The Joy Of Shopping

I’ve been buying some things online this week. There is nothing unusual about that in this day and age, it’s just that I found the experience to be a little unsettling. I was actually buying a full set of steel wheels and winter tyres for the Golf (yes, that obsession again) and the only place I could find that would do them at a reasonable price was MyTyres.com which is the UK trading name for German firm, Delticom. This is actually a large European concern and a firm with a pretty good reputation so it did make me wonder why their payments handling system feels like that of a cottage industry or a VAT-exempt sole-trader holed up in a Welsh cottage somewhere.

Initially, I actually found the experience very good with them having a huge range of stock available in various combinations. I managed to feed in my exact specifications of car model and desired tyre and was passed through to the checkout. I entered in my credit card details and this appeared to take the order with little trouble and I received an order confirmation. Things then started to go a little odd the next morning when I received an email telling me that for the order to proceed I would have to transfer money directly into their bank account. This sort of smelt like a scam.

I decided to phone up the firm's helpline (checked from an independent source) and it turned out that the email was genuine. They claimed to have tried my credit card but had it declined. This is not the first time this has happened and it usually involves a quick call to the bank to authorise payment but they were determined that I should pay by bank transfer instead. I’m always a bit uneasy about this as credit cards, at least in the UK, do offer a fair bit of added security whether it is down to the banks vigilance or the statuary guarantees that are in place. After doing a quick trawl of a few motoring forums I decided that this was par for the course and made the payment. I had expected to receive confirmation in a few hours but I actually received a response saying that I would receive a confirmation of payment in “1 to 2 days”. I did receive this but it was after 2 working days (right over the weekend) that the payment confirmation was received. During that time I was left sweating as to whether that money had disappeared into the ether.

The next part of this interesting transaction has to do with their chosen couriers, DPD. Now the first thing I would say about them is that their online tracking system is excellent but it also highlights the somewhat bizarre methods of transporting their parcels. I had assumed that as all 4 tyres were being transported from the same warehouse to the same destination that they would all travel together. There were actually 4 different package numbers for them so I just checked the top code. Whilst I was out walking the dog I got a text from Nina: Did you really only buy 1 tyre? When I got home I discovered that each tyre was in a different state: one in my garage in Scotland, one in a distribution centre in Warrington, one in a hub in Bavaria and the other in Baden-Württemberg. Now I can understand that the logistics could warrant splitting the order to get it to the distribution centre but I really think they missed a trick by not making a single journey to my house.

The rest of the tyres arrived this morning and the delivery driver was as bemused at his extra journey as I was. So would I recommend MyTyres? They do seem to offer a unique selling point with the combined steel wheel and winter tyre and their prices are very competitive. However, I found the purchase experience from BlackCircles and KwikFit to be far less stressful. Having used them once I think I would be more confident about ordering again. I’d certainly consider DPD for deliveries as even with the odd delivery their tracking was very good. They said that this morning’s delivery would be between 11:00 and 12:00 and it arrived at 11:03 which is pretty remarkable. Anyway, I suppose this just confirms something I’ve known for years: Germans don’t like credit cards.

The Not-So-Smart Phone

I used to have a little Sony mobile phone. It was pretty basic but had a great music player and the battery would last for over a week on standby. It broke around 18 months ago so I went for a smart-phone. This was an Android based thing which I was convinced (by others) was the way to go. This, it turned out, was a big mistake.

When I first bought the phone I thought that it would take some getting used to – but I never have got used to it. The touch-screen interface is bloody awful and I should have been wary of this having tried and failed to use a friend’s iPhone previously. Unfortunately, I sometimes just have to learn the hard way. Aside from the interface I also found the screen very difficult to read with my middle-aged eyesight and the whole thing was bulky and cumbersome to use. However, the absolute killer was the battery life. If left on standby it would last less than a day so I ended up switching the thing off, rendering it largely useless as a mobile phone. Even then, I would forget about it and the battery could be flat in under a week, making it less use than a strategically placed public call box.

I’m not in the habit of scrapping things that are not actually broken beyond repair but on occasion I just have to admit that I made a duff purchase and buy a replacement. I don’t think my requirements have changed as such. I need to make and receive calls on occasion and sometimes text; I like to have a decent MP3 player and camera but I also now realise that a half decent battery life and a vaguely useable interface help no end. As such I’ve gone for a not-so-smart phone in the form of a Nokia 301.

So what’s it like? Well, small, black, with traditional buttons and a no-nonsense interface would sum it up quite nicely. On a single charge it has lasted for around a week on standby although it runs down faster if the camera or music player are used more. The MP3 player is also a model of simplicity which easily found all the albums that I had loaded on the micro-SD card from the old phone. The songs can be selected via album or artist and there are also playlists which I haven’t fiddled with yet (and probably won’t). It sounds OK though the supplied headset and significantly better on more expensive headphones or playing through a proper stereo.

The camera is a 3.2MP job which is theoretically inferior to the old one but I haven’t noticed any difference. In fact for the most part it is far easier to use than the old one. The only problem I have found, and it is an annoying one, is that the photo’s are mis-orientated. I have found a way of fixing this using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) but it is a little annoying. Anyway, I took this picture in the early evening of the Celtic Circle at The Helix:

There are a couple of useful extra features on the camera. The first is for producing Selfies. A Selfie is a self portrait produced by pointing ones camera at oneself. I discovered that this word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary the other week and is a currently fashionable term amongst the young person’s argot (in a similar way to the way iPod means “gramophone-player”). The feature works by having a bossy American woman help position the phone at arms length. This was the result:

Unfortunately, it doesn’t point out that a gale is blowing one’s fringe asunder. The other feature is a panorama which allows a wide angled shot to be deployed by taking several shots and piecing them together. This was my effort:

I could see that working nicely for landscapes or something like Liverpool waterfront. The surprising thing is how idiot proof the feature is. All of these features seem to work intuitively and with very little effort from the user. Overall I’m very pleased and aside from the annoying picture orientation I couldn’t fault the device. I’ve also managed to set it up with the old Doctor Who theme as the ringtone and a TARDIS noise as the text notification. As far as I am concerned the mobile phone industry can take their smart phones and avail themselves of the suppository app.

Helix Day

Being a dog owner I spend more than my own fair share of spare time in public parks. This gives the dogs a chance to have a run and sniff around on their own and is also a chance for me to stretch my legs and get some fresh air (well, in between cleaning up after the dogs). I always seem to have been fortunate enough to live close to a decent park – I often walked through Jesmond Dene when I lived in Newcastle and my house backed on to Roath Park when I lived in Cardiff. For many years I lived not far from Birkenhead Park – Britain’s first public park and one of the inspirations for New York’s Central Park. Falkirk does pretty well for public parks with the likes of Callendar and Dollar Park but we are getting a new one, The Helix, and yesterday was its (sort of) opening day.

I suppose the concept of a public park is rather a 19th Century idea rather than a 21st Century one but I rather like the thought that some old waste industrial ground should be turned into a public space rather than used for high density housing or “retail outlets” as pretty much every bit of free land in this country seems to be appropriated for. Helix Day was  touted as the opening day for the park although it is still very much a work in progress. However, the day itself was very well attended (read “mobbed”) and Falkirk Stadium car-park, which was meant to house all the visitors, was soon overrun. If only Falkirk football club could attract this many people? The one problem with this was that it was actually quite difficult to see the park for the entire population of Stirlingshire thronging about.

There were quite a few activities taking place including this oddball take on gardening: mixing wild flower seeds with papier-mâché and flinging them hither and thither with a giant catapult. It could almost get me into gardening again.

The Helix is actually a huge expanse which will run from Grangemouth to Carron (almost as far as Stenhousemuir). It also runs alongside the Forth and Clyde canal so it should be possible to walk or cycle to the Falkirk Wheel.

I think what should mark out The Helix as a truly modern park are the works of art. The most imposing of these will be The Kelpies. They are currently under construction but will be 30 metre / 100 feet tall steel horse-heads. I’ve seen the 1/10th scale models and even these are impressive but the real thing is just as astonishing as an engineering feat as they are for their artistic merit. To give some sort of idea of the scale there is a man working in the cradle at the top of the crane and the mass of metal that is dwarfing the VW Transporter will be one of the creature’s ears.

I walked back with the kids to Carron Phoenix Works were the North part of the Helix ends. Along the way there are a couple of other works of art. One of these is a human sun dial. It works by standing in the centre next to the current month and seeing which way one’s shadow is cast. It probably works better if you are taller than this. It also works better if you live in a country with a bit more sunshine. There wasn’t on this occasion although we probably do get more than on the West coast. There are people in Greenock that will hurl stones at the fearful ball of fire in the sky if the sun comes out. I jest, of course - no-one has ever seen the sun in Greenock.

After the sun dial I expected to see a chocolate tea-pot. In fact what I found was this curiosity called “Love and Kisses”. I think the idea is that from one end it looks like a giant heart (the symbol of love, that is, not the internal organ). From the side, I think it is meant to represent a giant pair of lips and not, as I first thought, a giant iron turd.

Overall, I think the Helix is shaping up to be something quite special. I can also see it becoming quite a tourist attraction, particularly when the Kelpies are finished. But for me, it will be somewhere else to walk the dogs.

Southern Rock

Another week and another batch of (mostly) freebee CDs courtesy of an Amazon voucher. This time I’ve ended up going for a few Southern Rock compilations. I seem to have been listening to quite a few blues-rock albums with the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Free, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Company and Whitesnake rotating on the car stereo. The odd thing with this is that they were almost all UK based acts (Hendrix was American but based in the UK for much of his short career). Southern Rock has an attraction to me in that it doesn’t fit into the overly produced slickness of mainstream US rock but retains much of the grit and roots of the Southern states of America. It also wears its influences on its sleeve with a pleasing mix of rock and roll, blues, country and folk – it feels like the real deal.

I went for three disks and for purely alphabetical reasons I started with the “Essential” Allman Bothers Band. Now, I’m not sure quite how essential this is. The rear sleeve notes say that these are “carefully selected” tracks from their career but also make reference to “Jessica – the unmistakable theme tune to TV’s Top Gear”. This is true but I would hardly go marketing such an influential group of musicians based on a popular motoring programme. Never-the-less, this is all enjoyable stuff and much more blues soaked than I somehow imagined. I can’t complain for the £3 it cost me and is one I’d happily listen to it time and again.
 

The second disk was one I’d been planning on getting for a while which was a Lynyrd Skynyrd compilation. I have an old 7” single with Sweet Home Alabama on one side and Free Bird on the other. The version of Free Bird on the single was the edit and it really misses the best bit with the extended solo. In a way it’s rather like the Beatles' Hey Jude – a so-so-ballad which turns into something monumental and anthemic towards the end. There is no risk of this curtailment with the version on “Greatest Hits” as it is all there in its full 9 minute glory – and what a moment it is. The rest of the album isn’t too shabby either and any album that can kick off with the (friendly) poke in the eye of Sweet Home Alabama can’t be that bad.

The last disk was a double CD: ZZ Top’s Rancho Texicano. In a way, this compilation sums up the two halves of this most distinctive of band’s career – the growling guitar and gritty blues-rock simplicity of their 1970s output and the synthesiser overload of the 1980s. In all honesty, it’s the first disk that I prefer but I don’t think their 80s output was that bad – just a case of diminishing returns. The first disk contains the real classics: Tush, Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers, Cheap Sunglasses and La Grange are all there but there isn’t really a bad track amongst them. The second disk actually contains their most commercially successful material and I still think that Eliminator was a great album: Gimme All Your Loving and Sharp Dressed Man were genuinely top-notch song-writing. ZZ Top were one of the first American rock bands to really embrace the MTV age and their unique image helped with this but I think it is obvious that Afterburner and Recycler were moving them further away from what they did best. My only criticism of this compilation is that the last couple of tracks are throwaway remixes of earlier tracks – it would have been nice to hear some of their more recent stuff or live performances.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with the disks and I can see myself going for some of the more recent Southern Rock acts -The Black Crowes, maybe? Then again, who knows where my musical meandering will have taken me by then.

Ten Years Gone

Today marks the tenth anniversary that I became a father for the first time. Of course, my eldest son is older than ten but, as he was adopted, I wasn’t present at the birth. For that matter, I wasn’t even present at the conception. I was recently speaking to a work colleague who adopted children himself and some of his experiences were quite similar whereas others were markedly different. I suppose that, just as no two children are the same, neither are any two adoptions.

In terms of being an adoptive parent I think there are two distinct aspects: the process, both legal and emotional, of adoption and the actual day-to-day activity of being an adoptive family once the social workers and lawyers have faded into the background. Like most people who have adopted our decision was prompted by the fact that we couldn’t have children of our own. After 8 years of marriage and various medical procedures it was becoming increasingly obvious that we were not going to have children ourselves but rather than seeing adoption as a second-best choice I think it is something that we both saw as a positive step. Apart from anything else I think we had both become tired of being the subjects of endless medical tests and procedures. We wanted to have a family – not endless appointments with test-tube wielding doctors and nurses.

The actual process of adoption is very drawn out and often dispiriting. It’s worth it in the end but the initial introductory sessions don’t just point out what might go wrong: they point out everything that can go wrong. From the various literature that I read and from various things that social workers brought up my impression was that we would spend 90% of our time talking with the children about their adoption. In fact it isn’t like that at all and the subject only comes up very occasionally and usually only related to the children’s particular circumstances. I do think that this has helped though as, apart from anything else, it helped to see exactly what kind of things social workers deal with on a daily basis (it also made me realise than some people are not paid anything like as much as they should be).

The approval process for us seemed to go on forever. In fact it was probably only around 10 months in total but after having made a positive choice to go for adoption it seemed a bit galling that we were then questioned about our suitability as parents. I think the most frustrating thing is that it is rather hard to demonstrate one’s parenting skills when the whole reason that we were looking to adopt is that we had failed to become biological parents. The fact is that being a fit and proper parent and having children are two completely different things – if they weren’t there would be very few children who needed adopting in the first place.

Even after we were approved as adopters there was then quite a long time until we were matched with a suitable child. There are thousands of children around the country waiting for adoptive parents and many suitable adopters waiting to be matched but the process doesn’t appear to favour either group – in fact it appears to favour lawyers and various self-interested parties who’s motivations are more aligned to particular ideologies rather than the interests of young and vulnerable people. Maybe that’s unfair of me but it appears to be a feeling felt by many other adopters.

As it was, when we were finally matched it was a chance remark that Nina made to our social worker. Our son’s social worker was, above anything else, a pragmatist and could see far too many children falling into long-term institutional care because of the failings of the system. Even once we were approved I think I had misgivings – largely because of the amount of adoption literature that I’d read. I think what settled my mind was seeing a TV play, Flesh and Blood, staring Christopher Eccleston. He played a man who was investigating his adoptive parents and, whilst his character’s circumstances were not exactly the same as our son’s, I found many of the themes I’d read about reflected in his performance. What made me feel more positive is that he was playing a normal well-adjusted individual who just happened to have been adopted and was having to deal with that. The play wasn’t particularly about adoption as such but I would highly recommend it.

As for adoptive family life? Well, it’s difficult to say but I don’t really regard us as being any different from any other family. We have separately adopted three children and as a family they sometimes get on, whilst at other times they fight like cat and dog. At times they have displayed behaviour that I have wondered whether adoption may be a factor but generally they show the range of behaviour that any other children show. Our oldest boy has now started high school and I do wonder whether any issues will surface there but then I think that period can be problematic for any child. As for me, I don’t regret adoption at all – in fact I think it was one of the best decisions we made.