outstanding levels of customer service

Perhaps it's a function of age, an imperfect nostalgia for a time that only ever existed in the fevered imaginations of advertisers and Daily Mail journalists, but I long for companies to start loving their customers again.

They hate us. They tolerate us because we give them too much money for goods too shoddy to deserve their price tag. But deep down they hate and distrust us and want us to go away.

The following story is true but all identifying features have been removed - after all, I wouldn't want to give the business free advertising, nor do I want to be accused of libel.

I bought a thing. A few months later, one of its functions stopped working. I took it back to the shop. The charming sales assistant, who clearly liked customers and hated the employer (this isn't going to last long), exchanged the thing for a brand new one, fresh out of the box in front of me. We even tested that all the functions worked on the new one.

But I made a mistake. I hadn't noticed that I had left a minor peripheral tucked inside the thing that I handed over. Sadly, that peripheral was not tucked into the replacement. When I went back the following day, the returns had been sent, the peripherals were not sold separately, there was nothing anyone could do except take my name and phone number. One month passed - I heard nothing.

I emailed. The reply came back:

"Unfortunately we do no supply the [.......] as a spare part. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused."

(This has not been doctored, other than removing the name of the peripheral. Yes, it does say 'no' instead of 'not'.)

I wrote again, asking them to think again if this was the best they could do. The product is manufactured for the shop and sold under its name - they might not sell the spares but couldn't they obtain one? The reply came back:

"I am very sorry to hear of your disappointment, however, we do not supply the part to send out to you. I can only suggest you try your local store as sometimes they have spare parts in there stock room. Please accept my sincere apologies for the disappointment caused."

They are very good at apologising - both for inconvenience and for disappointment - not quite so good at choosing between 'there' and 'their' and very poor at spelling the name of their company (which I have not chosen to reproduce for reasons already explained).

Am I being unreasonable in hoping for a better response? I had offered to pay for the part.

A (thankfully small) part of me wants to go into the shop, buy a whole new product, extract the bit I need and then smash the rest into tiny pieces in front of whichever lucky punters are in the shop at the same time. I am glad to have reached a level of maturity whereby I do not seriously entertain the notion that I might do this. Perhaps I could put it into a story instead. Hey - that gives me an idea.....

Why Apple's iTunes is a demented butler who won't let you poach salmon in your dishwasher

A relaunch for the much ignored (by its author) blog. This entry does not really constitute diary material since it's an article which I wrote for no one in particular, offered to one journal (no reply forthcoming), left mouldering on the computer for a few weeks and then, this morning, thought I might as well publish here just in case my small readership is still looking here and might find it amusing. So here goes:

************************************

I'd wanted to believe it was apocryphal. Surely no one would try to poach salmon in a dishwasher. A few seconds on the internet and I not only had confirmation but also a recipe. Leaving aside the obvious questions (such as why?), this comes from a bygone age when household gadgets and appliances were the property of their owners to use, or misuse as they saw fit.

Recently, our family gained a new toy – an Apple iPod Touch (basically an iPhone without the irritation of people being able to call you on it). Before I am accused of anti-Apple bias, let me state that the design of the hardware is exemplary, the layout of the software is a thing of beauty and it is as easy to use as a fork.

But is is hobbled. Straight out of the box, it bleats. iTunes, it says. iTunes, iTunes, iTunes. You may not play a tune, you may not record this momentous purchase in the calendar, you may not find yourself on a map. It demands succour from its mummy and it won't do anything else until it gets it.

And so, before the fun could begin, I found myself installing a large, bloated and nasty program onto my computer. It takes ages to load and, if you're not careful with the options, it runs around your computer, vandalising your settings. And, as a final insult, it installs Quick-Time, possibly the worst video playing software ever written. Why? Search me – I fail to see why I need to play videos on my computer in order to be allowed to use an iPod.

It would be like buying a dishwasher and having it installed and then walking into your kitchen carrying your first tea-encrusted mug to slide into its welcoming drawer – but the drawer won't slide out. Butler, it bleats. Butler, butler, butler. And you open the instruction book to find that you are not allowed to load, or unload, or switch on, or add detergent to, or top up the salt for your dishwasher. Instead, you must give up part of your kitchen floor to an ugly little basket in which the dishwasher's butler will live. You haul the butler out of the dishwasher's box – it had been left there by the installation people, probably out of disgust. You put him in his basket. He sits there for ten minutes, seemingly meditating. Then, with no warning, he jumps up and runs around your kitchen, reorganising all your shelves, hiding the saucepan you use all the time behind the cheap ones you got from Aunt Mildred, padlocking all your cupboard doors as he goes. Hold on, you shout, you're only in charge of the dishwasher. Don't you believe it pal, he snarls back, holding up the end-user-licence-agreement which you had to sign before you could open the dishwasher's box.

With iTunes duly installed, and having gone through the predictable software upgrade, the little iPod is finally ready to be used. Its little button is pushed, the screen is stroked, the machine is turned and the pictures spin around in sympathy – aesthetically it is lovely. It has no music on it.

My Sony-Ericsson walkman phone can be connected to the computer and the MP3 music files can be copied across to it. The computer sees it as a disk drive. There is software, if I need it, but the simple approach works nicely and there's enough software clogging up my computer already, thank you very much. If there is a picture in with the music, the Sony-Ericsson walkman phone assumes it's the album cover and puts it up on the screen.

When the iPod is connected to the computer, iTunes starts. The iPod will not masquerade as a disk drive. Any music must be shown to iTunes first, before iTunes will see fit to put it onto the iPod. Any pictures will be ignored and will not be used as album covers. If I create an Apple account (and provide my credit card number), iTunes will kindly trawl the internet in order to obtain the album cover which I already have. Otherwise, for every album, I can click and drag the pictures into the right place.

The robot butler can go to the shops for me, he says. He can buy detergent for me, he says. He only knows one shop and it's not the closest and it's not the cheapest but, if I give him my credit card, he'll do it all for me and make it easy. No thanks, I say, showing him the cupboard already loaded with detergent and salt and rinse aid. I can't see them, he says. They're over there, I point. They need to be precisely here, he says, indicating a spot in the middle of the kitchen floor, and you need to hand me the dishwasher tablets one at a time – I can't open a box which I haven't bought from my authorised supplier. He sits in his basket and sulks. I go to the lounge, put the telly on loud and slam the door.

Many writers will tell you that they always carry a notebook. You never know when you'll have an idea and you won't believe how quickly the slippery little bugger will wriggle free from your cortex and disappear back into your subconscious, never to be thought up again. The little iPod frees you from the drudgery of carrying a book by providing virtual sheets of lined yellow paper – but can you get your ideas off the cute little screen and into a word-processor? Hmm, well, you can copy them into an email and then connect to the internet in order to send it to yourself. Or you can copy your ideas into the additional information box for a friend and then synchronise your address book and then scoop it out of there. Neither is particularly slick or intuitive or in the style of the little machine. Surely there is a better way? Indeed there is – you can install Microsoft Outlook (at no small expense) and it can put the notes in there.

The robot butler asks if you want to give up another circle of kitchen floor for his friend the valet. The valet is very expensive but he'll allow you to stick post-its on the dishwasher and also take them off again when you need to. He can perform lots more tasks, but none of them are any use to you – you don't have a felt hat which needs reblocking or a fireplace that needs sweeping. You thank him but say you'll carry on using the fridge as your note repository. He growls and says you should enjoy it while you can as your next model of fridge will probably object.

Two days later, an uneasy peace has been established in the kitchen. The dishwasher is finally full and, to be fair, has been expertly loaded by the butler – although, for reasons that you cannot fathom, he won't put in any of the blue plates, claiming that they are incompatible with the dishwasher but might be supported in a later version. You reach for the button to turn it on. You press the button. Nothing happens. The butler snorts his derision – there's no power in it, he says. It's plugged into the mains, you say. It's not authorised to take power from the socket, he snorts. It must take power from the back of the vacuum cleaner, which must be running at the time. And so, the shiny new, near-silent dishwasher will only run with vociferous accompaniment from the vacuum cleaner, which doesn't even work properly on your tiled floor.

The iPod will only take power from a computer (unless we spend more money and buy the Apple authorised charger). It won't take power from a USB hub. Fortunately, I thought, the little laptop has a USB socket which provides power even when the computer is turned off, for what on earth would be the point of running the whole computer just to charge the iPod? Unfortunately, the iPod is smart enough to see through this scam and ignores the power dribbling out of the socket until the computer is turned on and it can talk to its mummy and get her permission to drink the soda.

And so, enjoy being able to poach salmon in your dishwasher. It is ludicrous – I find it hard to believe that anyone, anywhere in the world has a dishwasher but does not own an oven – but it is our right to use, misuse and abuse our own domestic appliances. It is only a matter of time before they rise up and stop you.

League Table

Sorry to be cryptic but, if you don't know what this means, then it's not up here for your benefit.

For everyone who does understand the significance, here is the league table!

NB - 32
SN - 245
OL - 442

JR - 652
PJ - 684
TA - 1622
SW - 3947

correct at 10am, Thursday 21 January 2010

new blog to get excited about!

Hello everyone, my audience, my wide readership...

I have started a new blog - no, not because I wish to make a clean break and start afresh but because I wish to try something new. I am reaching out to the world with a challenge, and the challenge is...

ASK ME ANYTHING

Yes, you too can rush to http://sensibleanswers.blogspot.com where you can post literally any question and it will be answered honestly, usefully and kindly. The first hundred questions will be answered free of charge so get in there quickly!

three down, er, some more to go

Further to my previous post, which I'm sure you eagerly read as soon as I dangled it before you on this blog, I can proudly announce that I have now joyfully dispatched three protagonists in three short stories. They are gone - but I did throw each of them a good send-off (well, maybe not the middle one) as well as throwing enough baggage and general misery into their back stories so that their ending could be enjoyed with a sigh of relief, a knowing smile and a happy escape back into reality.

Speaking of reality, I have just had a short telephone conversation with a very pleasant person asking me market research questions about a recent car service. Not exactly exciting but what a joy it was to make his day by giving the dealer maximum scores on pretty much everything. And I wasn't lying. Giving positive feedback is a wonderful, life enhancing activity and may I suggest that the next time you feel like writing a letter of complaint, consider writing a letter of praise to someone else instead. (Of course, if the complaint really has to be made, try writing two letters of praise to keep the scales tipped the happy way.)

Now, how shall I deal with (fictitious) victim number four...?

it's a bloodbath

I have a reason. Really. There has been nothing new to read here for ages and ages and ages because any writing minutes have been spent putting together the first two short stories to go into an anthology.

With good luck and a following muse, I may muster ten of them and, at the moment, the anthology's working title is "They All Die At The End". You may gather that these are not stories for children and you can probably figure out how it's going to go for the protagonists.

I may alter the formula occasionally and kill someone off at the beginning before telling the tale in flashback. Technically that still counts as death at the end but everyone likes a bit of variety.

The working title, incidentally, comes from a habit I have thankfully now shaken of telling people about to see a film that the characters would all die at the end. I figured that if I consistently said this then people would realise that I was not spoiling the ending. Sadly, for films where no one made it out, I was sometimes accused of ruining the suspense and, granted, if I only said it to someone once and was, by chance, correct on that occasion, then the accusation would be justified. I don't do it any more.

Last week was half-term. N and I saw the changing of the guard, the National Gallery, Southend-On-Sea (which has the longest pier in the world - but does anyone else build them other than the crazy Brits?), Kew Gardens and some other places. Photos may follow - please come back repeatedly to see whether there are any as this will make it look like I've got more readers than I actually have.

things to do

On Monday we went swimming. Round and around the pool floated arm-banded N with me supporting her and encouraging leg kicking and arm scooping. Then scootering down the road before the umpteenth tricycle trip around the car park - S or me pushing up the hill, N careering intermittently back down again.

Yesterday we backed gingerbread biscuits, mixing then rolling and cutting and rolling the remainder and cutting and... etc. N doesn't seem convinced that she likes the result but S and I will eat them even if she doesn't.

Today I have rearranged the furniture (slightly) while N is at nursery so that she will come home to a newly erected super-den (Ikea play tent) with a maze of displaced chairs, sofa and side tables to negotiate to get there. The amount of effort will almost certainly outweigh the excitement generated, especially as there's a large chair squatting in front of the television. That is not an accident.

Will this keep us going for the afternoon or will I need to resort to Postman Pat and/or Charlie & Lola? Perhaps I should hide some books around the sofa to prolong the experience.

Any suggestions for tomorrow? Keep 'em coming...

the dreaded bloggers' block

Maybe I have just run out of things to say - will that do as an excuse for the empty days when you have arrived at my URL, thirsty for my words, only to be turned away with nothing but the dry gristle of last week's diatribe?

I'm still an unpublished author and yet, whenever I turn to literary agents' websites I find that they are extremely successful in reducing their workload by being so unwelcoming. They might as well write 'abandon hope all ye who submit your work here'. To be fair, that's not all of them - but most of the ones I can find who seem friendly have already turned me down.

The third Mr Grasshead is growing his hair.

N is back at nursery. Four mornings each week now and she stays for lunch one day too! I discover that, given that I need to have lunch too, this does not really give me any more time for 'getting things done'. That is not a complaint, merely an observation. I'm sure it will be good for her to get used to eating in a room of her peers, even though school dinners are still some years off. Given the work that dear old Jamie Oliver is up to, she will presumably be served a magnificent banquet each day by the time she gets there (and let's hope she eats some of it).

I have decided that, in the interests of motivation, inspiration and of providing a frisson of danger, a whiff of risk and a soupçon of chance, I would like YOU, dear reader, to request topics on which I can burble, meander and waffle. Anything at all - I throw this down as the first challenge of 2009. Don't let me down.

As an incentive, I shall write nothing more until someone gives me something back. (Unless, of course, I feel like writing something before then.)

never mind the unpublished authors, how about the unbroadcast films?

In the nether world of rubbish television channels lurks ITV2 and its mutant sibling ITV2+1 (i.e. ITV2 but an hour later). Their film output seems to mostly consist of three Jurassic Park films, Love Actually and any old rubbish involving cars blasting up and down unsuspecting urban streets (The Fast & The Furious and any number of The Transporter films).

If you miss any (or, better still, all) of these then don't worry - it'll be back next week.

For those of us unfamiliar with the brilliance of television scheduling and film licensing, could anyone post a comment explaining how this is clever? Have they bought the rights to show these films as many times as their antennae will take them and, as a result, will flog them until literally no one is watching them? Or is there really an audience for these films as they enter their thirty-second repeat this year?

How about a series of ground-breaking non-rubbish films? Even if the top 100 films on IMDB.com is too expensive (and, presumably, can only be shown on ITV1 - or, more likely, on none of the ITVs), how about showing films 101-200? I bet there are some goodies in there and some probably haven't been broadcast in the UK in maybe as much as three weeks...

Incidentally, my wonderful old gradually packing up mobile phone is now enforcing quality control. In the midst of a frustrating conversation with nPower, during which I was trying to establish precisely why I, as a loyal customer, couldn't have the cheaper tariff for gas and electricity (answer - because it's only for new customers), the phone got fed up and rebooted itself, thereby cutting off the call. What did we, the British people, do to deserve our utilities to be supplied by these conniving little crooks? Why do I want the choice between thousands of permutations, whereby it is nearly impossible to figure out which is the cheapest and, after all, the gas and electricity is the same so we can't choose based on quality of product? Can we be told what proportion of the charges is lost in advertising (so that companies can poach customers from each other), duplicated call centres, account transfer mechanisms and, of course, a team of highly trained actuaries to devise the pricing? How about one big company doing it for the benefit of the population? It might sound socialist but surely EVERYONE would end up paying less? Just a thought.

I won't blame you if, like my mobile phone, you gave up in the middle of that last paragraph.

another battle in the food wars

N is three. She has always been a fussy eater, what with rejecting pretty much all fruit and vegetable matter except, of course, chips - which she refuses to believe has anything to do with potato.

However, matters are deteriorating. Foods which she used to eat are no longer welcome and remain, untouched, on her plate while she claims they are 'not tasty' or 'yucky', while freely admitting that she hasn't tried them. Sometimes she will taste the sauce while the food is being cooked, tell us that it is delicious and then utterly reject it once it is on the plate in front of her.

At this rate, bread and butter will soon be all that's left. And when she decides to reject that, where do we go next?

I have decided that enough is enough and so have opened up a new battle in the food wars. N has tactically retreated and is lying in bed, strategically sleeping. This is an even better way of avoiding questions like, "Why won't you try fruit?" than the usual answer of "I'm not going to tell you."

(As an aside, I managed to defeat her with some infant logic last week. I had been trying to convince her to go swimming for ages. We used to go but stopped a few months ago when she kept on refusing. Finally, she said that she would go 'tomorrow' so, the following day, I asked her again. She said 'tomorrow' again to which I said that she had said 'tomorrow' yesterday and that it was now yesterday's tomorrow. She asked if today was 'tomorrow that day' to which, for want of a better answer, I said 'yes'. I then asked again if she wanted to swim, she said yes, so I stopped the discussion, got her in the car and went to the pool. And she loved it - it was difficult to persuade her to get out of the pool, even after an hour of splashing about.)

The worst part of all this food business is that I was the same as a child but, given that I gave up randomly rejecting food well over twenty years ago, I have lost touch with that inner child and so have no inside knowledge on how to reason with her. Bribery is not working - chocolate has been withheld for some time, with the promise that if she tries fruit (even if she spits it out after a couple of chews), she can have some chocolate. She appears to have resigned herself to having no more chocolate.

Since chocolate is the 'carrot' (excuse the horribly inappropriate analogy), then we need to find a 'stick'. Threats of gradually taking away toys has led to shrieks of horror - and some of them, frankly, were almost from me since this is something I really, really, REALLY don't want to do.

Can I let my child malnourish herself through obstinacy or should I descend to psychological torture? Is there a right answer on this one? Please - if there's anyone out there - someone must know how to deal with this. A signed photo of Derek to the person who comes up with the most useful advice.

Speaking of Derek, I'm really not sure whether the world needs a four-and-a-bit thousand word picture-less picture book about a psychedelic monkey. N enjoys it, although she mainly likes the bit at the end with her in it. If only it had illustrations, I might have a bestseller on my hands. Failing that, I think it could be read on the radio - apparently BBC Radio 7 does kids' stories - which certainly solves the problem of the absence of artwork.

And finally, the moment you've all been waiting for. I am proud to unveil the new Mr Grass-Head, with the original Mr Grass-Head (now Mr Straw-Head by deed poll), standing (?) in his shadow.

it's not a sausage, it's half an aubergine

If it was in a documentary, no one would believe that it hadn't been staged. If it was in a film, the audience would think it contrived. But this happened in real life - a car drove past me, registration number C7 GAR and the driver was puffing away on a large cigar. I can only wonder how much he paid for the number plate and how annoyed he was that he couldn't have C1.

I imagine he is the sort of person who would have attended the 'Bank of the Year Awards 2008', as documented here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/27/banking-awards-ceremony

...as if this story were not ridiculous enough, The Guardian has had one of its Grauniad moments, leading it to have to end the article thus:

· This article was amended on Thursday November 27 2008. Matthew Barrett, the former chairman of Barclays, is 63, not 92. This has been corrected.

I'm not sure why I find this funny - maybe it's in part because I can't help but wonder how it happened - I mean, sure, '9' looks like '6' if it's upside down but how does that explain the '2' instead of a '3' and, if they were upside down, he would have been 29 (or E9) - and why would it be upside down in the first place? Am I over-analysing?

But, to return to my original subject, it was N's third birthday last week and she was duly presented with gifts, which included a set of choppable faux fruit and vegetables (made in sections and attached with velcro thus enabling a plastic faux knife to faux chop them up). Last night, she was preparing a faux meal and thrust an item at me. "It's a sausage!" she said proudly.

renew, rebuild, recycle

1) Renew.

The momentum, clearly, has gone. The muse has departed. The drive has, er, driven away. It has been many, many, many excuse-free days without posts to this blog and only many, many days since I completed the second draft of my epic monkey poem. In short, I have not been writing and, for that, I apologise to myself.

(If you've missed me then thanks for caring but, and I say this without a shred of mean-spiritedness, you must appreciate that I am writing mainly for myself and so it is to myself that I must mainly apologise for withholding.)

But 25 November seems a good date for renewal (and I have, incidentally, just renewed my library book (The Enchantress Of Florence by Salman Rushdie, since you ask - the sort of book that makes you realise you are in the hands of a master from the first sentence (although, with my lousy joke hat on, I could say that his book was in my hands))). Am I wantonly displaying my IT-strewn career history by my use of multiple nested parentheses? And poor man's humour...

So, here is the blog reborn. Having thought long and pondered hard about applying for Faber & Faber's writing course, I decided to let the deadline approach and go by since, to be honest to myself and my current level of motivation, I did not feel that I would dedicate enough time to it in order to justify shelling out the course fee. Yes, I know that simply paying the course fee would probably generate a fairly large handful of motivation - but if that was what it would take, then I would be doing it for all the wrong reasons. Maybe next year - I can't imagine this course will be a one-off. If I can keep writing without financial guilt or (should I be so lucky!) an agent's nagging, then I might consider myself worthy - in which case, all I've have to do is to convince them to let me on the course, which is probably as oversubscribed as an excellent non-denominational state primary school. Hang on, that can't be right - nothing is as oversubscribed as an excellent non-denominational state primary school - although at least Faber & Faber probably don't use your postcode to determine whether they look at your application or not.


2) Rebuild.

I can't even begin to blog about state education. Oh all right then, if you insist. Can anyone (please!) explain to me the need for faith schools? Here are a selection of wrong answers:

a) The parents want them. WRONG!

The parents probably also want the state to provide a brand new Mercedes for their offspring on their seventeenth birthdays - unreasonable parental wanting is hardly justification. Parents want high-quality education for their children - but is religious segregation necessary for children to fully grasp mathematics, geography, physics (I could go on)? The majority of parents couldn't give two hoots about faith-based learning - they just want their children to do well. And children do well if their their parents encourage them to value education and if the teaching isn't being constantly interrupted by children who don't value education.

And any parent who values education will be prepared to pretend to be god-fearing and/or go to church on a regular basis in order to get their child into a school where the other parents are like minded. This has nothing whatsoever to do with faith and, unfortunately, excludes parents who have enough dignity not to pretend to be religious.

b) Multi-culturalism doesn't work and different cultures need to be kept apart to keep them distinct and prevent assimilation. WRONG!

That is a wonderful theory if you are hoping for social unrest and war (or the rapture). Even Yoda knew that 'Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate and hate leads to war' and, if George Lucas could get that point across in a CHILDREN'S film, it shouldn't be impossible for sensible adults. Children need to see that children of other faiths are still just kids who live in the same town and whose parents happen to believe in a different deity (or deities) but who otherwise share pretty much all the same values. Comparative religion teaching and multi-faith schools are the way to restore social cohesion, not the creation of new ghettoes.

(Obviously, the Americans will think we're insane since they don't believe in mixing faith with politics or education. Believe it or not, we seem to enjoy mixing them into quite a froth over here.)

c) Their results are better so they should be left alone. WRONG!

See earlier points as to why their results are better. These are the children that should be in the other state schools in order to bring them all up to a high standard. Faith schools act as a free(ish) private education for those pushy enough to get their kids in while not rich enough to go for properly private education (or trying to save the money for the skiing holidays). They take away another layer of bright kids leaving the non-denominational schools to mop up whoever is left.

Let me just say that I believe that the non-denominational state schools do a fantastic (and very difficult and chronically underpaid) job. But am I a bad person for feeling uncomfortable at the idea of N sharing a class of thirty with at least fifteen children who do not speak English very well? Should she be in a room where at least two (and possibly three) classes are running simultaneously? If the faith schools were shut down and the pupils assimilated in with everyone else, those who need help with language could be taught more easily separately and then mixed in with others when their language was up to it. Would that be a bad thing? Feel free to discuss and tell me I'm wrong.

In short, we need to rebuild the state education sector to something like the way it was before Tony Blair decided to let the religious get their grubby little hands on it. Church attendance used to be declining - is it on the way back up due to parents' desperate attempts to get their children into the best school? Is this a reason to go to church? Will this level of fakery help its practitioners in the afterlife? (Feel free to discuss and tell me I'm going to hell.)


3) Recycle.

To be honest, I thought 'recycle' sounded good after 'renew, rebuild' - but I didn't really have anything to say about recycling apart from the fact that I just took the recycling out before writing this. I don't think I'm recycling any of my writing but feel free to discuss and tell me that you've heard it all before.


4) And finally.

In the last post, I mentioned that I would come back to talk about Halloween. I didn't think it would take this long for me to get around to writing again but there it is. N was dressed in a black witch's hat (Asda - 40p) and a black vampire's cloak (Asda - 40p) with the collar turned down so it didn't look so scary. Both items were liberally coated with luminous star and moon stickers (Smyths - £1.99 - but we used the leftovers from decorating her ceiling so these can sort of be counted as free).

She stalked the mean streets of St Albans with her friend L and L's brother T, collecting sweets from neighbours with wild abandon. Actually, N tended to hide behind her mother and doesn't eat sweets but managed to amass a reasonable collection of chocolates.

Last week, N turned three and, finally, her extended birthday celebration is now over, the flat is festooned with gifts and cards and I'm trying not to get fairy cake crumbs into the keyboard.


P.S. There's a new Mr Grasshead about. Watch this space.

doggerel, weak humour and a brainy tree

Dear readers, I have been letting you down, depriving you of your fix, withholding my wordy pearls of wisdom - it has been many days since my last confession. But I have been busy, I have not merely been relaxing and enjoying the closing hundred pages of Catch 22.

My main excuse has been that every waking writing moment has been taken up creating my first work for N: a rambling, sprawling, bedraggled piece of rhyming couplet doggerel in which the story and writing style are probably perfect for different age-groups - the unkindest mismatch of all since it renders the whole piece useless. I plough on regardless as it approaches four thousand words and no pictures. On the subject of pictures, the competition to illustrate this picture book is still open - I assume that you are all beavering away eagerly, conjuring up a bright, colourful, intricate yet child-like, doodle of a monkey swinging around a room. Hurry - the competition closes soon.

My secondary excuse has been that last week was half-term and so I was deprived of my three morning writing windows. In their place, I took N to the Natural History Museum where we, along with about a billion children, saw the dinosaur exhibit, the mammal hall, the birds and a surprising floor dealing with the power inside the earth, which included a simulation Japanese convenience store earthquake experience. It was mostly surprising as I didn't know that side of the museum even existed.

N enjoyed the little animatronic dinosaurs ("why have they got red around their mouths?" she asked - "maybe they've been eating strawberries," I replied - does a two, going on three, year old need to know a truer answer?) but found the roaring, staring, swivelling, snarling T Rex a bit much. "Maybe I'll like him when I'm bigger," she says, optimistically. "Maybe I'll like this place more when it's not full to bursting with ADHD children," I thought. To be fair, the museum is clearly doing its job very well by attracting such vast hordes and manages the crowds spectacularly - queues move quickly and staff are friendly. What more could one want if one is stupid/unlucky enough to (have to) go on during half term week?

The museum, though, was knocked into a cocked hat by what we did the next day. Mister Maker (see www.mistermaker.com) is currently in semi-hiatus and so we can no longer watch it every day. The episodes which are being broadcast are repeats. So N has taken to watching little clips on the website or on www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies. It is a wonderful, enthusiastic, inspiring, happy, bright programme - one of the best children's programmes I can remember - and all the more so for not featuring anyone wearing a cuddly/latex costume/mask. So, imagine my joy on discovering that Mister Maker himself, in person, was appearing at our local Asda (for those of you reading this in the USA, please go and vote NOW, and then read on to discover that Asda is owned by Walmart) and that we had about fifteen minutes to get there.

It was him - not just a lookalike in the same jacket and waistcoat. I shook his hand, he drew a picture for N of Sid The Spider (although N says, "He's called Sid but I changed his name to Sidney"), and I took a photo of him with N. The actor who plays the part (who I believe is called Phil Gallagher) comes across as a genuinely friendly, decent, person who actually enjoys working with children. I wish him every success and luck with his career although I don't think he'll be the next Doctor Who as he's probably too similar in age/appearance/hyperactive approach to David Tennant. A real red letter day, made even more exciting by the fact that I bought N's Halloween costume there for 80p.

I'll come back to Halloween next time I write (unless I forget) since I need to move on. In these troubled times for the BBC, we should spare a thought for whether their creative departments will feel sufficiently motivated to properly promote the next reality/entertainment/rubbish programme. To ease their burden, here is a photograph which I grant them free and perpetual licence to use as they see fit.

(For those who have no idea what I'm talking about due to intellectual limitations or living in a nation unencumbered with a television programme called 'Strictly Come Dancing', this is a joke. Email me if you need more explanation...)

And, on the subject of intellectual limitations, here is a photograph of a tree which looks a bit like a brain. I document it here as the council has been sending tree people around, reducing magnificent trees to paltry stumps with little or no warning. In case the brain-tree is about to suffer such a fate, I felt that its beauty should be recorded for future generations.

some real writing

I have been depriving you of fresh postings and I apologise but, as the title above suggests, I have been doing some real writing.

Staring deep into the eyes of N's favourite toy, Derek (see earlier posting and my profile photograph), I had a flash of inspiration. Using him as my muse, I have begun pouring out doggerel fiction. In rhyming couplets (and occasionally triplets and even one special quadruplet), I am telling the story of his creation and the heroic acts that preceded his passing into N's care.

It's heady stuff and should probably be read sitting down - not that it will be appearing on this blog any time soon. In the meantime, the work is crying out for illustration. Perhaps the artist could be you, dear reader. To apply for the job, please submit a (colour) picture showing Derek swinging by his tail from a chandelier.

jet-lag joy

Two in the morning, a room bathed in light pollution gurgling through the uncurtained window from the flood-lit car park of the block next door, I stride in, fully awake and ready. Face paper-white in the glow of the laptop screen, I begin to type.

I admit it - in the small hours of Tuesday I got out of bed and wrote some hideous sentences. I am now a jet-lag author.

It seems so good, the words of a genius rattling around in your head, desperate to get out and be recorded before they fade and are only an ungraspable wraith in the morning, gradually drowned out by the daylight and the moans of "why didn't I write it down?" which you finally realise are coming from your own mouth. But this is nothing compared to the other side of the coin - the horror of discovering that you did write them down and, boy oh boy, is it rubbish. Not to be read again until the middle of another flummoxed sleep-deprived night.

I'll probably do it again, though. It was a whole lot of fun at the time and better than lying in bed wondering which mammal to count next. Anyway, the stuff I wrote (and yes, stuff is the appropriate term) might be salvageable - I'll look it over next time I've just flown across a few timezones.

Why should all good things come to an end? Or, to put it another way, here is the latest update on Mr Grass-Head - or, perhaps, Mr Mould-Face would be a better name given that he has entered a whole new phase. Consideration for you, dear reader, restrains me from displaying a stomach-churningly striking photograph but, with his hair trimmed, lipstick reapplied and eyes redrawn, he could be a shoe-in for Santa in your local shopping mall with his fluffy white beard. Only his lack of knee to sit on could hinder his job development.

fixing the world, one step at a time

Hotel lighting - who wants to stand up and take responsibility? We arrived at the Crowne Plaza Redondo Beach nearly two weeks ago at about 9pm local time (i.e. middle of the flipping night according to my body clock). Having listened attentively to the receptionist's speech about how to gain free access to the gym next door (as if), we dragged and coaxed luggage and sleeping child along endless Shining-esque corridors, dipped the key card in the lock, flicked the light switch and, as the door closed behind us, realised that a 3-watt bulb had come on by the door, leaving the rest of the room in Stygian gloom. I appreciate the possibilities that a hotel room can offer but not everyone needs the lights set to maximum seduction - some of us need to be able to avoid crashing into furniture without resorting to night-vision goggles. It could be arranged subtly from the front desk - sultry-lighting-loving Lotharios could tip a wink at check-in while everyone else would get warm and welcoming. Anyone requesting flood-lighting could be thrown out.

As you may have realised from the above and from the absence of any updates for a while, I have been away from home and away from the inclination to write anything. But now I am back, refreshed and jet-lagged. As the title suggests, I shall be running an irregular series of advice on how minor inconveniences can be resolved to the greater good of all mankind. Coming soon - the positioning of the hand-brake on my car.

But wait, I hear you say, tell us more about your holiday in California. The beach, of course, was beautiful and here it is at sunset. There are two ways that you could know it was sunset - firstly, the chance of finding an east-facing beach in California is fairly slight (but I'm not prepared to rule it out without studying a map of the wiggly coastline and I'm not prepared to study a map of the wiggly coastline so the uncertainty will remain) and, secondly, what on earth would we be doing on a beach at sunrise?

The sun shone, the sea foamed and crashed, N built sandcastles (which inevitably collapsed almost immediately due to the extreme dryness of Californian sand), S sunbathed and I threw myself into the cool, foot-numbingly wonderful ocean.

J & A were married successfully, charmingly and heart-warmingly in a ceremony so beautiful that I might have stolen ideas from it hook, line and sinker were it not for the fact that S and I are already married - and anyway, if I say so myself, our ceremony was extremely well-constructed too.

Finally, I should add that Mr Grass-Head needs a haircut. His flowing locks are grizzled and tired - perhaps ten days roasting on an unknown south-facing windowsill has taken its toll. A trim and a reapplication of facial features are in order - until then, any picture would be too terrifying.

so many trivial things to do, so little time

This will, of necessity, be a short entry - probably riddled with typographic errors for which I make no excuses except lack of time which is why it is going to be a short entry. The same shoddy excuse applies to the lack of action on this blog for the last six days.

Nevertheless, I bring exciting news and, more surprisingly, it's even on the much neglected supposedly main topic of this blog. Last Thursday, I spend about three (or was it four?) hours concocting the perfect email to a literary agent. I put my heart, soul, collar size and kitchen sink into it. I wrote it to Nathan Bransford, whose own blog, hosted, possibly (well, slight chance), on the very same physical disk as this one, made me realise that plenty of agents are human.

Having finished and sat back to wallow in smugness (risky to do on a kneel-up chair with no back to it), I thought I would click on his 'how to write a query' entry on his own blog. Having realised that I had broken every rule, and not even paid heed to his advice and suggestions, I then added the following:

Looking back at your advice on writing queries, I have probably broken all the rules, and not necessarily in a good way. However, I believe that one should always try to stand out from the crowd and to be true to oneself. I am not someone who feels comfortable sending short, dry and dull emails and hope that you find this lengthy outpouring entertaining. I certainly feel that, after spending several hours putting it all together, I might as well send it and see what happens!

So I shall now stop, but only after reassuring you that the writing style here, involving tortuous long sentences and wilful meandering, is significantly reined back in my books.

Unfortunately, I then read my own email again (more carefully this time) and realised that I hadn't actually written very much about my own books (yes, that should have been the main thrust of the email - don't ask what I had blathered on about instead) - and that it could qualify as the most insane thing I had ever written. At this point, I parked the email in Outlook's drafts folder and, smugness deflated, went out to do something else. In years to come, this email may be held up as an example of precisely how not to contact a literary agent in exactly the same way that the screen test that Jools Holland and Paula Yates did for 'The Tube' is used to show aspiring television-types how not to make a programme. 'The Tube' ran for several years with them hosting so maybe I should send my email anyway.

Before I go to extricate Derek from the washing machine after his annual bath, imagine that you are standing in your kitchen, staring out of the window at a gradually darkening sky as evening descends into twilight. Suddenly, a flash of lightning outside and a monstrous shape appears. Yes, Mr Grass-Head is on tour, part Gary Rhodes, part Mark Lamarr, coming to a kitchen near you...

the experiment is over

It began in a wave of optimism a mere three (or was it four?) months ago. Hang on, that's not right. I actually thought they would all die, or be eaten, or disappear without trace or simply not appear at all.

We did the best we could. We fed and watered them, we cared for them, we gave them canes to lean upon when they were weak and frail. We encouraged them. N danced for them.

But this week, the realisation that a pesky squirrel was climbing up them trying to eat their seeds led us to call it a day and put the viable sunflowers into a vase, prune the rest into the dustbin and wait to see whether anything will rise up, phoenix-like (okay, we didn't actually burn anything), from the enriched soil next year. (The soil of the pots - the earth in the flower beds proved toxic to seeds as the samples planted there all fell into the 'simply not appear at all' category.)

Overall, a fairly rubbish year for sunflowers - mainly, I feel, due to a conspicuous lack of sunshine in the summer and an over abundance of pot flooding from torrential rain. Nevertheless, we managed to grow about three or four feet of sunflower about seven times over. The packet of seeds suggested six to nine feet - maybe in sunnier climes, like Kent.

It was a good year, however, for Mr Grass-Head who is going from strength to strength. No photograph this evening, mainly because it's dark now - but partly because I felt that N should appear herself on this page, clutching one of her flowers.

here there and everywhere

The trouble with trying to squeeze more than one photograph (and that one photograph being of Mr Grass-Head, obviously) into a blog posting is the endless wrestling with the limitations of the blog format in order to have the photographs adding to the prose rather than getting in the way and popping up in the wrong places, merrily scattered here there and everywhere.

Clearly, I lost yesterday's wrestling match, hence the somewhat slapdash appearance of my witty, pithy, etc critique of London, the Open House event and all manner of other subjects about which I am opinionated while knowing very little. You will have to take my word for it that I entered the field of battle with valour but, in the final reckoning, was defeated by the fact that the window into which I type my pearls of wisdom and position my photographic works of artistic merit operates to a wholly different agenda than the one on which the posting is finally viewed. Yes, it's the old story that "it looked okay on MY screen" or WYSIWYG where that "I" in the middle actually stands for "isn't".

I also feel that it was unfair of me to give no attribution to the 'Hope' photograph. As any Handel expert would immediately have known, this beautiful trompe l'oeil feature (yes, it's a painting not a sculpture) is in the Church Of St Lawrence in Stanmore. Take the tube to Canons Park, turn left as you leave the station and it's a short walk along Whitchurch Lane. Medieval tower, eighteenth century church and Handel used to play the organ - what more could you want from a trip out to zone 5?

Mention of zone 5 reminds me that a few years ago I found a website, written by Quin Parker, describing his adventurous excursions to stations in zone 6. Clearly Canons Park would be worthy of inclusion if only it were slightly further flung. At the time, I found his writing hilarious and, searching for it a few days ago to see where he had been lately, all I could find were Google links to pages that no longer existed. Where has Mr Parker's travelogue gone? If anyone can find it, please let me know.

And finally, I'm sure that you have been missing him and have been anxiously awaiting news of his progress. Yes, without further ado, I hereby present you with another lovely picture of our favourite gent who has gone to seed (ha ha).

Notwithstanding the fact that his lipstick is running, his nose is turning blue and his hair is made of grass, S feels that he resembles Kevin McCloud more and more each day. You, the reader must decide - opinions in the usual place please (i.e. nowhere, but one can always dream of dialogue).

open up - it's the public

This weekend, nearly seven hundred grand, humble, wonderful, terrible, trendy and fusty buildings invited the general public to have a good old poke around. London Open House is an annual event which restores one's faith in mankind since it is wide-ranging, generous and free.

Portcullis House, cutting across St Stephen's Tower (am I a pedant for using the name of the building, rather than the bell (Big Ben) which it houses?), was showing off its surprisingly light and airy atrium, nestling within the troll-like fortifications. It also surprised us with its Gerald Scarfe exhibition, clearly illustrating the old maxim that politicians really would rather be insulted, even within their own workplace, than ignored. Glorious as the atrium may be, the meeting rooms looked as boring as meeting rooms anywhere else and we were left to guess the state of the offices above. It does make one wonder whether palatial quarters for MPs is the best use of taxpayer's money, even if they do let us into the lobby once a year. Would it be terribly ungrateful of me to ask how many hospitals we could have had instead if the MPs had continued to work inside tiny broom cupboards in the Palace Of Westminster? How about if they had just had a normal glass and steel box of the sort infesting every city in the world and the difference spent on hospitals - how many then?

Never mind. Let us move on. It was a day of crosses, starting with the numerous red crosses warning rascal drivers not to attempt to park and obscuring the view of, shame on us, London's most popular tourist attraction. Not only does this cursed thing have the effrontery to refer to its tawdry fairground ride as a 'flight', it even has the nerve to charge £15.50 for the experience. What is it with our infatuation with going up things to come down again and at such great expense? In the time it takes to queue up numerous times and trundle around in a glass dustbin, any self-respecting tourist could take a healthy walk around any number of beautiful scenic views, or the lazy ones could take a bus ride around them. Either option would be cheaper and more rewarding but, even though they are fairly obvious, I don't see the London Eye running out of suckers any time soon.

In case you can't make it out, the label in this rake's hat says 'My favourite bit of London'. I don't think the hat was original. A prize to the person who can identify the sculpture and its precise location - write me a comment telling me. No prizes for identifying the fellow in the other photograph although perhaps you would care to suggest the sort of hat which would best suit Mr Reuter. Even hatted, though, I do not feel that he will become anyone's favourite bit.

Another cross greeted us during the half-hour queue to enter the Lloyd's building and, once inside, the view down through the numerous floors to the bell and the clock and the tiny ant-like figures reminded me of Orson Welles in 'The Third Man', berating Joseph Cotton for his sentimentality and asking him, from atop an observation wheel not altogether unlike the London Eye, whether he would "...really worry if one of those dots stopped moving", given that he was making a large profit from stopping quite a few such dots. Bearing in mind the recent and continuing financial turmoil, I can honestly say that I would worry about the fate of the dots but, at the same time, am concerned how many of the normal occupants of that building could say the same.

Three more crosses against a beautiful pollution-coloured sunset. N was in the bath at the time.

Finally, I leave you with hope, or maybe I should say Hope.