By a strange twist of fate the book we bought for our son Paul for Christmas "Chocolate Cakes And Cuckoo Clocks" (a collection of writing by Alan Coren) was the same book that he bought for me. As a Guardian reader I am not familiar with Coren's writing which appeared mostly in The Times but I must say that this anthology is a pure joy. I challenge anyone not to enjoy his completely off the wall pieces which range from an account of attempts to telephone President Nixon, Chairman Mao & Fidel Castro (almost in the manner of Bart Simpson) to a parody of the Rime of The Ancient Mariner combining a tribute to Ken Russell with watching a match between QPR and Stoke City on Match of the Day. I do urge you to get hold of a copy of this book. It will certainly brighten your day.
Talking of brightening the day, our new super duper phone system has been playing up something rotten ever since we got it. It seems that we are now on VOIP which is short for Voice Over Internet Protocol which allows us to speak using Broadband technology and make big savings on our calls. Great idea-lousy product.We get muffled calls,calls that we can't hear people talking but they can hear us, calls that just drop out mid conversation (or is that just people who get fed up with the sound of my voice?)and a switchboard that lights up like a Christmas Tree and cuts everyone off. VOIP? Vastly Overrated Internet Phones. Today's fault was attributed initially to BT but, when we were getting nowhere after two hours and several conversations with the service provider's technical department, I used my expertise gleaned from years of using Sky Plus and switched the system off at the wall and back on again. Hey presto service is resumed. The switch off at the wall method works for almost everything nowadays - even our boilers.
I was having a look at eBay yesterday and realised that I have not used it, apart from buying a few tickets, since August. It's quite sad that something which played such a major part in my life over the last 9 years has declined so much. In the early days in 1999 I could find some fabulous rarities and I have a great collection of items from then. In the early 2000's I could sell stuff at excellent prices but a couple of years ago the world and his dog jumped on the bandwagon and suddenly everyone was dealing. The result was that the market was flooded and prices slumped. As one of the rare members who was actually paying tax on my sales I was at a huge disadvantage although I believe that the taxman has now started to catch up on the myriad of car booters and pin money people who were actually making a pretty good tax free income. Anyway I built up a stock of about thirty pieces last summer and I was thinking that now that the dollar and euro are worth so much more it may be the time to dip another toe in the eBay water. I mean the stuff will be 25% cheaper to overseas buyers so maybe just maybe. Will give it a try later this week.
We went back to the gym yesterday for the first time this year. Managed to swim 100 lengths of the pool and Marion had a couple of hours of classes. It's always interesting to see the new faces in the new year and make a mental wager on how many weeks they'll last. My guess is the guy who looks like Fred Elliot won't make it to February and the gym owners will be made up with yet another unused subscription.Tonight the five a side football resumes. Let's hope that it has warmed up a bit. Driving in to work today the dial read -6.5C. Can't remember last time we saw temperatures that low.
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