I ended up with over 250 photos to develop, which given our risibly slow upload speed of 0.04mbps (thanks BT!) I didn't fancy doing over the internet.
A fortnight ago I visited the local branch mid afternoon and was surprised to find the manager locking up. "I'm just going out to get some photocopying done" he said unapologetically. Little was I to know this was my "CAUTION! Crappy service ahead!" warning sign. Anyway, I killed 15 minutes, went back in with in my SD card, they downloaded it all, I paid (more than I would have on line) and told me it'd be ready Wednesday.
Tuesday I got a phone call to say the download had failed and I needed to come in to repeat the process. I don't live near the shop - I live 8 miles away - so I made a special journey the next day, to find the shop inexplicably shut. I later learned it's the shop manager's regular day off and the area manager failed to find someone to cover that week.
I made Trip 3 a week ago and again found it temporarily closed for photocopying, but waited around (no sorry!) and downloaded them all again.
I collected the photos this morning. Unfortunately, they're not mine. The manager's first reaction when I phoned him (a number I now know from memory) was "Oh. Can you bring them back in?"
It's been left like this: the central processing place for Max Spielmann "think" they've found my order and they "should" be in on Tuesday. I'm not holding my breath.
The mother of all snotty letters is being formulated. If nothing else they owe me 5x 16 mile round trips worth of diesel.
It's such a pleasure to be back reading you "Suzy", the most smiles per paragraph of anyone I read, both for the amusingly good things described with an economy I can never attain, and the crap ones, on which you can turn quite an articualtely sharp pen.
ReplyDeleteMe and Kirsty had a great holiday in Kent years ago. We spent literally about thirty minutes in Dover (intending it to be a day trip). What an armpit of a place. Seedy bedsits, that's what I remember. A town that's given up and is purely utilitarian, welcoming visitors off the axles and exhaust pipes of Norbert Dentressangle lorries.
I bought some long johns in a chairity shop in Herne Bay but it's an anonymous place really, too big for what it is. We stayed in a village inland with the comely name Maypole, where we found a cracking pub which looked a bit forbidding at first, with its 60s flat roof, but had the most welcoming and curious bunch of locals, who took us under their wing all night. There was nothing for me to drink--no real ale, no proper cider (no cider--in Kent! -- I don't count Strongbow etc), no bottled Belgian beer--and the locals plied us with whisky, which I never touch. In the morning, a terrible amateur timpanist was rehearsing very loud passages from an avantgarde concerto for percussion in my head.
Looby! You're not doing porridge! Hurrah.
ReplyDeleteI went to Ingoldmells last week. That's a giant caravan park a mile north of Skegness where Jeremy Kyle guests go for a week of R&R. It was for work so I can't really say too much about it, but suffice it to say I must have been the only person there without a "Wonga" loan.
Oh - Herne Bay. We were advised to get the bus from Whitstable to Canterbury but messed it up on the way home and thus ended up going via Herne Bay. The journey was enlivened by the noisy arrival of Liz and Joseph, both swigging heavily from unbranded cans of lager. Liz was a tattooed grandmother of one in hotpants and leatherette knee boots, Joseph a 20 year old virgin with mild learning difficulties. They discussed their fledgling relationship using phrases borrowed from "Dear Deidre" - when they weren't analysing Liz's time in Holloway for nicking old ladies' handbags, or slandering various neighbours as potential paedophiles/ abusers of the elderly.
ReplyDeleteI have never wished more fervently that I could make myself invisible.
I'd have got with them :)
ReplyDeleteON!
ReplyDelete