Unlucky for some

So I've finally taken the step. Once upon a time I had a business website; it was my pride and joy; I would gaily blog on it until disaster struck. Ironically, in hindsight, it was my thirteenth blog that I think caused all the problems. A blog about the Yiddish language, referencing the Big Bang Theory, which got my site hacked apart until my friend, whose company was hosting it, told me she had to kick me out. That was over four years ago. And now I have taken the plunge to write online again. However, as all blogs are a little bit about the ego of the blogger (aren't they? They are, aren't they?) I want to preserve online, for posterity, my earlier blogs. Therefore, the first fourteen posts from me will be those, and then I will plunge headlong (hopefully) into writing some fresh material. Here goes with number one...

FIRST BLOG 16.10.13

Sometimes I wish I could take my red proofreader’s pen and use it on elements in my life.

I have just spent the weekend with friends, eating dinner and brunch out in a couple of the city’s eating establishments, where small, some might say, imperceptible details have had to be corrected by us, and the overall weekend experience has left me grumpy to say the least.

Why can’t people proofread their actions? Why do so many catering businesses set up in the UK, purporting to offer an ‘American experience’ when it is obvious that not one of the staff has ever set foot in America, let alone a diner. Eggs Benedict is my all-time favourite breakfast when I’m eating out, and yet very few chefs/cooks/kitchen operatives seem capable of delivering it how it should be. Toasted muffin, perfectly poached eggs, crispy bacon and lashings of buttery hollandaise sauce - that’s all I ask for (2018 EDIT: I know that officially it should be ham not bacon, but that's how I like it.)

I’ve had un-toasted muffins, cold ham, cold plates and today - additional spinach (which would make it eggs Florentine), but the crowning insult was I had to peer under my bacon for any sign of hollandaise which had melted into little more than a buttery smear, and when I, and another of our party, asked for extra sauce it arrived, not in a nice little warm jug for pouring, but in a sorry little pot with not much more of an offering than a butter pat ... AND it was cold. We did the usual British thing, actually we did a little more - we actually ‘braved it’ to complain to the waitress in some detail. We could see into the kitchen from where we sat, and she did appear to go back and relay our message to the ‘chef’. Why then did I sit uneasily for the next few minutes half expecting Chef to come sprinting out of the kitchen, meat cleaver in hand, ready to chop us up for sausage meat? Of course, when it came to pay the bill, we didn’t withhold any money, but I refused to leave a tip, although I very nearly got a pen to scrawl ‘My tip: learn how to make hollandaise sauce properly.’ on the receipt. My friends took pity on the waitress and left her a couple of pounds.

I know that I really shouldn’t ‘sweat the small stuff’ to use an Americanism, but I’m so weary of having little things go wrong and spoiling the overall enjoyment of things when it would be so much more pleasurable to be able to marvel at the wonderful efficiencies in the world.

We’ve recently had to endure one of the (supposedly) most stressful of life experiences, that of selling a house and moving (although we’ve not done all of the moving part yet, just most of it). Whilst the house has ‘sold’, we’re still in the middle of the conveyancing process and I’m incredulous how much hand-holding has to be done with solicitors. Here’s a line of work that I would have believed put the ‘profession’ in professional, yet on every document I’ve received I’ve had to point out the minimum of three errors - some as major as ‘the fee should be for selling rather than for a ‘purchase’’ - yes, they were trying to charge us Stamp Duty, Land Registry and search fees, which almost quadrupled what we should be paying as the vendor.

In addition to this, I’ve recently been battling with a removal company that moved 80% of our possessions into private storage, but actually sub-contracted the job (without telling us) and our things ended up being - and I kid you not - slung into a container with little care for the usability of the items at the end of the day. Many emails have ensued, with - in the end - a conciliatory company getting involved on behalf of the B.A.R. (British Association of Removers) and we should get two-thirds of the initial outlay returned to us. Can you imagine the irritation though?

Unfortunately, as I’m all too painfully aware with these recent events, life obviously doesn’t get proofread, whereas that’s what I’m planning on doing for the foreseeable future, offering a service to individuals and companies making sure important documents get thoroughly checked and the overall professionalism of a firm is not compromised.

Life’s hiccups often happen for a reason. One company’s misfortunes ensured I took redundancy at the beginning of this year, thus enabling me to embark upon my longed for dream of returning to the county of my birth and setting up my own business.

Then a very much unplanned broken ankle in June meant we were delayed by eight weeks from putting the house on the market - but this led to us marketing it just as the school holidays ended, and demand for houses in our area peaked, which meant we capitalized well on local demand. Things not progressing perhaps as fast as we’d like (although had anticipated) might mean that other opportunities previously not available to us may well open up.

So, I’m aware that life is not all about planning, but quite often about allowing things to unfurl, and even for nature to take its course. I’m very much a fatalist, and can often be heard humming ‘Que Sera Sera’. The future’s not ours to see, what will be will be.