one. Then I think we are done.

We are awaiting chairs from IKEA, they were out of stock when we ordered them, but are now available in store, but as we ordered by mail order they have to come from their main distribution centre in Rotherham. Oh well lets hope the wait is worth it.

We next need to sort out the bathrooms which are all well old and starting to develop problems. We need to sort them out before we can redecorate, much like the roof.

I would like to do a bit of work on the swimming pool as that is also in need of attention, so I dropped into CRS a pool company near Tarpoley to see if they had been the initial installation company. They were singularly unhelpful and asked me all the questions I was hoping they would have the answers to. I was firing buying signals at them all the time but they were totally oblivious to them, so have lost any chance they had of getting the refurbishing contract. Given pool maintenance companies are few and far between though, I will have to do some more research.

The highlight of the redevelopment so far though has been the work paving Dave and his mate Tony have done to turn our front path from a sloping Winter death trap into a fine set of steps which match in with the patio and house character very well....they are about to grout all the flags at the mo but are getting frustrated by the constant rain fall which is slowing them down.

I call him paving Dave as the kitchen fitters have Dave the sparks, Dave the tiles and Dave the odd job man, far too many Daves!