A worker no more

Today is my last working day and it's damn near over. See, I said the next post would be a little ray of sunshine. Yay me! Been easing into the transition by not overtaxing myself - a short fight with HR, who somehow managed to pay me just £88 this month. I know my wages are meagre, but this is beyond the pale. But no, this is a post of joy, not moaning. A final team lunch of vegetarian sushi and beer. A fine haul of a Spanish dictionary and map of Spain and Portugal from my writing team-mates. Now it just remains to recycle everything in my desk, pack up my mug and put on the ultimate out of office message. Then go to the pub.

I think this is the first time I've really felt like it's all actually happening and I'm so excited I feel like I could scream, cry and probably sick up a bit, all at the same time. I've really left my job. What a great feeling, although the above description may sound more like poor health than joy - it's not.

So...
Goodbye civil service, with a particular sharpened pencil eye-poke to: SpAds, you bunch of power-crazed, craven time-wasters; policy officials that think they can write sentences but, in fact, cannot even make abstract pictures with letters and word-shaped forms; marketing people that don't actually market; and everyone whose work involves making other people fill out forms. I don't miss you already. At times, it has genuinely been fun. There have been other times, but this is a post of joy, and those times have no place here. There will no doubt be dark days ahead when I will have ample opportunity to revisit those times and ponder at length on what I did and didn't get out of working for the civil service. I'm glad I have had a go at it though. I've met some really great people and learned a lot.

Now it's time for celebration. For now, I am officially retired!

It's all gone horribly wrong

Looking on the bright side, maybe I'm getting all my shit luck out of the way before I go travelling, which would be a good thing. But what a genuinely rubbish run I am having. We've got the whole credit card fraud thing, as detailed below. Actually, let's start with a list of organisations that are currently on my shit list and then I will explain - this way, the time-poor can just know who to hate on my behalf and not have to worry themselves with the why of it all.

Current list of evil fuckers (LEF):
Barclaycard
ebuyer
Home Delivery Network
David Daniels
Home Office - in particular the Managed Migration department
Decathlon

So Barclaycard, we know about. Utterly incompetent and unhelpful when you've been defrauded. Tell you what, they do get that replacement card out to you in a hurry so you can keep on racking up the debts though! At this point, I am still unable to challenge the fraudulent transactions because they have not yet supplied me with a statement in the time it takes them to cancel and replace my credit card.

ebuyer. This is the company through which I have been ripped off. So far, so not necessarily their fault. However, I phoned them earlier this week to see if I could prevent any possible outstanding goods being despatched on the account in a bid to minimise the damage. I gave them my postcode, my address and when they asked me for the account name I explained that apparently the person had been using the name Andrew Breck but my credit card and address. They then refused to tell me whether any goods had been sent! Despite the fact that I had given them my address and was willing to give them my credit card number as confirmation. They would tell me, however, that their courier company is City Link.

City Link are not currently on the LEF because I think they might end up carrying the can for all of this. I phoned them and they claim that someone at the house signed for the goods on February 16 - a day when both Grrr and I were at work. I can only assume that the person waited outside the house and signed for the goods when the delivery came. There is no way the guy was actually in the house and they clearly didn't ask for proof of identity or address, so I think they've cocked up really. They could join the list, however, with just one tiny step in the wrong direction.

The so-called 'delivery' company that does make the LEF is the ironically entitled Home Delivery Network. Tragically, the formerly unfaultable Amazon is now using this hutch of braindead bunnies to deliver your goodies. The nearest depot to us is about 6 miles away. After we received the first card, with no tracking number written on it (and a website that won't give you any information without a tracking number and crashes when you try to get contact info) I contacted the depot direct.

[Small up-beat aside - thank you internet. I googled 'Home Delivery Network die you bastards', or somesuch, and found a message board where others were discussing the extent of this company's evil. One extremely helpful person had posted some advice on contacting the scum - don't call their crappy central call centre number, go to 192, do a search on the company, find the depot nearest you and call direct. I did this and it worked a treat. I also got to read some really nasty things about the Home Delivery Network, which gave me a little warm glow.]

Phoned them, they're open until 7pm Mon-Fri. Cycle out there after work in the cold and dark. 6.45pm: find warehouse in middle of nowhere, observe many signs telling me to go to front door, ring bell, buzz intercom, bash on door, tap on window, no response. Swear muchly, cycle back home.

Phoned them again to check what hours they are open on Saturday so that I can cycle out there. Again. Me: 'So, is there anything special I have to do to get in? It's just that I was told you were open until 7pm in the evening but I was there at 6.45pm last night and there was no one around.' HDN twat: 'Yes there was. You should have gone around the back.' What do you even say to a response like that? I'm the customer. All the signs at your warehouse tell me that I must go to the front door. It's dark, in a deserted industrial estate and you want me to go wandering around on the off chance that someone might be hiding at the back of the building. When eventually I was able to collect my parcel, having gone 'around the back', I discovered that they were working inches from the front door on which I had been banging and ringing and tapping and so on both the night before and that very morning. Evil. Mother. Fuckers.

Our washing machine is broken. It has been broken for more than a week. It is half full of filthy stinking stagnant water. It was supposed to be replaced with a new machine yesterday. It wasn't. David Daniels are the estate agents that work for our landlord. They are the rudest, most incompetent, ignorant and cretinous estate agents ever - which, as you can imagine, is up against some pretty tough competition. Just thinking about them makes my ears bleed.

My application for citizenship has been approved. Hundreds of pounds and a naturalisation ceremony later I receive the certificate I need to prove I am now both Australian and British and thus secure a British passport. It's wrong. They've got my name wrong. They've decided that my name at birth was different from my name now. I have posted it back with the required evidence of who I am, and now I discover that it will take at least two months for them to check the application and print a new certificate. That's more than twice as long as it took them to approve my application. All those reports about the incompetence of the Home Office, they're all true.

Decathlon I feel a bit sorry for. If so many other really irritating things hadn't happened, they probably wouldn't have made the list but I've run out of charity and general benefit-of-the-doubtness. I bought, among other things, some new cycle shorts from the Decathlon store at Surrey Quays. I cycled all the way home with them and then, when I went to wear them, I discovered that they still had the security tag on. Because they only made them in grey, not the black which I actually wanted, I can't even just rip it off because they will end up with an unsightly stain. Now, I will have to cycle all the way back to the shop to get them to take the security tag off. I know, it's not a big thing, but it's another thing and therefore, albeit harshly, they make the list.

My next post will be a fluffly bunny filled ray of sunshine - probably focusing on cool stuff that I have recently bought. I hope.

Bastards - a banking coincidence

Well stab me with a spork - I only started the new blog yesterday and already I've got something to rant about. Thieving buggers Barclays, with whom I foolishly and shamefully bank, have reported disgusting record levels of profit on the very same day that Barclaycard stop my credit card for fear of fraudulent use thus sweeping their pointy stick through my magnificent spiderweb of online orders for essential travel goodies.


Where to begin... first of all, it turns out that there has been fraudulent use of my card. Someone has used it spend more than £500 with a company called ebuyer. Oh, and £2 with T-Mobile - with purchasing a ringtone striking me as about the least ambitious act of online credit card fraud ever. Wow, on the ball Barclaycard, lucky you stopped that happening. Only what? You didn't? No, you authorised those transactions and then declined all the legitimate ones I actually placed with reputable traders with whom I have accounts and have placed previous orders. At present, it would appear that the only way you can use my credit card is if you're not me.


But hold on, what's that? The charges from Amazon have both been authorised and declined? At the same time? Well, I can't see that online because with my credit card blocked I can no longer even look at my statement. And you can't tell me for sure, although you *think* it has probably gone through. Maybe, in a week or so, you'll have a better idea.


So at least, it will all be sorted then - oh, of course, it won't will it. Because then I have to start the process of proving that I didn't make the fraudulent transactions, working out what I have and have not been charged for and whether I have or have not received it, and then re-ordering the things that I haven't got and hopefully haven't been charged for.


This, apparently, is how one makes record profits.


Offering entertainment of a less poke-out-your-own-eyeballs variety is the ever-dependable Townsville Bulletin, august journal of my family's current home town. In a series of events that you could not, in any way, make up, they face the twin threat of kittens and crocodiles. Yes, if the plague of cats doesn't get you, the rogue reptiles will.

Fear the kittens of death, pictured left and appropriately captioned by the Bulletin as NATIVE BIRD KILLERS - the paper's caps, it goes without saying. Fortunately, Grrr saw instantly that this twin pronged attack could be dealt with in a single blow by feeding the NATIVE BIRD KILLERS to the rogue reptile thus ridding the town of plague and befriending a sated and subsequently un-rogue-like croc. In the words of genius: "Hey presto - everybody's happy."


My life would probably be immeasurably improved by replacing the mental health damaging escapades of fat-bastard banks with the threat of kittens and crocs.

So it begins...

Welcome to the blog of a journey. That's journey in a physical sense, rather than the no-doubt more interesting metaphysical one - but if it turns out to be a good enough journey, I suspect there'll be plenty of that as well. I've resigned from my job, I'm packing up my house and I'm going. Soon. There's 39 days to go.



That's 39 days until we board the ferry at Portsmouth and float our way to Bilbao. I consider 39 to be the headline figure, but there are lots of other figures floating around. Delivery dates, prices, travel times - for a non-maths person, I feel like I'm doing an awful lot of maths at the moment. My personal favourite though is 7 - that's 7 working days to go. Not including today, which is more than half over. In less than two weeks, I'll be leaving work: not taking a holiday or a career break or changing jobs. Leaving work. Ah the joy.

But enough gloating. As this is the first post, let's recap - at the end of March, me and Grrr are going travelling. For the first six months, we'll be cycling around parts of Europe. This blog will hopefully record that journey. Here is a rough map of what the path of our journey might look like:

Ignore the vaguely question mark-shaped thing in Italy - the question has largely been resolved and the answer is 'no'. In fact, this is probably more of a guide than a route map, so much is up for grabs in the execution. What we know so far:

• we are definitely leaving from Portsmouth


• we are definintely taking the ferry to Bilbao


• we are definitely doing that on March 30.

So, plenty still open to negotiation, reconsideration and change. Got any good ideas? Based on our embarassingly scanty suggested route, any stops, diversions, or detours are welcome. It doesn't do to over-plan, I always find...

Anyway, this post is primarily intended as a rod for my back - I figure I need to start this blog in order to feel under pressure to keep this blog up to date. Much is going on, planning is frantic, and decisions are actually being made despite a hell of a lot of procrastinating about everything from tents to bottle cages, cycle socks to party dates and venues. And we haven't even made most of the big decisions yet. Despite *the plan* being hatched and committed to many months ago, it's taken quite a long time to get to 39 days, which will apparently now last about a week - or that's how it feels at the moment. It is time to get ready, decide things and do stuff. Sooner than I can possibly imagine, it is going to be time to go.

How much does that rock.

More soon...