Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

A very nervous but well-dressed Furtle is off for an interview this morning in the further attempt to find a better p[aid and rather more engaging job that doesn’t leave her wanting to murder her colleagues just to break up the boredom.

I have discovered a disadvantage of using digital radios as alarm clocks: if you don’t listen to them for at least five minutes in the day the clocks move forward (or indeed, backward), then the internal clocks do not re-set automatically. Happily the alarm on my phone went off on time and ten minutes later when the radio was due to come on, Furtle was already awake with nervous tension, so my Monday morning tendency to roll over and go back to sleep was thwarted.

At some point over the next few days I have to decide whether (and when) to email Amazon and ask them precisely where my book is that they supposedly despatched on 22 March. The travesty that is their home page makes it less than obvious how a customer is supposed to email them and ask and we all know that a misdirected email isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Equally, I am beginning to wonder if I shall receive notice beyond the automatic email that anyone has actioned my order for a Feegles Rob Anybody mug. The twenty-first century seems to have broken temporarily.

A word of advice for anyone thinking about buying CD jewel cases from eBay – it’s probably not worth the effort.

Having spent a couple of weeks fruitlessly trying to find a retailer that sells double CD cases, I gave up and bought some off eBay, dirt cheap. And that’s what I got: dirt cheap CD cases. They are a bit too flimsy for comfort, though once they are properly reassembled with CD sleeves etc put in them, they should do the job. I can’t see me needing to dismantle them a second time.

Twenty-five jewel cases for £4.50 including p&p seems like a bargain, but when more than 20% of the cases are broken – in some instances, shattered – it’s less of a bargain. I mean, 23p each is hardly a rip off, but it’s the principle of the thing: they were sold at the heady price of 18p each. That said, I can’t tell if the damage was done by the post office or not. I think maybe 5 of the 6 were post office mishandling – they were all at the same end of the package, but one was from the middle.

Oh well, caveat emptor as they say.

I’ve emailed the vendor but not heard back yet. I expect that it will be neutral feedback with a note.

When I was a kid I never read the instructions that came with model kits. I would cheerfully glue them together in whatever fashion seemed most appropriate and generally that worked. I mean there’s only so many ways the pieces of a Spitfire will fit together, so who needs to look at diagrams (other than to get a cheap adolescent thrill from the instruction “insert male piece A into female piece B” –fnur, fnur)?

As I got older and the model kits got more complicated - HMS Victory, the Cutty Sark et al, I would deign to dip into the instructions for the more fiddly bits, but large chunks would still get slung together regardless.

These days I rarely make model kits, but when I do, I employ a combination of experienced arrogance and a meek thumbing through the instructions to work out what the next odd-shaped piece of plastic is supposed to be and where it’s supposed to go (I can still do an Airfix Spitfire without help, though). I have long since learned to keep the glue well away from transparent plastic, too.

I arrived home last night to finds that the “Welcome Aboard” TARDIS, Doctor and Martha Airfix kit I had won on eBay had arrived¹. You wouldn’t believe how complex a kit can be produced to assemble a geometric box and two figures. I’m not sure what the level of detail would have done to my 11 year old brain had it been available back then, but I know what it’s doing to my brain now.



Suffice it to say that I shall be using the instruction book, both for assembly and for the painting guide. Hopefully when I have finished the Doctor will not look like Heath Ledger’s take on The Joker.


¹Thank you, Parcel Farce for leaving it in the passageway, open to the elements and hidden behind the gate where it might have been crushed, rained on or stolen.