Is there such a thing as "too good" customer service?

Tuesday, February 24th, 2015

Last week, to celebrate Gareth and I's first anniversary (or, in years together, 19th anniversary!), we retraced some of our steps from 2014 after we had the civil partnership ceremony. Our "honeymoon" (remember how I hate that word!) took place at Langley Castle in Northumbria, near Hexham, and we enjoyed it so much that we decided to mark our anniversary by returning to the scene.

It's a proper castle experience, with four poster beds and window seats and 6ft thick stone walls and passageways and turrets and flags and all that heraldic stuff that you want when you visit an English castle. It's not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but for a once a year treat, it suits us just fine.

But this blog isn't about how wonderful and happy we were in an expensive castle, that would be boring (not to say, repetitive!). No, I thought I'd talk about the hotel we went to after Langley, which for reasons which will become clear, will remain anonymous. Not because it was so bad, but because it was kind of too good - or rather, trying to be too good. Let me explain...

After Langley we traveled to North Yorkshire and stayed in a spa hotel not far from the beautiful seaside town of Whitby. Now, first things first, I can hardly blame myself for booking a hotel which offered services which I wouldn't ordinarily be interested in, but aside from that, the level of customer service kind of creeped me out a bit.

I have plenty of hotel experience, from the dirt cheap Ibis Budgets through to the aforementioned top of the range stately homes. But never have I come across the type of service which greeted us at this particular hotel.

We parked up and wandered into the lobby to try and check in, but were told we were just a little bit too early and could we wait 30 minutes or so. Absolutely fine. We were asked if we would like breakfast, and declined as we prefer to generally pay less, eat more healthily and find somewhere in the locale to invest in. It was at this stage that a suited gentleman appeared out of the ether to encourage us to partake in their breakfast - the best breakfast we would ever taste. We declined once more. So far so reasonably normal.

But then a barrage of in-your-face over-friendliness began which really put me on the back foot and sort of disturbed me a bit. The suited gentleman proceeded to refer to me as Mr Stratford constantly, almost at the end of every sentence (and there were many sentences). He also insisted that he should be given the keys to my car so that he could bring my car from the car park to the hotel entrance so our luggage could be unloaded.

I insisted that that would not be necessary and that we were happy to transport our own luggage, but the matter would not be dropped. He went on to say that he would like to drive us in a golf buggy to our car, so that we could fetch our own luggage back in the buggy. I said no, it would be fine, we would wait until the room was ready with our keys and we would fetch our luggage ourselves.

Not dissuaded from treating us like crown princes from some mega-rich Arabian province, the suited gentleman proceeded to insist we had a "hotel orientation session", which essentially consisted of a personalised tour of the entire spa complex so that we knew where everything was. Now, as I type this I realise this reads quite innocently, simply an example of good customer service on a level which perhaps isn't reached often enough these days. But it was the constant use of "Mr Stratford" and the unceasing insistence that everything I might want to do for myself could be done by a member of staff which perturbed me. When I go to a hotel I expect to be treated with respect, politely, and have any need I require to be met, within reason. But this gentleman was really overdoing it, acting as if we had paid an inordinate amount of money for a personalised service above and beyond the attentiveness of any staff I'd ever known before.

The "hotel orientation session" took Gareth and I on a tour of the restaurant ("In the evenings the tables will not be as bare as this, Mr Stratford, they will have candles and there will be low lighting. All very tasteful!"), then the wine cellar ("plenty to choose from there, Mr Stratford!"), then the conservatory, and then the gardens. Now, fair's fair, the gardens were beautifully landscaped and when Gareth and I escaped the suited gentleman's clutches later on, we did have a walk around the grounds and they were the best thing about the entire hotel. But I didn't need to be shown the gardens, I would've been happy to be told about them and to discover them myself at my leisure.

The orientation session had only just begun. We were then taken into the hotel bar lounge, marched to the very centre of the room and told where the bar was, what was on the food menu and what ales were being served. Everybody else in the room stopped what they were doing/ eating/ drinking/ saying and turned to look at the two interlopers being given a grand tour of the hotel. Who did they think they were? As all eyes stared at me, I realised that some of these customers might be thinking I was famous or rich in some way. Dressed in scuffed boots and leather jacket, I hardly felt the part.

That was the bar done. Next was the spa. "We don't take people all the way down to the spa on an orientation session, Mr Stratford, for, you know..." At this point the suited gentleman lost his words, and I interjected: "Privacy?". "Yes! Yes, Mr Stratford, quite right!", and then he proceeded to stand with us halfway down the steps to the spa and tell us which button to press in the lift, what we should wear between bedroom and spa, and what time the children's "splash times" were so we could avoid the kids. "Unless you're teachers, are you, Mr Stratford?" When I told him I was not a teacher, he replied: "Well, that's just as well, Mr Stratford, because children are the last thing you probably want around you during a half-term, aren't they?"

Our hotel orientation session was over... for the time being. Our room wasn't quite ready, so we were urged to take a bite or pint in the bar lounge as we waited, but after my experience as a bogus millionaire during the tour, I didn't feel I wanted to return to the scene just yet so we insisted on a walk around the grounds as we waited.

As it happens, following our walk we did decide to have a bite in the bar (though not the bite I might have preferred, as one of the barmen was lick-the-mirror handsome!) and as we tucked into our sandwiches and fries I was tapped on the shoulder by the suited gentleman to tell me my room was now ready and that when we'd finished eating he would help bring my car round with the luggage. ARGH!

We circumnavigated the luggage escort experience as the gentleman was blissfully absent when we went to check in proper, but before you could say "The Shopkeeper from Mr Benn", up he popped again to single-handedly carry all our luggage (one suitcase and two plastic carriers) over to the lift, into the lift, up in the lift, out of the lift, along the corridor and to our room.

When we reached the bedroom door, Gareth quite naturally attempted to open it using the electronic key card, but it was snatched from his hand by our guide. He showed us that we were wrong to take the key cards out of the slipcase we'd been given as all we had to do was wave the slipcase in front of the lock and the door would open. He demonstrated this with the pride usually seen in a parent's eyes when they watch their child's first steps. Boy, was he proud of those hands-free electronic door mechanisms!

You guessed it, he didn't leave us there. He proceeded to give us a "room orientation session", heaving our suitcase onto the bed and then giving us a five minute tour of the room and its facilities. "You'll find the TV remote control up here, Mr Stratford, and the tea and coffee-making facilities over here."

And then the mind-numbing: "Do you have any particular tea requirements?". Gareth and I looked at each other blankly for a few seconds, wondering what to say. Gareth said he had no particular requirements, but was then told that any type of tea he wanted could be obtained: flavoured teas, herbal teas, fruit teas. "We stock Yorkshire tea, but any brand can be obtained for you, Mr Stratford".

Note: NOT from the hotel in question

After reassuring him that regular tea was fine, we were then shown where the hairdryer lived, and the ironing board, how the bath taps worked, and where the bathrobes hung. We were shown how the patio doors opened and what was outside on the patio, and also given a bit of history about the building and what the special builder's marks were on the brickwork.

Back inside we were told that if we wanted to bring a bottle of wine of our own into the room - "or indeed any form of alcohol, Mr Stratford" - all we needed to do was ring room service and the "appropriate glassware" would be brought to our room, "free of charge!". I spied the two generous tumblers on the tea tray and considered they'd be appropriate for anything I'd be drinking in my room, wine or water.

And at that, he was off. I was just getting used to having a constant commentary in my ear about where I was and what I could do when he said he'd leave us in peace and swept out of the room backwards, closing the door behind him. I looked once more at a stunned Gareth, crossed over to the door and flicked the lock.

Now, all this sounds very nice, doesn't it? A polite man very politely giving us a polite tour of the hotel and its facilities and then politely leaving. But the intensity of this man's breathless determination to meet his customers' every needs was overwhelming and disconcerting. I felt like a child, incapable of doing anything myself. I mean, I didn't care where the hairdryer was, but if I did need it, I'm sure I was capable of opening a drawer and finding it there.

On the one hand, the level of customer service and care at this place was second to none. They meant well, and they did well. Every single member of staff, to a fault, was super-polite and professional and couldn't do enough for you. But it also kind of felt like we were in some sort of institution, some nightmarish holiday camp where everyone wears fake smiles and pretends nothing bad ever happens. A veneer of paradise which was in no way a sham, but which was forced, plastic, ersatz.

Sadly, we won't be returning. We felt uncomfortable every time we left our room as we would often be accosted by the suited gentleman, hovering in the lobby, and asked if we needed our car bringing round if we were going out for the evening. No. No! It's my car, I'll drive it, thank you very much!

What do you think? Would you revel in such over-attentive customer service? Or do you prefer the polite but hands-off unless asked kind of customer service that I do?

Here's to the future

Wednesday, December 31st, 2014

Dear Past, Thank you for all the lessons. Dear Future, I'm ready...

And so another year passes into history. It's a strange time of year, New Year's Eve. On the one hand you have people wanting to go out and celebrate the passing of one year and the birth of another, singing songs, holding hands in complicated ways and knocking back the pints like there's no January 1st.
But on the other hand you have the melancholy that a New Year can bring. Few people can deny that January can be a thoroughly depressing and disheartening month. That post-celebratory period when nothing seems very enjoyable: the weather's usually appalling, there are debts to pay after the excesses of Christmas, and everybody's on a misguided drive to "better themselves", to diet or exercise or quit something in order to make them feel they are a better person, or at least making progress toward becoming one.
The truth is, we are who we are and it's difficult to change that, especially with a half-hearted diet or exercise fad. People seem determined in January to turn over a new leaf, make a change, start afresh... but so many people fall at the first or second hurdle, slipping back into their familiar routine.
And so January can be a depressing time, when ambitions are raised and dashed, and the half-lit gloom of a winter's month conspires to convince you that life is just so bloody boring and dull.
And then February comes with its Valentine's Day and promises of an early spring, and things start to improve. And then March and April bring their Easters and warmer weather, until we're back into the swing of things come May.
That all seems a bit of a ramble, reading it back, but it was a stream of consciousness, so I'm leaving it in! But what I did want to say was that New Year, for me, is a mixed bag of emotions. I'm happy to welcome in 2015 with a few drinks and a song, but underneath the surface merriment, there is a nagging feeling of melancholy. I wonder what 2015 will bring?
Certainly, for me, 2014 was a year of renewal and change. In December 2013 I had what might be described as a mini breakdown. I was signed off work, depressed and disillusioned. One day I might actually write about it.
It took me a month to get back on track and "rediscover myself", as my doctor ordered. And I did that, so by January 2014 I was re-focused on the future and trying to get out of it what I wanted.
It can take time to figure out what that is, too, and sometimes you have to identify what you don't want first before coming upon what you do want.
And so by the end of 2014 I've got married (after 18 years together already!) and quit my job, a job I'd been in for far too long, which was not healthy for me, and which I no longer fully believed in. It was time to make a change for the better while it was still possible. It was a brave move, but very definitely the right choice.
And with brave choices comes the fear of the unknown. But whatever 2015 holds, for me as well as mine, it must be faced with strength and fortitude, with enthusiasm and, where appropriate, joy.
Because life is not a rehearsal. You get only one of them, and this is it. It's so important to make your life what you want it to be, or as close as possible.
You won't get another chance. Not in this lifetime...

PS: It's interesting looking back on my blog post from December 27th last year and reading how I was feeling with the onset of 2014. I was looking forward to it and was convinced it was going to be a good one. Which it was. So this encourages me to look to 2015 with even more enthusiasm and a positive outlook. Let's see what the morrow may bring...

Pictures of you (and you and you)

Thursday, December 18th, 2014

I had a work leaving do last night, even though I left two weeks ago. We all had a great time, first quaffing a few drinks at the Albion pub in Conwy, then scoffing a meal at Alfredo's restaurant in the town. A handful of us returned to the Albion for last orders. A good night was had by all, and I thank everybody for coming along. It meant a lot to me.

Anyway, the booby prize for those who came is for pictures of them to be posted on the interweb (and I expect my blog stats to go through the roof and for the number of hits to be reported diligently at the next Daily Post news conference). For those unable to make it, this will no doubt give them a chuckle...

First up, two people I spent a lot of the last five
years at work with, Eva and Joel (quite what
Eva is doing to poor Joel is a mystery. Maybe
it's a Slovakian massage or something).
Joel looks half-cut, but was actually 100% sober
for a change.

Then we have Neil (my former boss, a phrase he doesn't particularly like) and Mari,
a reporter I've worked with for more years than either of us will ever admit to.
Mari was really up for this photo...

...Neil not so much. So Mari went for the jugular. By the way, they are spectacles
on Neil's head, which he puts there so he can see up to people.

Here we have Owen (who came as a Frenchman),
Dion (who looks like butter wouldn't melt but
 we all know it so would), Samantha (who looks distinctly unsure about
these guys) and Steve, who looks like he's
not sure about anything.

Here's Steve looking a little more confident about who and
where he is, with glam Samantha, plus Judith, whose
curled fist makes her look ready to lash out at any
moment. She's also looking off-camera. There's
always one...

There is an "out-take" from that session, where Samantha and Steve are deep in conversation and Judy looks far less aggressive...

Group shot of Blake (aka Eric Morecambe), Laura (caught in mid-swish) and
Tom, who's probably about to say something vaguely intelligent that nobody's
listening to. Maybe it's about the poo on his plate? In the background we have Jo
(who we'll come back to) and a preoccupied Andy, who's probably texting the
latest work experience girl to arrange a hook-up.

Me (the handsome one on the left) and Tom,
who looks pretty satisfied with himself. And
so he should be - he has plenty to be proud of.
I won't say where his right hand was in that shot
(actually, maybe that's why he's so satisfied...)

Andy and Rhodri. Don't they make a nice couple? Neither of them look like
they want this photograph to happen!

Two goons. I never look good in selfies. Rob looks like someone's tickling him,
which may have been his wife Helen as she'd just been told by a fortune-telling
fish from a Christmas cracker that she was passionate.

Rob with said wife Helen. She looks very demure here, but trust me, you don't
cross her. Rob did once, and now look at him. Also, Rob was very amused by
the sign behind him reading "a touch of cream". I'm saying nothing.

Mari again and Jo, properly this time. Again, don't they make a nice couple?
And there's Rhodri in the background thinking: "Thank God Andy's going."

And finally, me and Owen (the Frenchman
from earlier on). Don't they make a lovely couple?

Absent from these pictures but who did come along for a drink are David, Bryan and Jez (who I learned used to be a bingo caller in Caernarfon. I can so see that).

Thank you again for everybody who came along, thank you to those who were unable to make it but who were there in spirit, and thank you to everyone collectively for raising £117.50 for Parkinson's UK when they had a whip-round for me. That means the most to me.

I won't miss the job I've left, but I will miss the people. Every single one of you.

Black Friday: a dark day indeed

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

The utter chaos that Britain's first Black Friday was met with beggars belief. People were tearing at each other to get to bargains they believed they had to have, even going so far as to physically assault fellow shoppers and abuse retail staff.
I mean, is anything worth that: losing your dignity just to get your grubby hands on a new telly?
Black Friday is, of course, an American thing, and what happens in America almost inevitably makes its way to the UK eventually, for good or ill. In several states in the US, people are actually given a public holiday on Black Friday so they can get in the midnight queues early. As a result, the first Friday after Thanksgiving has been the busiest shopping day of the year every year since 2005 in the States.
This year was the first time it's really been picked up on and actually pushed en masse in the UK. Everywhere I went in Manchester on Friday, there were signs and adverts telling me the day was black and that I could get so much per cent off this, and it could well be my last chance to get that essential gift at such a knockdown rate.
And the streets were packed. I mean, severely congested to the point that you were barely able to move freely without either treading on a small lost child, or bashing shoulders with a frenzied housewife with consumer hara-kiri on her mind.
And it saddens me that this anti-social and frighteningly damaging annual ritual is being promoted in the UK. Christmas is stressful and expensive enough as it is without retailers smugly trying to wring even more pennies out of those who cannot afford it by trying to convince consumers that they really have to buy it today - not tomorrow, not closer to Christmas: TODAY! It's your last chance, or else you'll be paying twice the price, and probably for less.
I fear for the pockets and bank balances of those in Britain who really cannot afford to fall victim to this consumerist pressure. Retailers should take responsibility and refrain from putting undue and unnecessary pressure on people to spend, spend, spend what they haven't got. People will pile up their debts on credit cards and then find themselves in even more trouble in January than they might have if they'd just stuck to sensible, paced Christmas shopping throughout December (or earlier!).

And the violence that broke out on November 28th in the UK, where people attacked one another in supermarkets in desperate attempts to get the last cheap iPod or whatever, is unacceptable, yet depressingly predictable.
Metropolitan Police chief Sir Peter Fahy rightly said: "The events... were totally predictable and I am disappointed that stores did not have sufficient security on duty."
Greater Manchester Police's Deputy Chief Constable Ian Hopkins echoed these sentiments, saying that while shoppers' behaviour was appalling, the lack of planning from retailers was "really disappointing. They should have planned appropriately with appropriate levels of security to make sure people were safe. They have primary responsibility to keep people safe and they can’t rely on the police to turn up and bail them out."
The Black Friday phenomenon is only going to get worse year on year because we live in a consumerist society where electronic goods and multimedia and pointless tat like loom bands and woolly Christmas jumpers are valued more highly than simply making sure there's enough (not too much) food on the table and having a happy, family-orientated day in the spirit of Christmas.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not religious, and I certainly don't begrudge people a bit of fun and frivolity, but the destructive power that Black Friday has demonstrated this year has to be kept in check, for all our sakes.

It's all very well giving Tesco and Asda and all those other multinational retail giants bigger profits sooner, but what is it doing to our society, to our debt-ridden and those on restricted budgets who feel pressured into buying when they really needn't?

I hope that if Black Friday rears its ugly head again in 2015 - which it will - retailers take responsibility, and mediate and control its marketing, make sure there is security on their doors at one minute past midnight, and above all, don't encourage mass debt.

But then this is the UK. I shouldn't expect so much.

Researching my family history

Thursday, November 13th, 2014

My paternal great grandmother and great grandfather

I keep trying to research my family tree, but I quickly get very frustrated with the whole thing. For the last few years I've been gathering information about my immediate family from parents, my grandmother and uncles etc, and that helps to flesh out the chequered history of the family over the last century or so.
Recent times are the easiest: just ask mum or dad about their mum and dad and already you've gone back two generations. If your grandparents are still alive (I only have one) then they can take you back another generation, probably into the 19th century.
So I have managed to get names and birth dates, sometimes marriage and death dates, going back on my father's side to the 1870s, and in some instances a little further than that.
But it's around the late 19th century when I get really confused. My surname is not too common, but it's also straightforward enough to mean there are far too many branches of the name to know if I'm on the right tree or not. And of course, 100 years ago you didn't get helpfully individual names like Shane or Monica or Jethro or Apple like you do nowadays - everybody seemed to be called either Thomas or Elizabeth!
I have discovered some interesting things about my paternal family, however. Although I hail from the Midlands, it seems my father's family went to Derby from Barrow in Cumbria, and before that lived in Ipswich, and before that in Dagenham in London. They moved around plenty, perhaps in search of work.
I also have pictures of some of my ancestors, and it's the ones I never met that I feel most curious about. My father's grandfather Thomas was a typically Victorian gentleman with an impressive moustache and there's a lovely photograph of him in his latter years in my grandfather's back garden with his wife, and they look so sweet - he in waistcoat and pocketwatch, she in apron and hobnail boots. I feel like I know them; I certainly feel like I want to know them.

My great grandfather and his son, Leonard

It's weird seeing pictures of your ancestors. They were real, they lived and breathed just like you and I, but somehow it's hard to believe that when they are mere words on a page, and a set of dates.
When you see their face, they come alive once again. I always say that nobody ever really dies, just so long as there is somebody on Earth who remembers them. Memories keep everybody alive.
Another aspect of researching ancestry I find very confusing is military history. I know my grandfather served with the Territorial Army in the 1920s and the Home Guard in the 1940s, but I have absolutely no idea where to start looking into it.
I'm a member of Ancestry.co.uk but it seems to me there is too much information on there for me to sort through. I need to be trained in how to use that site!
But I am fascinated enough to keep trying. My great-grandfather (he of the pocketwatch) would have been in his 30s at the time of the Boer War. Did he serve in the military? I tend to think not as I think he was a blacksmith, but it's so hard to find concrete confirmations for things. The 1901 and 1911 Censuses are a goldmine of surface information, but anything earlier than that and my great grandfather seems to get lost among all the other men who seemed to share his name.
I shall keep trying, persevering, because I want to know more, I want to know where I came from, perhaps in order to know where I'm going...

Something wicked this way comes...

Thursday, October 30th, 2014

Halloween. Or, more accurately, Hallowe'en. Or, most accurately, All Hallows' Evening. A celebration of all that is spooky and dark and scary and twisted. Some people might think it distasteful to celebrate a day that wallows in death in such a way, but you know what? I love it!
I love Hallowe'en more than Christmas, more than any birthday I've ever had or ever will have. I'm not one of those people who dresses up, knocks on doors and scares the living statins out of little old ladies, but I do love a good scare. Fear is one of the basic emotions, and it makes you feel very alive to be scared. Especially when it's all artifice, as Hallowe'en is. Obviously, if there really was a crazed knifeman banging on my window to get in, and it was the height of summer, I'd be as petrified as the next serial killer victim.
Many years ago, when Gareth and I were in the pubescent stages of our relationship, we used to mark Hallowe'en night by settling down and watching a spooky horror film.
But that tradition has grown over the years, and these days we have expanded to marking what we've labelled Hallowe'ek - seven days of spooky goings-on!

American Horror Story: Coven.
Not one for ophidiophobes.
Or, indeed, gynophobes

To mark Hallowe'ek we choose a selection of supernatural and horror genre titles we'd like to be entertained and spooked by and watch them each night, leading up to the day itself. We usually watch American Horror Story (one of the most twisted and unsettling shows on TV at the moment) and almost always break out the M R James adaptations, whether they be the Ghost Stories for Christmas from the 1970s (by far the best supernatural television ever committed to videotape) or the various other interpretations that have emerged over the years. My supernatural archive television collection brimmeth over!
Although this year life seems to have got in the way of Hallowe'ek somewhat, we're still doing our best to uphold the tradition. Last night we watched the 1982 John Carpenter film The Thing - visceral, gory, gooey and thoroughly entertaining (how I wish Carpenter could get his mojo back - it's been lost for decades now). We're also wading through American Horror Story: Coven (Jessica Lange at her crazed best) and have been dipping into the 1986 M R James readings for TV by Robert Powell too.
The crowning glory of Hallowe'ek 2014 will be seeing two productions at The Lowry in Salford Quays (regular readers will know that place is my second home!).
First of all we're seeing The House That Stank of Death (Volume 4), a "unique multi-media comedy/ horror experience featuring short plays and films which will make you scream with terror and laughter". I love the alternative stuff they put on in the Studio at The Lowry, so this should be a real treat (or trick).

Secondly, we're seeing a faithful reading of M R James's Casting the Runes by Nunkie Theatre Company's Robert Lloyd Parry. I've seen Robert recreate James's fireside readings before, and he really does bring the essence of telling a ghost story to its unsettling fundaments - it's just him in period costume, in a big leather armchair, and the whole studio theatre illuminated by candlelight alone.
And it is M R James's expertly crafted words which lift the hairs on the back of the neck: "He put his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow. Only it did not get so far. What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth. With teeth. And with hair about it. And, he declares, not the mouth of a human being..."
Shudder!
And I have other spooky films lined up too: Hammer's The Plague of the Zombies (one of their B-movies which really exceeded the main feature at the time); the silent German Expressionist horror Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari; and Jack Clayton's 1967 overlooked spook-fest Our Mother's House.
So what are my favourite Hallowe'en films of all time, I fail to hear you scream? Well, one of my favourite films of all time, of any genre, is 1963's The Haunting with Claire Bloom and Julie Harris. If you've never seen it, seek it out. It's by far the spookiest, eeriest, most unsettling ghost story I've ever seen committed to celluloid... and the scariest thing is, you never see anything. But my God does it give you the willies!

Michael Myers from Halloween

On the other end of the spooky scale, I think John Carpenter (it's that man again!) produced the best modern day horror flick with the original Halloween in 1978. The direction is flawless, the music really gets under the skin and the terrifying creation at the heart of the film - namely, Michael Myers - is, to me, the fictional embodiment of my nightmares. That face, that mask... That point of view shot at the start of the film. Yes, the ultimate slasher film for me, and Carpenter was quite right when he said there should never have been any sequels. With a few exceptions (which I could probably count on the fingers of one gnarled hand), sequels are never a very good idea.
What's that I hear? The chiming of a distant clock telling me it's time to get to bed... or my coffin!

Me, when I wake up in the morning...

Photo-set: A voyage around my parents

Saturday, September 13th, 2014

I spent a few days with my mum and dad earlier this week, just me and them, and it was nice to just spend some quality family time. I've not really done that for years; the only time I get with them these days is the odd snatched weekend when they come over here or we go over there.
But it's not often I spend time with them like in the "old days", when I lived at home with them as a teenager. I left home to go to university when I was 18, and never went back, for reasons too detailed and emotive to go into here. So it was nice to be that teenager again, being well-fed by my doting mum and teased by my proud dad.
I took a moment to capture just a few of the items around the house that are just so "them", little things which sum them up to me. They are very personal associations and would not be obvious to anybody but myself, but to me, these are some of the things that speak "mum and dad" to me when I am at their house...

This chiming clock was given to my grandfather (my dad's
dad) as a long service gift. Do they do that now? It's got
a pretty noisy chime, which it imparts every 15 minutes, and
drowns out the TV, but my parents don't seem to mind or
notice. It's special to me because it is of great sentimental value
to my dad, whose parents both died in the 1970s when he was only in his
twenties.

Pigs. My parents, particularly my dad, has a thing for pigs,
and they can be found all over the house, including this cheeky
fella on the hearth. I see a world-weary wisdom in this pig's
wrinkled expression, which oddly reminds me of my dad!

This rather camp-looking copper, seen shouting something or
other with his hands firmly on his hips, has been a feature of the
house for years, and I've never liked it. My family has absolutely no
connections to the police force so it's presence is meaningless. I
guess they just like it as an ornament, but I think it's weird.

An ever-present Screwfix catalogue which my dad seems to have by his side
constantly. He's a DIYer and is always tinkering or building something, and
always looking in this catalogue to see what he can buy next. It's always screws, nails
or brackets, though, not sturdy boots or gloves. It amazes me that a catalogue is needed
for screws.

Spectacles. Every room in the house has a pair of spectacles in it,
just placed randomly and used by both mum and dad. The thing is,
despite them being everywhere you look, there's never a pair
around when they actually need them, so then there's a hunt through
the rooms to find a pair. It amazes me that there can be so many pairs
of spectacles, yet never enough!

This is a fluffy holder for a pair of said spectacles,
except - guess what? - there's never any spectacles in them because
they have usually been taken off elsewhere and placed down
randomly in another room (as above). This holder is ALWAYS
empty whenever I go there, so its point is utterly lost.

My mum is always knitting, and all through the house strands of wool and thread
can be found on the floor, in corners. This is my mum's attempt to knit socks, apparently.
Many of her knitting projects go unfinished - she is in a constant state of development,
but rarely achievement!

Finally, an example of how, sometimes, my parents buy something
which really doesn't fit. They have a kitchen with black marble
worktops and pale walls and cupboard doors, but then they go
and buy something which really sticks out like a sore thumb (literally!).
This red pedal bin is my mum's pride and joy, but looking as it does like
a pillar box, I have to wonder why they chose red. Notice also evidence
of the aforementioned pig theme on the window sill, as well as a different
pair of spectacles, idly discarded alongside.