To whom it may concern ...

I am a great believer in complaining. If people did not complain about injustices, nothing would ever change. Just look at the Suffragettes. I like to think I would have been a Suffragette.

I am not known for ‘buttoning my lip’. I could complain for England and am the Queen of the letter of complaint. I endeavour to make people quiver with fear from afar by my use of English.

In the past couple of days, I have had reason to complain three times. The first was when I was overcharged for an item in Asda. I am generally not a fan of supermarkets and the way they conduct their business but Asda acquitted itself with aplomb. Not only did I receive an immediate refund but also a £2 gift card for my trouble. Of course, I told everyone about this and am now writing about it. Someone at Asda knows the secret of good PR.

Ten days ago, I bought an item on eBay for the grey mare. It finally arrived yesterday. The wait had me hopping up and down with displeasure (I had paid immediately via PayPal). Far from the advertised ‘excellent condition’, the leatherwork was cracked and smelt as if it had been stored in a damp, mouldy shed. I fired off an obstreperous email and the item is winging its way back from whence it came.

The final issue is the one that concerns me the most. I have contacted the ILPH to report a cob tethered with no water beside a busy dual carriageway near an A1 underpass. I believe tethering horses should be banned full stop. The Government had its chance to do so in the new Animal Welfare Act but didn’t. I have seen a black horse with white hair covering the scar tissue on its face, where its skin had grown over the too-tight headcollar it had been tethered in.

My mum used to tell me my mouth would get me into trouble. I hope on this occasion, it gets that horse out of trouble.

Resurrection shuffle

Dealing with a dying computer was not the way I wanted to end my Bank Holiday. The inconsiderate creature decided to gasp its last when I was blogging. Something about a fatal error in the registry. I’m used to its blue screens of death; it usually gets over them if I sigh deeply, cajole, then threaten. This time, though, there were no reviving cyber-smelling salts. It was gone – taking with it all my (unbacked up) Word documents, photos and a few CDs worth of music. I could say I was rather cross but I believe incandescent with rage is the phrase I’m looking for.

The only way I could resurrect it was to use the reload CD: the one that wipes off everything and takes the computer back to basics. Then I had to reload my broadband stuff and ring the nice man at my ISP because I couldn’t remember my user name. Then I had to reload Office.

I remember the first time I loaded software on to a PC I was afraid I would somehow cock it up. Now I am blasé – I simply don’t care. These stupid machines have a mind of their own, and quite often they have malicious moods. If they take it upon themselves to eat your documents and photos, there is absolutely nothing you can do. "Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and will now close". You – the supposedly intelligent member of this partnership – don’t have the slightest say in the matter. “Oh no, don’t close,” you cry. You think you hear the PC chuckling demonically to itself as it shuts down…

My PC – a £80 second hand jobbie – has always been a fragile prima donna. I thought I treated it well – it had a nice firewall, it had anti-virus protection and I frequently scanned for malware. But it didn’t even have the decency to tell me it was going to close down and gobble up my unsaved thoughts. It just struck, hard and fast.

And if some clever clogs decides to tell me that I could have done something to save my things – a word to the wise: don’t. You wouldn’t like me when I’m incandescent with rage. Just ask the computer.

Sprite

Bank holiday weekend, it would seem, means only one thing: convoys of caravans compelled north on some strange pilgrammage to God's Own Country.

They crawl up the grey ribbon that is the single carriageway of the A1 like cream coloured lice.

Last time, I was stuck behind a 'Crusader'; this time the miscreant was a 'Sprite'. Funny thing was, there was nothing spritely about it ...

Richard the Lionheart

A big cream-coloured caravan was one of the steering wheel-smacking, angst-inducing and tedium-creating reasons why I was late home from work today.

When I managed to overtake as the A1 returned to dual carriageway, I noticed it was called a 'Crusader'. Was that because it got nowhere fast?

Town and country

I am nowhere near the first and no doubt I won’t be the last to remark on the lack of understanding frequently exhibited betwixt town and country. Unlike some, I have never considered the country to be inhabited by barely literate, fundamentalist Christians (the North) or peasants doused in a touch of Archer-esque charm (the South). Nor, curiously, do I believe that Britain’s towns and cities are solely peopled by modern-day Fagins and gun-toting or knife-wielding yobs. Having spent almost a decade and a half living and working in cities before escaping back to this glorious realm, I think I am qualified to make a judgment.

It’s a shame the people that govern us don’t appear to have had adequate experience of the countryside, though. A town Government, voted into power largely by town people, will understandably play to its audience. That’s probably why Gordon Brown is reportedly planning to punish everyone who drives a 4x4 in tomorrow’s Budget. Heaven forbid that he could make them economically less viable for those who don’t actually need them, but curiously, seem best able to afford them.

I have long considered 4x4s to be wasted if they don’t have a tow bar, don’t belong to farmers or to those who live in remote places accessed by single-track roads. But why should those who do live in the wilds or who actually need a powerful tow-vehicle be chastised because of those who run them as ‘gas-guzzling’ status symbols? I am not a city-based ‘yummy mummy’, so perhaps I misunderstand the subtle nuances of needing a 4x4 for the school run. Personally, I can’t see what is wrong with an ordinary car, or even the school bus.

Mr Brown would have us believe that he’s acting against 4x4s as part of the Government’s current obsession with green measures to combat global warming. I wonder if the equivalent of 4x4 drivers were blamed for making it warm enough to grow grapes in Roman Britain...

The Chancellor has been dubbed ‘Stalinist’ in reports today. I wonder if he prefers that to being considered a pursed-lipped puritanical killjoy?