Varying degrees of loss

It was two years ago tomorrow my Granpa Reid passed away. It's quite strange that it has been two years already. Part of me still expects him to be there when we go round to my Gran's place. Sitting in his armchair, watching the telly. It was usually the horse racing that was on. Engrossed or in a trance like state, he'd sit there watching until the race ended, then get up and offer drinks and argue with Gran. Sometimes I can still feel his whole weight on my shoulder, from when I was younger, whenever he got up from his armchair and he'd plant one of his giant hands down on my shoulder for some unnecessary support. He'd also sometimes stand heavily on your feet as he passed you by on his way through the living room. You'd have a sleep over at Gran and Granpa's some nights and wake up with carrots and onions in your shoes like some kind of strange non seasonal Veggie Claus had visited during the night. I still find it odd that Granpa did pass away at all. There was nothing wrong with him! He was only 81? He could have easily done another ten years. Such is the way with life though.
Not quite as unfair but still a complete p**ser is the fact I've been robbed. Last night I decided to check out our accounts online and discovered that someone has nabbed £35 from one of our accounts. Last week I purchased a tenners worth of petrol at a garage in Rutherglen. On the statement this is listed alongside another item which was apparently £35 bought from the same garage the next afternoon at approximately 1pm?! Ka and myself were both at work when this purchase was made and the credit card in question was, as far as I know, in the right arse pocket of my trousers. How did the thief do that then? Was my card scanned by some piece of evil card scanning equipment whilst in the garage the night before? Had somebody been watching me type in my pin? Who knows. All I know is we're £35 poorer with no sign of a return and my card has now, once again, been cancelled. So now I'm having to wait on another cash card coming through the post, preceded by another new pin. The third new card in a year. The last one being lost in T in the Park last year whilst dancing to The Wombats and, almost immediately before that, when I had nipped up to the Spar outisde my work to withdraw some money. On plugging my card into the hole in the wall the whole industrial estate decided to conk out. The whole site lost it's electricity supply for around two hours leaving me with no cash or cash card. The only plus point being we sat at our desks in the office with nothing to do for two hours (I think we ended up having a paper ball fight).
On a brighter note, one of our blue wheelie bins has mysteriously appeared at our door. Yes, one of the previously thought long lost wheelie bins has turned up safe and well. One of the other neighbours welcomed it home on Monday evening. Somehow, this wheelie bin escaped the ned bonfires and has survived?! Unfortunately there is no knowledge as to where it has been the past month or so but I'm looking into it... nope nothing in it either.

Ridiculous language

I let myself down over the weekend. I swore at a Royal Bank of Scotland telephone operator. On the Saturday morning we got a statement through our door informing us the bank were billing us for a grand total of £58. We had inadvertantly fallen beyond our overdraft at the turn of the year. Our first time, and they are billing us now for this ridiculous amount of cash. Our money was one day late in going into the bill bank account. So, angry and frustrated, I told a Bank call centre lady that it was a 'bloody ridiculous' amount to charge. She responded in a haughty "I advise you to stop swearing at me". The best I could come up with in response was "bloody is not a swear word!" before hanging up. It's not good to blame these innocent call centre types for their employing company's corrupt methods but sometimes you just cannot help but lose the rag, and sometimes even the will to live. "I think you just need to control your finances a little better" the woman had said to me in the most patronising tone she could possibly muster. I would say the lady got off lightly with a mere 'bloody', wouldn't you? Banks are not to be trusted anyway. Especially the Royal Bank as it's certainly not the first time they've swiped money from my account through no fault of my own. These problems occur because of dates falling on bank holidays, weekends and such like, messing your financial schedule right up. Previous problems have also occured due to salaries being paid with rubber cheques, but that's another story. As it happens I have since discovered that for the same financial accident which befell us in January, Clydesdale Bank would have charged us £8 less and, best of all, Barclays bank would have only billed us £22. A good reason to leave the Royal Bank. Should we go through the hassle of changing the whole account though? It would involve at least ten different phonecalls to ten other different call centres to sort out the changes which could involve getting creative again with my insolent grammar. These call centre employees must be used to it though. It must be the worst job for putting up with disgruntled customers. Some, like the Royal Bank lady, are just asking for trouble though.
Around Christmas i phoned the Vigin tv line as our Digi box had suddenly decided to refrain from operating for longer than one minute at a time. After restarting the box, with the classic switch it off and back on again routine, I decided that we needed a technician so I picked up the phone. By the sound of her accent the lady on the other end of the line, with the distorted volume in conversation, sounded like she was also at the other end of the world. The background noises giving the impression she was up in one of Richard Branson's own hot air balloons. As she fired her gaseous flame up into her balloon and her basket struggled in the wind, the virgin lady warned me she was going to go through some steps with me. Rolling my eyes i informed her I had already restarted the box in an effort to remedy the problem but she insisted on taking me through these steps. After following her instructions running back and forth from the phone to the tv for around ten minutes I realised that she was basically taking me through the exact same steps I had put myself through. I was switching the box off and back on again. The only difference this time was that is was in an overly long, over complicated fashion whilst at the same time trying to understand each others words, through our different accents over the distorted phone line. Afterwards the call centre operative came to the same conclusion I had done fifteen minutes previously. We needed a technician. I kept my cool though and after the call had finished, rather shakily, placed the phone receiver back down on it's perch with only a loud sigh. Which is the calm, collected self that was missing on Saturday morning with the Bank.
Telling my family about the whole bank episode over dinner last night, my Gran nodded and agreed that my language had been getting worse. She noticed last week when I'd been in her house spouting about something that I'd "no idea where the hell it had come from?!" Again, I'm not sure if 'hell' is a swear word, but it was obviously enough to earn disapproval from my Gran. Something no one in the family enjoys.
Around ten minutes after the phonecall on Saturday morning I was racked with guilt and felt like phoning the lady up again and apologising for my 'bloody' language. Needless to say, I decided against it. I'll live with the guilt. That is until the next statement slides through the postbox, billing me for offensive phonecalls.