A routine week in many ways, although it has had me unusually frustrated. My phone and bank frustrations have sent my eyebrows sky high. Other highlights include taking lessons from Fred Flintstone in making some furniture and Rachel has been kept busy with jigsaws borrowed from the village library.
Firstly the bank, Lloyds Bank to be precise. Perhaps we are old fashioned in liking paper statements, posted to us each month. Sure, make the most of online banking but there is nothing more frustrating that being pushed into paperless statements.
Lloyds Bank have form on this i.e. this is not the first time they’ve pulled a stunt like this. You log on to the app and the first screen is almost forcing you to go paperless. There seems to be no way around it, the only way to access your accounts is to accept paperless statements, as you can see from the above screen shot. My solution? I closed the app and went straight in the following day, luckily without being coerced to accept paperless statements.
This strikes me as being one of those “we are doing it for our customers convenience” but no they’re not. It is simply a cost saving measure by the bank, with a bit of “we are doing our bit for the planet [by forcing you to go paperless]”.
Rant over.
Well nearly.
You can see in the above screenshot how I have removed our account details and my email address. Common sense really. So why did the phone repair man think I would leave him with my passcode? Read on.
I had been having some difficulty in charging my phone, so I went to a different repair place that is new to me, although it was recommended. Suffice to say I don’t think I will use them again. They were a bit vague about when I could drop off my phone for repair. Then the initial 24 hour turn around turned into three days.
During those unsettling three days without my phone, not knowing exactly where it was or who was trying to repair it, I had some irrational worries about never seeing the phone again, having to buy a new one and having to somehow get a new SIM card with the same number.
It was during the three days that they asked for my passcode. Here’s how the conversation went….
Did they really think I would allow them access to my emails? Social media accounts, bank details, notes, address book, phone, thousands of photos and access to my blog? What’s more you don’t need to unlock an iPhone to see whether it is charging or not. Honesty, what is the world coming to?
Furniture making!
We decided we needed some stackable single beds for our guest room. They can be pushed side-by-side for a couple, moved apart for singles or stacked on top of each other for extra floorspace.
Then I decided to make them, instead of buying them, seeing as how we had two spare mattresses! The frame is made from some floorboards which have been loitering in the garage for several decades. Once I got going I quite enjoyed making the first one. For the second one I will plane the planks of wood before assembly but other than that, it is plain sailing. Through using a combination of deep threaded screws and wood glue it seems really sturdy.
I have enjoyed doing it so far, although I won’t win any joinery prizes, not even from Fred Flintstone. My little workshop is gradually becoming better equipped and sorted but there is still a long way to go for my skills to match the potential. We haven’t decided what colour to paint the stacking beds yet. As the room is pink, I’m thinking navy blue.
Jigsaw puzzles
Rachel brought some jigsaw puzzles back from the library, just before Christmas. Everyone dipped in to do the occasional 30 seconds, which always seemed to stretch to 20 or 30 minutes. Mind you, I was hopeless as any areas which involved red, green or brown, which funnily enough left very little to do, apart from blue sky.
Rachel has faired much better, determinedly pressing on and completing quite a few. She reports on the therapeutic nature of these puzzles. Maybe it’s that time of year which is so conducive to jigsaw puzzles – the lull after Christmas, the cosiness of the house and being able to cast your eyes over 1,000 little pieces and bring all of those random meaningless bits together (almost sounds like some kind of metaphor for our lives these days?).