I cannot tell you how delighted I am that Game of Thrones is over, I absolutely loathe and detest it and even worse the pointless discussion after the programme.
It is without a doubt a Marmite show, my wife loves it and has inflicted it on me on quite a few occasions.
It’s over, it’s over, there is a God after all!!
I have an Amazon music machine thing to which we added a small one, a sort of extension speaker, at least in my mind. I have no idea how the damn thing works and very rarely use it, however I did know it wasn’t desperately expensive to run. This morning though when going through my Amazon account I came across an item for £14.99 which just said Amazon Music Unlimited which after some research I found to be the monthly payment for the Alexa music machine which used to cost £3.99 per month. The following is my online chat to their help department together with the translation of what I was thinking rather than what I wrote.
Me:I have an Amazon Music Unlimited payment which used to be £3.99 and I have just noticed that it changed on 17th November 2018 to £14.99 I don’t know why, can you tell me why this happened, please.
Me:Why the hell have you suddenly started to charge me nearly four times as much as I was previously paying??
You’re now connected to santhiya M from Amazon.co.uk
santhiya M:Hello, my name is Santhiya. I’ll be happy to help you.
I’m sorry to know that you have been charged 14.99 instead of 3.99 gbp.
Do you mind waiting for a minute while I research this for you?
Me:That’s fine.
Me:I suppose this is going to waste the entire morning, I’ve nothing better to do!
santhiya M:Thank for waiting.
I’ve checked your account and I see that from 17 November 2018 your subscription was upgraded to Amazon Music Unlimited Family Monthly from single device plan.
In this case I’ll cancel and request a refund from 17th November 2018 to Friday, 17 May 2019 so that you can again sign up 3.99 GBP plan.
Is that okay for you?
Me:I am unsure how this works. We had one alexa thing then got a small one as well. Do I have to pay for both of them, we don’t want the most modern music just old tunes.
Me:Yes, that’s very good, but why the hell was it suddenly increased for no apparent reason, answer me that, if you can!
santhiya M:I’ve checked your account and I see that you have active prime and music unlimited subscription under this account. From Monday, 20 March 2017 you have single device place which you can access only through alexa but from 17 November 2018 your subscription plan accidentally upgraded to family plan.
Me:Ok can we go back to £3.99 as you suggested. Will we have to do anything or will it just revert for us.
Me:Why the hell can’t you just put it back to where it started from, can’t you tell I have no idea how all this nonsense works!
santhiya M:I’ve now cancelled your subscription and requested a refund from 17th November 2018 to Friday, 17 May 2019 and it will get reflect to your account within 5-7 business days.
You can use your voice to modify your Amazon Music Unlimited Plan through Alexa.
To do this, say:”Sign up for Amazon Music Unlimited.”
Me:We have to start again by talking to the thing?
Me:You want me to start talking to a machine, it’s bad enough having to write to you, why won’t you put the bloody thing back to where it started from? Blast, I think the internet has gone down, bollocks!
You’re now reconnected with santhiya M.
santhiya M:you can degrade your plan. your plan now.
You can use your voice to modify your Amazon Music Unlimited Plan through Alexa.
To do this, say:”Downgrade Amazon Music.”
So that your plan will be revert back to single device plan
I’ve now requested a refund without cancelling your subscription.
Me:So we still have to say “downgrade amazon music” or have you done it for us?
Me:You must think I’m doolally, if you think I’m going to try to sort this out by talking to a machine!
santhiya M:Yes, please say “downgrade amazon music” you plan will be changed.
Me:I just said that and it said we have to go to our music settings on the web, I have no idea where this is?
Me:This machine has just sent me to a page which doesn’t seem to have any bearing on what I am trying to achieve, if I wasn’t doolally when I started this conversation I will be by the time I’ve finished!
santhiya M:You can sign up for Amazon Music Unlimited Single Device plan by visiting the Amazon Music Unlimited (https://www.amazon.co.uk/amazonmusicunl…(See full link) ) page.
Please try this above link and let me know.
The subscription will only be available with the Echo or Fire TV device that you will select during the sign up process.
Hope we are connected.
Me:I have no idea what I am doing, what has Echo or Fire Tv got to do with Amazon Music?
Me:I’m beginning to lose patients, what the fxxk are you talking about?
santhiya M:Echo means your alexa.
In this single device plan you can listen music only through alexa.
For a easy way I’ll cancel and request a refund for that subscription so that you can sign up single device plan through alexa.
Is that okay for you?
Me:I think so, I’ll wait until I can find a young person who has some idea of what we are supposed to do but thanks for your help anyway.
Me:I can see I’m fighting a loosing battle here, I’ll have to wait until I get assistance from a young person, quite clearly you’re never going to do it for me!
santhiya M:At this time simplest way I’ll now cancel your subscription now please ask your alexa to “Sign up for Amazon Music Unlimited.”
So that your single device plan will be activated.
Shall I cancel your subscription now?
Me:Yes, as I said we will get assistance from our children who probably understand what we need to do.
Me:I’ve tried talking to the bloody thing already, I’m losing the will to live!
santhiya M:Sure.
I’ve now cancelled and requested a refund from 17th November 2018 to Friday, 17 May 2019 and it will get reflect to your account within 5-7 business days.
Me:Thank you, at least we are half way there!
Me:I give in, at least we’re halfway there!
santhiya M:So that you can sign up your single device from alexa with the help of your children.
Me:Yes.
Me:I bloody hope so!
santhiya M:After that your alexa sign up single device plan and you will be charged only 3.99 GBP in future.
Me:Excellent, thank you.
Me:I’m still wondering why you couldn’t do it for me?
santhiya M:Thanks for your understanding.
It’s my pleasure to assist you!
Is there anything else I can help with?
Me:No, thank you.
Me:No thank you, I’ve had enough, I’m going for a lie down in a dark room!
santhiya M:Bye have a lovely day!
Me:And you.
Me:Bye, I suppose you did your best!
santhiya M:Thank you:)
Please click the “End Chat” link to close this window. You’ll then be asked to complete a quick survey and provide comments about your experience. We hope to see you again soon!
Me:Ok
Me:See you again soon, I bloody hope not!
Finally, after all this paralarva I tried to follow the link which would lead me to the page where I could go back to where we started and sign up again for £3.99, unfortunately the only page it took me to said it would cost £7.99 a month. I would love to contact them to find the link to the page where we go back to where we started at the promised £3.99 but I don’t think I’ve got the strength left today!
It being VJ Day I thought this film which I did some many years ago about Lieutenant General Arthur Percival and the Battle of Singapore in World War Two might be appropriate.
Here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3lLGllAfkE
Some years ago I was lucky enough to get an entry in the second charity bicycle run called The Tweed Run which took place in London in 2010 and what a fun day it was.
I was reminded of this today when listening to Harry and Edna on the wireless with his radio show on the event. https://www.mixcloud.com/harryandedna/tweed-run-2017/
Ever since I did the event I have thought how much fun it would be if there was a similar type of run near where I live and to this end I am putting out the request for slightly eccentric tweed wearing bicyclists who live near Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire.
I have over the years put out feelers to various cycle clubs and cycle shops to see if I can find like minded people who may want to organise such an event with no luck, so I am now working on plan B.
The Flitch Way is a local walking and cycling path from Bishops Stortford to Braintree and at 15 miles would seem an ideal route for a tweed clad bicycle ride.
Having given up temporarily on a full blown event with hundreds of riders I am now looking at a much smaller gathering of perhaps half a dozen slightly eccentric men and women who may wish to join me and hopefully set a trend whereby many others may join us on future rides.
Should any old bicycle owning, tweed wearing, slightly eccentric individuals wish to join me please don’t hesitate to contact me, for you never know, from little acorns large oaks do grow.
Today was “Drive it day” when every self respecting classic car owner is supposed to take their cars out to make the public aware of our wonderful hobby.
Those of you who read this first time will now realise I have uploaded the professional photo which is slightly better quality but I left the others
Usually my wife is very reluctant to have her photo displayed on any sort of social media but today she must have had a funny turn as she decided it would be okay to upload her image.
We were papped by professional a photographer and I asked if they would be kind enough to bash off a couple of snaps on my phone which they duly did.
Two things are noticeable here, firstly I think the lens could do with a clean and secondly, you would hardly guess from the background of this photo that we are parked in a field full of classic cars but we were.
I’m going to upload these images before my wife changes her mind and may add the professional one later if I can get a copy.
I am primarily aiming this blog at the younger folk who, I think, are not as genned up on the subject as they might be and will therefore start my blog in the style of a fairy story, as this seems to be the only way to gain their attention judging by the numbers of young folk watching Game of Thrones.
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, in a time long, long ago, well actually Europe and the time was February 1957, there was no European Union, it wasn’t until March of that year that the European Economic Community, commonly known as the Common Market was formed.
On the 25th March 1957 a treaty was signed in Rome between France, West Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg which established the European Economic Community the EEC which came into operation in January 1958.
Just to put this in perspective for you younger folk, prior to 1957 all the countries in Europe and the UK existed as separate entities, how scary is that!
How brave the British must have been, for as far back as the seventeenth and eighteenth century hoards of the extremely wealthy would have gone on a Grand Tour often lasting up to four years, extensively to broaden their horizons and take in the culture, language, geography and architecture, but which often just turned into a glorified booze up.
It would be wrong to accuse the British of being anti Europe for we have travelled extensively on trains like the Orient Express and the Blue Train to places like Paris, Milan, Vienna, Strasbourg, Belgrade and many others. Later in 1907 the Caravan Club was formed and by the 1930’s, touring the continent was within the reach of wealthy middle class people, however the best story of this time is of the race between Woolf Barnato, owner of Bentley Motors and famous Bentley Boy, who raced the Blue Train from Cannes back to London in his 6 1/2 litre Bentley Speed Six, and won!
Putting this story into historical perspective we have to now mention the Second World War in which a diminutive Austrian called Adolph Hitler attempted world domination where vast swathes of Europe came under the control of jackbooted Nazi hoards.
It was during 1940 that the French were overrun by the Germans causing General Charles De Gaulle to flee to Great Britain and set up the Free French army, he remained with us until 1944.
At this point up stepped the plucky Brits who rather belatedly were joined by our American cousins and went to the rescue of the defeated Europeans resulting in our return to Europe yet again on D Day in 1944, finally defeating the Nazis in 1945.
Meanwhile, as we were still running amok with our Bentley’s, it was suggested by some European political theorists who, with a view to preventing war and improving Europe’s economic climate that economic integration might be a good idea, and the first major step was taken in 1951 when France and West Germany integrated their coal and steel industries. Now for us older fellows and with the benefit of hindsight, we can all see where this is going.
I know that you will find this surprising, but initially Britain and other nations declined to join the Common Market, however by the early 1960’s the Common Market had shown signs of significant growth and Britain changed its mind.
From the British point of view there was a slight flaw in the plan, as the French President was one Charles de Gaulle who twice vetoed the British admission because of our close ties to the United States, hang on, I’m seeing a pattern emerging here, if I’m not much mistaken.
As you can imagine we were not greatly impressed with his actions, this, some might say from the “cheese eating surrender monkey” who as leader of the Free French during World War Two, when overrun by Nazi Germany fled to the safety of Great Britain for the rest of the war. One would have thought that, one good turn deserves another, but apparently not.
There is a possibility that had he not been so against us joining, we may have just walked away and got on with our lives, but we Brits are never ones to back away from the taunt “come and have a go, if you think you’re hard enough”, or in this case De Gaulle’s taunt of “Non”.
For the benefit of the younger element who may be reading this, it may surprise you to know that it wasn’t until January 1973 under the leadership of Ted Heath that we were finally able to join, which means we have only been in the Common Market for 45 years.
Two small points here, 45 years in the concept of world history is a drop in the ocean and the Common Market that we joined then is a distinctly different animal to the current European Union we are currently shackled with.
Having given the history of getting in, I now propose to discuss the thorny subject of, getting out and will start with a quote from the latest film about Winston Churchill, who allegedly said, “you can’t reason with a tiger, when your head is in its mouth.”
Rather along the lines of a visit to the dentist where upon sitting in the chair, one clasps his testicles in one’s hand and utters the phrase, “we’re not going to hurt each other, are we?” Perhaps, when next our negotiating team enter the room, I think they too should have a useful phrase to get our point across and I suggest this; “Exactly what do you want to sell us, I’m sure there must be something?”
I know very little of the game of poker or gambling but I know a little about common sense and having witnessed recently the look of fear in the eyes of the EU negotiators when the mention of no deal is brought up, I still find it hard to understand why we don’t play this hand and negotiate a sensible deal which works for both of us.
There you are, the story of Brexit from the very beginning and I’m hoping I live long enough to eventually see an end to the story.
Following on from my previous post who’s George Formby, I happened to be watching the Formula 1 motor racing at the weekend and was reminded of Jochen Rindt which leaves you dear reader with the question, who?
Motor racing has always been a very dangerous profession especially during the 1960’s and 70’s where it was all too often that we would hear that yet another driver had been killed.
I have copied the list of drivers who died in the 60’s and 70’s from Wikipedia but was rather amazed to see they had left off Jim Clark who was one of the best drivers the world has ever seen. Clark was World Champion in both 1963 and 1965 and won the Indianapolis 500 in 1965 but unfortunately died when his car left the track and crashed into a tree whilst racing at Hockenheim in Germany on 7th April 1968.
As you can see this was in the days before any form of crash protection at the circuit, and virtually nothing from the exceedingly flimsy cars of that era, so if you went off as Clark did there was nothing to stop you hitting the trees at the edge of the circuit.
The following is the list of drivers who died just in Formula 1 in the 60’s and 70’s.
However, my post today is about the only driver to have won the World Championship posthumously and that driver is Jochen Rindt.
Rindt was born in Germany in 1942 of Austrian and German parentage. His parents died under Allied bombing in 1943 and he was taken to Graz in Austria where he was brought up by his grandparents.
He had a very successful F1 career and was considered one of the best drivers by many people but he was very badly affected by the death of his friend Piers Courage and many were convinced that he would retire at the end of the year. Until that time he continued to drive with grim determination but the joy of driving had ended for him.
Rindt went on to win the French, British and German GPs. In his home Grand Prix, at the Osterreichring, Rindt failed to finish and his main rival Jacky Ickx led a Ferrari 1-2. The pressure began to tell on Rindt and he went to Monza for the Italian GP ready to clinch the World Championship that had for so long alluded him. Rindt by that time had decided to quit racing at the end of the season and talked about setting up a sports clothing business.
Practice was held on Friday and Saturday, September 4-5, and half an hour into the Saturday session Rindt’s Lotus veered sharp left under heavy braking into the Parabolica, dived under the Armco crash barriers and bounced back onto the track, its front end torn away. Jochen Rindt was lifted clear by officials, but if he was not already dead there was no hope of his surviving terrible chest injuries. Officially he died in the ambulance on the way to a Milan hospital.
I am grateful to Wikipedia and Grand Prix History for information used in this post to one of the best drivers in Formula 1 and the only one to have ever won the World Championship posthumously.
I HAVE JUST COMPLETED 200 POSTS ON THE DIARY OF A COUNTRY BUMPKIN WHICH MAY NOT SEEM MUCH BUT AS I’VE ALSO BEEN POSTING ON MY OTHER BLOG JOE WELLS OF WHOM IT MAY BE SAID, THE COMPLETE TOTAL WILL BE MORE. I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO THINK I HAD BEEN SLACKING!
https://www.joewellsofwhomithasbeensaid.com/
My post today was prompted by reading Marilyn Armstrong’s post called Defiance or Determination.
https://teepee12.com/2019/04/22/defiance-or-determination-marilyn-armstrong/#like-1110345812
Children seem so ill disciplined nowadays compared to my childhood, when my parents said no, they meant it and we knew it too. I am astounded at how rude some children can be but when you see a family out and they are sitting round a meal table all of them on their phones with no interaction between them, I’m not greatly surprised.
It will obviously never go back to the old days where six of the best with a slipper or a cane used to help concentrate the mind no end. Punishing children who don’t like school by excluding them from the very place they don’t want to be doesn’t seem like much of a punishment to me.
It’s quite odd to me that when I was at school, we never had anyone with ADHD or autism no-one disrupted a lesson and we were so unbelievably well behaved compared to modern children.
I know from experience that you can give a child a full-strength fizzy pop style drink and they shoot of as if they have a rocket up their backside and take some considerable time to calm down, I have no idea if this has any bearing on ADHD. When I was at school, we had fizzy pop called Tizer it tasted horrible so we didn’t consume vast quantities of the stuff which may explain a lot.
In my day there were four basic categories of children at school, naturally clever, hardworking, not so clever and lazy, or permutations thereof. For example, you could be clever and lazy which would place you about halfway in your class, or you could be not so clever but put in an enormous amount of hard work and come top of the class.
Surprisingly the main thing we all came out of school with was a decent education in the lessons of morals, ethics and good manners, most of which was taught (although we didn’t realise it at the time) in the Religious Education class with parables like the good Samaritan etc.
I can remember my parents saying to me, “never speak to a grown up until they first speak to you,” which when visitors arrived, we would dutifully wait to be spoken to before responding. You can’t imagine the youth of today behaving in such a fashion.
We try to educate our grandchildren in the correct ways but sometimes it feels a little like pushing water uphill, I wonder what on earth it will be like in a few more generations time, from the look of things sometimes I worry that some of the coming generations may damage their knuckles as they scrape along the ground.
I was prompted to write this today following a comment from Chris Hall https://lunasonline.wordpress.com/ about my post Goodbye Christopher Robin https://lordjoewells.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/goodbye-christopher-robin/ and the mention of the film on the subject.
This led into the mention of the film My boy Jack which I can also recommend as very well worth watching.
My Boy Jack is a 1916 poem by Rudyard Kipling. It was written after his son called Jack was posted as missing and later as dead in September 1915 during the battle of Loos in World War One. Jack was a Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards when he was killed, he had extremely bad eyesight and was not fit to be in the Army, but in the beginning of the war his father was very patriotic and pushed for his son to join up.
Not surprisingly after his son was killed Rudyard Kipling became very anti war, after witnessing the futility of it, having lost his son. My Boy Jack is quite a moving poem but all the more so when you know the story of why it was written. I need add nothing further to this blog and I give you;
My Boy Jack, by Rudyard Kipling.
“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
The Diary of a Country Bumpkin 