Should I stop blogging?

It was easy when I first started because I felt I had so much to say, and thanks to Zoe of “My Boyfriend is a Twat” (now now longer with us; in a blogging sense I hasten to add!) who gave my blog a BIG mention at the start. The result was that I had an instant circle of readers. Thanks Zoe.

The truth of the matter is I have so much to say, not in the trivial manner of some of my later posts, but in a more aggressive and political way now. These last few years watching this country go rapidly downhill is distressing me and making me very angry with the politicians and other people who are supposed to be running this country. They are running it alright; into the ground!

I think that if I turn this into a political blog I will lose a lot of my cyber-friends, and I don’t want that. In all honesty I dont think I can continue the way I have done and watch out “lords and masters”, who we elected as our “representatives” to speak for us in Parliament, now telling us what we can and can’t do whilst lining their pockets with our money and living the high life!

See what I mean? I was on the point of a rant just then, but I managed to check myself just in time.

I dont think I will just stop blogging, but I feel that I should take a break for a while and review the situation. One answer I suppose is to start another blog under a different name where I can really have a go at the bas. . . er, blighters who cause so much grief to the elderly, the sick, the unemployed and the homeless while giving shitloads of our money to other countries.

So for the time being it’s ‘au revoir’ from me and the little fellow in the picture, who will no doubt pop up in another blog soon I hope. As Arnie used to say, “I’ll be back”. Now I’m off to the ‘Earl Shilton Home for the Bewildered’ for a spot of R & R.

Some time ago I wrote about the amount of junkmail that comes through our letterboxes (June 2, 2010).

I am still getting vast amounts of the stuff, as no doubt you are too. I have tried stuffing A’s junkmail in to B’s postpaid return envelope, B’s rubbish into C’s envelope together with loads of Pizza, Indian and Chinese takeaway leaflets, etc., as suggested in the video below.

This seemed to work for a while, but gradually different firms are now sending junkmail without a freepost return envelope so I printed off some self adhesive labels which I stick over my address and send them back.
If you want to do the same and can’t make your own labels you can download them from here.

For the last two months I removed all the paper junkmail from the porch and did the above with it. I was now left with 17 plastic collection sacks from practically every charity in the UK (see above). That’s about one every four days!

I don’t have any old clothes, DVD’s, ornaments or bric-a-brac to donate, and on most of the bags it states that if you don’t want to donate this time, save the bag for next time. Previously I tried leaving the unused bag out on collection day, but they don’t pick them up. I can’t see any recycling symbols on the bags, but two do show a glum face and state that “This bag is not recycleable”. So what do I do with them? Now, now, sensible suggestions please. . . .

Sorry about the poor quality of the graphic, but I’m still hungover from last night. . .

Not being the proud owner of a washing machine I have to do my smalls by hand in the sink and take my sheets, towels, shirts and certain other things to the local launderette for a service wash (cut rate for Old Age pensioners on Mondays!).

Living alone I just couldn’t justify the cost of buying a machine because they all seem to be ‘family size’ jobs, a slight case of overkill in my case. I did once find a small one on the internet designed for batchelors and people on their own but the price was about half as much again as a family size one. I suppose that manufacturing costs would be higher because not many were made. It was out of my price range anyway.

But I digress. This week I packed my grubby washing into a bin bag and took it to the Launderette. I collected it later in the day and it was all nicely folded and packed neatly into my bin bag.

When started to unpack it I noticed that it hadn’t been dried as well as it usually was. In fact it was still quite damp. Never mind, I thought, I can put it over the clothes horse to dry.

Then I noticed that the towels and sheets were still grubby (and damp). When I examined my shirts I saw that the inside of the collars and the cuffs were still dirty. I thought “I’m not having this, especially as the price had gone up in line with the VAT increase!”

I took one of the towels and a shirt straight back to the launderette and confronted the girl who served me and told her I was very unhappy with the service. Her reply was, “The manager has told us that due to the increase in the water rates, the electic bill and the high cost of the washing powders we have to reduce the washing and drying time in order to make it cost effective”.

Cost effective my arse! They also put the pensioners rate up to £11 from last week when it was £8 per load. I know the VAT went up to 20%, but these charges are just way over the top.

I think in future I will join my neighbours and go with them to their free “launderette”!