Category Archives: General

General

Picking Up a Parcel in Reading

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Reading Sorting Office

One of the more annoying hassles we discovered when we moved to our present house was that we had moved into a postcode delivered from the sorting office in Reading, rather than the more convenient offices in Wokingham or Crowthorne.

Although in general it’s not too much of a problem where our post comes from, if the postman is unable to deliver a package for some reason, it does mean that we have to go into the centre of Reading to pick it up. Unlike most of the parcel delivery companies the Royal Mail have their main site right in the centre of the town, adjacent to the railway station – due in part of course to needing to be close to the railway for Post Office Train.

If you look at the picture, the sorting office is the big building in the bottom of the shot, with the parcel collection office being in the top left corner. The car park containing all the red vans is where the Royal Mail park their vans, and the other car park is for the Vastern Road retail park, which includes a few large retail units and a TGI Friday’s Restaurant. Bear in mind that the largely empty situation in the rest of the car park is pretty normal – very rarely is that car park full. The only available parking, and indeed the parking everybody uses is in the retail park car park.

Anyway, today Beth went off into town to pick up a parcel, and drove into the car park. Being a Saturday morning, TGI Friday’s was closed, and the rest of the car park wasn’t busy, so she went to park in one of the spaces by the sorting office. When she got out, there were new signs warning that the car park was not for use of Royal Mail customers, and someone further up was arguing with some clampers, who had clamped their car in the few minutes it had taken for the person to go in and collect their parcel. Apparently since Wednesday they have been sitting in that part of the car park watching for people parking and going to the sorting office and then clamping them – cost being £120 to release the car. Whilst of course it is their car park, and they can limit access to whoever they like, with the amount of space their usually is in that car park it does seem to be a tremendous own goal by the owners of the retail park to annoy large parts of their potential customers by clamping them for collecting a parcel. Needless to say, the topic has kicked off discussion elsewhere, and even made the local paper. Locals are well advised to find somewhere else to park when they need to collect a parcel.

General

Another Big Brother, Another Racism Row

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Barely a week into the new series of Big Brother, the show has shot into the headlines again (and pulled in an extra million viewers) thanks to Emily, one of the contestants using “the N-Word� during a conversation with fellow contestants Charley and Nicky.

Thanks in no small part to the Shilpa Shetty controversy earlier in the year, although I suspect in part driven by the fact that at 3am Charley and Nicky were still discussing the incident – more concerned that Emily would be punished it seems – the producers took the decision to eject Emily and woke her up and removed her from the house in the early hours of Thursday morning.

There are a number of interesting observations about what has happened. Firstly Narinder, a housemate from Big Brother 2 is currently writing a book about the series interviewing former housemates about their experiences. She appeared this morning on BBC Breakfast to discuss this incident and said that every previous housemate from a racial minority, including herself, have had some sort of incident, but the majority have not been shown. She even highlighted that as part of the fight that occurred during Big Brother 5 that eventually required security guards to enter the house Emma used the same word as an insult towards Victor.

Her opinion was both that Channel 4 was both right to show the incident in full, and that they were right to eject Emily as a result, more-so having seen the incident on the highlights show. I think what is most shocking about what happens is that Emily really doesn’t understand quite how offensive the word is. When Nicky asks her where she is from (Bristol), Emily says that she and her friends use it all the time. Nicky, who was brought up in Watford says that the word would never be used where she came from. Emily also tries to justify it by stating that the word is used in many songs – which it is. Also worth considering is that Nicky is about ten years older than Emily. Whether it is something regional, or to do with the people Emily knows, or whether the use of the term in music has resulted in some groups not understanding the offence caused by the term I don’t know. Suffice to say that by not just editing it out this time, Channel 4 has certainly highlighted that the use of the word is offensive.

Having said that, whilst Emily has been ejected because her use of a word would be offensive to the viewing public, the Times BB Blog highlighted that people have expressed possibly offensive views without using offensive language. Certainly if they disciplined anyone who expressed an opinion that was either naive or offensive to one group in the same way as Emily was disciplined then there wouldn’t be many contestants left. However the question is what impression does that give to people watching about the relative importance of words as opposed to beliefs?

General

A Hotel that Does Read the Feedback Forms

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After Jo and Drew’s Wedding last week, rather than drive back home we spent the night in another local hotel, the Richmond Gate Hotel. Basically the choice was somewhat limited when we booked as I wanted a hotel where we could actually park the car – a number of the hotels in Richmond have little or no car parking at all – and the Richmond Gate was about it.

You can read my review of the hotel on TripAdvisor, what I wrote on there is pretty much what I put on the feedback form. Looking at the other reviews for the hotel, and also for it’s sister hotel next door for both the experience does seem to depend very much on which room you get.

In terms of the Richmond Gate there are rooms in the nice Georgian part at the front of the building, but the majority of the rooms are in the modern three-storey block out the back where we were – and they charge extra for the bigger ‘feature’ rooms anyway. Being a modern design though, all of the standard rooms in the block out the back are the same size – small. Looking on the hotel’s website some of these do appear to have been refurbished, but they won’t have been able to do that much about the size of the rooms. They could shrink the bathroom, but that won’t do that much good really as fundamentally I think the basic room is small for the amount they are charging, however many toys they try to add.

So whilst there was nothing overly wrong with our stay, I thought it was expensive for what we got. The room was small, and basically a bit tatty as it had yet to be refurbished. I filled in the form, but didn’t much expect a response. However a couple of days ago I actually got a letter from the manager at the hotel apologising for the room and highlighting that they were refurbishing the rooms, and that our room hadn’t been done yet and offering us a complimentary upgrade to a superior room the next time we stay there in the next year – not that I think we’ll have call to use it though… But it’s nice to know somebody reads those things.

The Richmond Gate Hotel originally uploaded by justindz – who also thought the rooms were small…

General, Pictures

Wedding Pictures

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The Waiting is Over

If you’ve been reading Beth’s blog recently you’ll have been following her making the cake for Jo and Drew’s wedding which took place yesterday.

She has actually written up the day, well it’s actually about fifty-percent about the cakes, but there are details from the wedding too!

If you’re wondering about the comment about my foot – which I realise I haven’t mentioned on here, at the moment I’ve got an infection in my left foot, which I’ve had since the beginning of the week. The doctor said it was either an infection, or could be gout – saying that if it were gout the pain would be worse later in the week as the antibiotics he gave me would be ineffective. Anyway, the good news is that it isn’t more painful, so hopefully it’s not gout, but the bad news is that with it being in my left foot changing gear in the car is rather uncomfortable, as is wearing anything other than a slipper on that foot, so Beth did the driving yesterday.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded the pictures that I took yesterday to Flickr, or alternatively you can browse them in our gallery.

General

Bank Logic

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Interesting bit of bank logic. I was trying to access my online banking service this morning and it was refusing my access code – I assume mine got reset when Beth phoned up to change her code yesterday. However whilst I was waiting for them to unblock my access the agent came out with the following statement: “I notice you have one of our savings accounts are you saving for anything in particular?” My answer to that was no. Then the follow up question that I assume would have been asked whatever I answered “Have you considered one of our loans?” At that point I pointed out that since I had a mortgage with them anyway why I would need another loan from them – a question he didn’t answer… Actually, I guess he is probably told to sell everyone a loan…