The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[Cudzoziemiec]

New pet peeve on trains – people who fill the large luggage rack with small items that would easily fit on the overhead rack. I'm talking about the rack for suitcases etc at the end of the carriage, not the bike cupboard (though that too).

[andrewc]

Why is it going to take First Direct up to 5 working days to open a new savings account for me ?  I'm not exactly a new customer, they've had my dosh for the last 30 years or so.   

Are you the one time leader of a rabble rousing shite political party perhaps?

They've just phoned me up & given me a 10 minute interrogation on my employment status, country of birth & residence and country I pay tax in.   If they are doing this for people of my modest means then Farage must have got the full Camp X-Ray treatment ... 

[rafletcher]

Why is it going to take First Direct up to 5 working days to open a new savings account for me ?  I'm not exactly a new customer, they've had my dosh for the last 30 years or so.   

So you don't complain when it's not openened the next day. Oh, wait....

[andrewc]

Why is it going to take First Direct up to 5 working days to open a new savings account for me ?  I'm not exactly a new customer, they've had my dosh for the last 30 years or so.   

So you don't complain when it's not openened the next day. Oh, wait....

I applied online on Sunday.  They advertise as being 24/7 with the ability to open a current account in minutes, but this one is different .    I've been with them since they started in 1989 and have never been anything but pleased with their service. 


Account now set up, money transferred via their website https://www.firstdirect.com/savings-and-investments/savings/bonus-savings-account/

[rafletcher]

I'm also a 1st Direct customer (and Midland before then). The only time I've been irritated was when I asked to remove one of my christian names from my cards (my first name, never used). "Not unless you change it by deed poll" they said    It's still there.

[Pickled Onion]

I'm also a 1st Direct customer (and Midland before then). The only time I've been irritated was when I asked to remove one of my christian names from my cards (my first name, never used). "Not unless you change it by deed poll" they said    It's still there.

Which is the usual bollocks. Legally a deed poll is not required, there's a thing called "name change by usage", and very sensible it is too. After all, it's far more secure for your card to state the name everyone knows you by, for fairly obvious reasons.

[Mr Larrington]

Time for Tea.  Open fridge, that I might have milk to go in said Tea.  Full bottle of ketchup falls out of fridge door; lands on Mr Larrington's bare foot.

Fuckity-ow

[MattH]

Bank related, though not me this time. But prompted by the "been a customer forever" grumble. One of our ex-grads (been here for a couple of years) wanted to get a loan for a car. Her bank insisted she go in in person, because they still think she's fifteen apparently. Then after she went in at the time they told her, the lady told her she'd have to come back the following day to fill in the forms and finish the loan application, with no reason given and no-one waiting in the branch. So she ended up having to travel in to town twice, losing an hour and a half of work each time (luckily we're not a clock watching company; as long as the work gets done all is good so she wasn't having hassle from us over this).

[Kim]

Time for Tea.  Open fridge, that I might have milk to go in said Tea.  Full bottle of ketchup falls out of fridge door; lands on Mr Larrington's bare foot.

Fuckity-ow

That's what you get for keeping ketchup in the fridge.  If you want to keep something that doesn't need to be kept in the fridge in the fridge, I suggest bread; it hurts less.

[Mr Larrington]

That'd be the ketchup that says “Keep refrigerated once opened” on it…

[Kim]

That'd be the ketchup that says “Keep refrigerated once opened” on it…

I always assumed they were just lying, but it seems that it's more controversial than that:

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/jul/03/should-you-refrigerate-ketchup-store-shelf

[Cudzoziemiec]

There is no issue too trivial to be turned into a Guardian controversy.

And the next one is right in that article:

“On a personal level, I store my ketchup in the fridge. I prefer my ketchup to be firm, not runny, so it doesn’t separate. When I squeeze the bottle and liquid comes out first, it gets on the bun and makes me mad.”

Squeezy plastic bottle or solid foot-breaking glass bottle? Or maybe a tub?

[ian]

Why anyone self-respectingly Guardian isn't using Stoke's Bloody Mary Ketchup is of deep confusion to me.

I've never kept ketchup or HP in the fridge (and I don't use ketchup often, so I'm sure it's way beyond any reasonable use-by date, it's so old I figure the main risk is fossilization).

Mayonnaise on the other hand. Though if you're dicing with the Devil's sex custard in the first place, I figure you have it coming to you. Salad Creme would be perfectly safe stored on Venus. It only exists to confuse American tourists who ask for sour cream in British pubs. Their only countermove to Salad Creme was to invent Miracle Whip. Which, as moves go, is practically thermonuclear in its diabolical subtlety.

[rafletcher]

That'd be the ketchup that says “Keep refrigerated once opened” on it…

Hmm. I keep a big bottle of ketchup to refill a smaller “ready use” one. Neither is, has ever been - despite instructions on the label - kept in a fridge. The larger bottle must have been opened 3 months ago and is kept in the shed. Ditto salad cream, pickled chillies, piccalilli etc. etc. 

[MattH]

Where you are going wrong is having ketchup. Have brown sauce like a  proper British person.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Referring back to Mr Larrington's original post, I don't think either ketchup or brown sauce (or for that matter salad cream or mayonnaise) would improve his cup of tea.

[Cudzoziemiec]

My cleaning lady is mother to a 11-year-old, who is approaching the end of Primary School, as befits kids of that age.

Child has end-of-term/school play in near future, before kids are scattered to pastures anew by the four winds.

No parental photography is permitted.

After performance, photographs of child + parent will be taken, presumably in costume.

So, no group shot of final curtain call.

No class photo for a lifetime of nostalgia.

This emphasis on kids' security and privacy both saddens and maddens me.

D, Friend and I quite frequently muse over their 1975 class pic.

Life will be poorer without these things IMHO...

Our now-19-year-old's end-of-primary play was videoed and distributed on DVD to parents. There was a permission form beforehand, but evidently everyone signed it.

[Kim]

Our now-19-year-old's end-of-primary play was videoed and distributed on DVD to parents. There was a permission form beforehand, but evidently everyone signed it.

I'm impressed by how this statement sounds both high-tech and futuristic while also being incredibly dated.  I suspect this means I'm old.

[Wowbagger]

My cleaning lady is mother to a 11-year-old, who is approaching the end of Primary School, as befits kids of that age.

Child has end-of-term/school play in near future, before kids are scattered to pastures anew by the four winds.

No parental photography is permitted.

After performance, photographs of child + parent will be taken, presumably in costume.

So, no group shot of final curtain call.

No class photo for a lifetime of nostalgia.

This emphasis on kids' security and privacy both saddens and maddens me.

D, Friend and I quite frequently muse over their 1975 class pic.

Life will be poorer without these things IMHO...

Our now-19-year-old's end-of-primary play was videoed and distributed on DVD to parents. There was a permission form beforehand, but evidently everyone signed it.

Somewhere in the annals I have a couple of whole school photographs involving Phyllis, when she was about 16, therefore 1935 or so. Phyllis died, which is a salutary lesson of what happens when you appear in school photographs.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Our now-19-year-old's end-of-primary play was videoed and distributed on DVD to parents. There was a permission form beforehand, but evidently everyone signed it.

I'm impressed by how this statement sounds both high-tech and futuristic while also being incredibly dated.  I suspect this means I'm old.

I suspect the clue to this is in "now 19".

[Cudzoziemiec]

My cleaning lady is mother to a 11-year-old, who is approaching the end of Primary School, as befits kids of that age.

Child has end-of-term/school play in near future, before kids are scattered to pastures anew by the four winds.

No parental photography is permitted.

After performance, photographs of child + parent will be taken, presumably in costume.

So, no group shot of final curtain call.

No class photo for a lifetime of nostalgia.

This emphasis on kids' security and privacy both saddens and maddens me.

D, Friend and I quite frequently muse over their 1975 class pic.

Life will be poorer without these things IMHO...

Our now-19-year-old's end-of-primary play was videoed and distributed on DVD to parents. There was a permission form beforehand, but evidently everyone signed it.

Somewhere in the annals I have a couple of whole school photographs involving Phyllis, when she was about 16, therefore 1935 or so. Phyllis died, which is a salutary lesson of what happens when you appear in school photographs.

But but but... Dorian!

I have, I think, destroyed all my school photographs, and I'm still alive. But I am getting older.

[Mr Larrington]

Where you are going wrong is having ketchup. Have brown sauce like a  proper British person.

Can’t stand the filthy muck   This Unit will have no lorry with garnishing its sossidges with runny boot polish.

The mustard is in the fridge too, but that’s in a much smaller and more stable container.

[ian]

You've not lived until you've tried ketchup in the US. Partaking regularly in US condiments, I'm sure, results in living far less longer. Sweet isn't an effective quantum. It's like injecting the contents of Sherbet Fountain directly into your frontal lobes and then skydiving without a parachute into the Tate & Lyle factory. With your mouth open. If you survive that, you'll find your pancreas has hired a lawyer and petitioned for divorce. I wouldn't worry, it won't survive long enough for you to worry about alimony. If any bacteria can survive in a US condiment, I don't want to meet them. The guns won't help, they'll laugh at bullets.

[andrewc]

There's a jar of mayonnaise in my fridge.  Home made to a Nigella recipe.   It's now about 3 weeks old & I think I may need the gloves & face mask to dispose of it & clean the jar out .   I never seem to get to the end of a batch the same week as making it.....

[ian]

Homemade mayonnaise is something you do once, and your release you've made an entire bucket of diabolical sex glue with just a single yolk. Given any mayonnaise is, in the majority of circumstances, too much mayonnaise, you'll pretty much left with a increasingly desperate array of off-piste usages before it becomes a biological hazard. Unguent l'amour, crowd control, building render. It is the sauce of shame.