Category: General

Today is 4 years since I was made redundant, after 21 years of service.

I can’t believe 4 years have passed already and that in that time, we have had a pandemic, the Queen passed away, my mother-in-law passed away, we renewed our wedding vows, a war broke out in Europe, the cost of living is crazy.

That’s why you should try to live your life to the full, as you never know what is around the corner.

Thank you to those that have commented or left a like on my postings. It’s very much appreciated.

Today we took a drive out to Tunbridge Wells Garden Centre, we decided to have something to eat here. The food had always been good, but today it seemed on a different level.

I gave feedback via their website and this was the respond I got back.

“Good afternoon Michael,

Thank you for taking the time and sharing your feedback about your most recent visit to our store.

I will be sure to pass on your feedback and positivity with the garden centre restaurant team.

Have a lovely day and we hope to see you again soon!

Many Thanks

Ollie Muggeridge

Customer service manager”

I must admit, I wasn’t expecting a response this quick. I always like to give feedback, whether good or bad, especially as most people only like to give bad feedback.

Found out this evening that my dad was in remission from his myeloma cancer. Which was fantastic news.

They will continue to monitor him, but this is brilliant.

This morning I did my yearly ONS standard of living survey via a telephone call.

I think it’s good to do these things as it as an input to what’s happening in country, especially the last 18 months with the crazy cost of living.

It helped I had a good rapport with the person doing the survey.

Some of the questions are weird, but as I have done this for a few years now, they have some of the answers already.

To keep the website compliant, I installed a cookie compliance plugin today.

So from today you will need to validate what cookie setting you want to use.

Always have to keep aware what is going on regarding the internet.  

After the incident on Friday with the car, I had been communicating with Kia, even had the engineer call me that had been dealing with the issue so he could hear what actually happened on the day.

All the testing they had done, whether with the computer system or manually, they found no fault.

They had searched there knowledge base and it hadn’t been reported before.

I was kindly taken down to the garage, by Ziya.

When I was at the garage, I enquired how they got the car started again.

An engineer saw me and took me to the car and on the driver’s side, there is a button that you can press that will reset the car. So they are becoming more and more like computers. (Reboot – lol)

I wished I had been told about that, when I purchased the car.

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again. At least it was all covered under warranty.

I received an email overnight, as I mentioned in a previous blog posting, I had signed a petition to have the state pension, tax free. There was a meeting in the house of common regarding this earlier in the week and this link takes you to the meeting –

https://hansard.parliament.uk/HoC%20Debate/2024-01-16/debates/0972D88A-20DC-4229-B1A2-249B77610C62/web/

After reading the meeting, I don’t see any mention of stopping the tax on the state pension. So what was the point?

If you sign a petition and it reaches a certain total, you expect that to be action, don’t you?

Be interested to see what other people think, feel free to comment, but please keep it civil.

Well, not the day I was expecting that. Today I was meant to have been my bi-yearly eye test.

That didn’t happen, as what was meant to be a simple drive to Costa to get a coffee, ended in a nightmare.

I was parked opposite the Costa shop and got my coffee, after getting back in the car and pressing the button to start the engine, I went to turn the dial to reverse and nothing happened.

I tried various things over next 20 minutes, but nothing would respond and I was getting warning lights on the dashboard, that when I looked them up, said a malfunction, but not with what.

I rang my break down cover and they advised they would send a vehicle out to pick it up. I rang the KIA garage, which was only about a mile away, but they said they were booked for a month. So I rang the KIA where I purchased it from and they would take it in. The issue with this, was that it was about 30 miles away.

By now the car had lost all power, I was lucky as I parked on a slight slope, but I was last car, so it just rolled back into the kerb and not another car.

I was able to speak with one of my sisters and she was happy to come and pick me up from the garage once I had got there.

Just over an hour after I had called the break down service, the recovery vehicle turned up, but due to the issue with the car, he would have to park right in front of me, but there were two cars parked in front of me, one I knew was in the café, but the second car I had no idea. You could only park here for an hour, thankfully the recovery driver had no issues in waiting, which was good as it was about 35 minutes, before the other driver turned up. So he went and the driver of the other car allowed it to be moved. I had to stop another car trying to park in the spaces in front as the recovery vehicle was trying to move in front of my car.

Once the car was on the back of the recovery vehicle, we had a good journey to the garage and booked it in. I have to admit the recovery person was great.

My sister, came and got me and I finally got back home, mid-afternoon.

Now wait and see what they find.

This afternoon, I signed petition to stop state pension being taxed.

I mean you’re taxed when you’re working, plus taxed on the money going into your pension.

So why should we be taxed again on our pension. I mean the government have already taken enough tax from you over the years and your still be taxed on the other pensions that you have.

Let see what happens.