Boss Radio

Apparently it's another of the things you may be acquainted with if you are one of the lucky few with dyslexia. On the one hand you may be lucky and find you're ambidextrous, on the other hand you may suffer from a touch of the OCDs.

Now me, I'm no Mr. Monk, but I do occasionally push someone's piles of CDs straight for them (I tell them I was afraid they were going to fall over).

So, with the weather below freezing some of the time, I decided to defrost the freezer. I loaded everything in it into freezer-bags and put them outside into the snow, then I switched it off. This is something I have to do by touch because the freezer and the 'fridge stand besides each other on one side of a window and the plug socket is about 6' up from the floor on the other side of the window. It's a small window and part of it is obscured by the edge of the 'fridge. Pictured it yet?

One day we were offered a cupboard. I believe mum had been complaining about our tiny larder, the one in our previous home was a walk-in job, this one is more like a tall wooden box attached to the wall, so one of our neighbours who was throwing a cupboard out offered it to us.

It turned out to be a very tall cupboard, it stood about 3" short of the ceiling and just fitted into the space between the cupboard and the 'fridge with about a hand's width between them. Now if I wanted to switch off the freezer or the 'fridge... I think I mentioned all that. Basically I needed a stool or a stepladder and then had to lean over the 'fridge and feel behind the cupboard in order to get to the mains switch.

Am I back to the present day yet?

I got a bit lazy when I switched off the day before yesterday, I grabbed a nearby box and used that to stand on. I leant on the top of the 'fridge and just managed to reach the first switch and flip it off. I knew it was the right switch because as anyone with OCD will tell you, the device on the right is controlled by the switch on the right, and the switch on the left, which is the one I'd flipped off, therefore turned off the freezer. On the left.

Today I came home from taking mum out for her daily drive and wondered why there was a pool of water on the floor which had obviously not come from the freezer.

As you've probably guessed, it was from the 'fridge, as I realised as soon as I opened it and the light didn't come on.

For two days I've been leaving the heat on in the kitchen, occasionally leaving the door between the kitchen and the living room open so more heat can bleed through, and constantly spraying the ice with freezer-defroster, then wondering why it was steadfastly refusing to melt. I'd reached the point where I was about to put a pan of boiling water into the freezer, which is treatment I usually reserve for when there's a huge block of ice in there, and all the time the poor old freezer was desperately trying to re-freeze.

We've been promised more snow tonight, I just hope it's enough to save all the food I put out, I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

Meanwhile I can but ponder what went wrong. Why did I put the left plug into the right socket?

It's coming to something when you can't even trust your OCD to do the right thing.

Not that this post is anything to do with that, I just thought I'd mention it.

What I'm writing about is this:-

74.470606,18.974821

Stick it in Google maps and switch to satellite view, now get in as close as you want, what in the hall is it?

I think we should be told.

We pulled in to a lay-by and I got out to take a picture of a strange looking sky. Then mum asked if I'd dropped something.

I picked up the something and it turned out to be an unused ticket for a trip from Hollyhead to Dublin on the 14th of August 2009 via the Stena Line. The passenger's name was Jamie Rolph and the ticket was for 4 passengers and 1 car.

I'd love to know if he/she got to make the trip without his/her ticket, but even more, I'd love to know how the heck his/her ticket came to be blowing around a layby on the Winchester to Newbury road 3 years, almost to the day, later.

I think we should be told.

Yup, Vinnie and Rob, those two sons of fun property developers, correction, multi millionaire property developers, are going to sue the Serious Fraud Office over the collapsed case against them.

As I endlessly point out, when people sue a public body they do not sue the individuals responsible for their ire, they sue us, the taxpayer. Quite frankly when multi-millionaires sue me for something I haven't done I tend to get a bit ratty about it.

This annoyance that I feel is somewhat compounded by the fact that they were, in all probability, guilty as hell, but the SFO screwed up the investigation. At this point the annoyance picks up a little compound interest because, in throwing out the case, the judge opined that the reason for the SFO's shortcutting of the system was that it was underfunded. Its annual budget is £32 million. Not really enough to take on two multi-millionaires, let alone all the other cases they're handling, so I'm inclined to side with the judge in this case.

It seems hard to imagine in these days, that in the 50s there were only 8 millionaires in the whole world. Now the national lottery creates two millionaires a week in Britain alone. Also back in the 50s science fiction authors were being mocked for predicting that the mega rich would, in the future, be more powerful than the state.

Welcome to the future.

Spain's borrowing rate has gone up to 7½%. In other words they're getting ever closer to needing a bailout.

But whoever sets these lending rates knows that, so why do it? It's not because they're afraid of not getting their money back because it makes it more likely, and not because they think they'll get more money out of the country because they obviously won't.

The advice I'm always given is "Follow the money".

So someone tell me, who stands to gain out of Spain going bust?

I think we should be told.