Tag Archives: rubbish

What a Load of Rubbish in the Daily Mail

I could use that subject on any given day, but today specifically is the ongoing complaints in the Daily Mail about a “slop bucket in every home”, which they have been banging on about for too long already.

Here’s the istyosty address to read the full story without counting towards DailyMail’s statistics: http://istyosty.com/6jzp but for the moment, I’d like to focus on the end of the story.

Namely, this shower of balls:

Interesting.

I’ll try and ignore the fact that retired teacher Sylvia lives in a terraced house, all to herself (no mention of who the man is, so I will assume him to be one of the other outraged neighbours), so would have no problem housing at least twice as many bins. And the fact that she’s retired at 59 presumably means she has plenty of free time to moan to the newspapers about bin collections.

But is that the full story, really?
Do they HAVE TO put out NINE bins? Really? They’re being “forced” to? Continue reading What a Load of Rubbish in the Daily Mail

The Lanes

All this talk of bad customer service, and Mary Portas’ online poll has reminded me of an event that happened a few weeks back. (Btw – no surprise with that poll that John Lewis is near the top, and PC World/Comet near the bottom. Although I am surprised you can’t “add” stores – only pick from their existing list. And the Apple store isn’t in there).

A few weeks ago, I went to The Lanes. This is a non-chain bowling place in Bristol, that my girlfriend and I have been told is much nicer than Bowlplex/Megabowl, and does amazing milkshakes. I’m still not convinced that either of those statements are true. Continue reading The Lanes

The Package Trip – Day 5

Today was a bit of a let down. I felt a bit guilty about it really.
I convinced my girlfriend to Platja d’en Bossa. Our rep had told us this was the longest beach in Ibiza, it would be a very hot day, and where better to go on a hot day, than the longest beach? And as it was near Ibiza Town (that we went to yesterday), I thought it’d be easy.
Plus, it being a Sunday, half the buses weren’t running, but there were still ones to Ibiza Town aplenty.
We got up, walked to the bus stop, grabbing an ice cream and some water en route.
The bus was late. By about 20mins, but they had both been dead on time the day before.
A bad sign?

Some girls asked my girlfriend if she spoke German. She does. She claims not very well, but she can have a conversation, and watch German tv and get the gist.
They asked her about the bus, she told them it was late, but that it was a Sunday.
Turns out after we heard them speaking to each other, that they were French. I can see why they chose to speak in German though, because everyone here speaks German, English or Spanish. I’ve not seen anyone else carrying onions or wearing a beret.*

(*Childish stereotype. Obviously they weren’t. They were quite overweight though, which given the French diet of coffee and cigarettes, must be difficult to achieve.)

So anyway, the bus arrived, and off to Ibiza Town we went. We get off, start walking to Platja d’en Bossa. It’s a bit further than I thought.
Also, when we got there, pretty rubbish.
Long, yes.
Covered in leaves from the trees, yes. It was more like walking through a woodland than along a beach.
Also, it wouldn’t be fair to say it was near the flight path. It WOULD be fair to say it was directly under it. I’ve never been so close to a moving plane, without being on one. And it’s a pretty busy airport. Every 20 mins, we got a good look at the underside of another plane.
There are hotels here too. Lots of hotels. I’d be a bit annoyed if I’d booked a hotel there.
We walked all the way to the end of the beach to see if it improved. Sadly, the only thing that increased was the prices of the beach cafes we passed. 20+ euros each for a basic pasta dish at one of the latter ones.
I had said that we shouldn’t take food today. And should just eat out somewhere. I regretted this idea. 50 euros on lunch was really more than we could afford, so we just kept going, thinking there might be another (cheaper) cafe further along.
We got to the end, and by luck, were next to a bus stop. We caught a bus back to the centre, and I apologised for suggesting it in the first place.

In the centre of Ibiza Town, we went into a bakery and bought lunch. Which of these items do you think is a sausage roll?

I wasn’t sure either was, so bought both.
One contained apricot jam, the other apple. On the plus side, it meant me and my girlfriend could share them.