Yesterday Graham decided to buy himself a portable computer (I don’t know what the official term for them is, sort of between a hand-held and a laptop) over the ‘net, from Tesco Direct. Not a good idea, as it turned out. The Tesco computer translated our address into some kind of Welsh (even the post office and our local council is happy for it to be in English), which the Mastercard computer promptly rejected; the Tesco computer informed a by-now ballistic Graham that his card had been rejected, and cancelled the order.
So, this morning, having failed to get any kind of response from Tesco, Graham went off to buy it from some other online vendor. Quick as a popped pixel, the rejection came back. Graham’s ballistic-ness went into orbit.
When I’d calmed him down I persuaded him to get on the phone to Mastercard, who settled it, unlocked his card, and gave him a great comforting cyber-hug. ”Leave it 10 minutes and try again. It’ll work with the new company, no problem, and we’ll take up this problem with Tesco ourselves.”
And so it was.
Great relief settled over the household and we settled down over a splendid special brew of coffee–no-one espressos the way Graham espressos–to discuss what to do with our day.
“You’ve forgotten,” he said. ”I have to wait in for the furniture delivery men for our new bit of Tapley.”
“Ah. So I did. Well, then, if you’ll be content with beans on toast for lunch, I’ll nip out later to grab a couple of bottles of wine and then we can go shopping properly tomorrow.”
As it happened, the phone rang right then, telling us the delivery was about 15 minutes away and, soon enough, there our lovely new Tapley sideboard (55 inches wide x 24 deep x 21 high) was, all gleaming in its teakiness, safely on the upper landing. Beautiful piece and we think that our Tapley collection is now complete. We’ll not know until the soon-to-be-initiated living-room makeover phase is done, but I reckon we’ve now got all the Tapley any two blokes could reasonably require. This piece needs no restoration.
We’ll be popping out together pretty soon now, as the heat of the day passes over, and shall grab wine and fruit, waiting on a proper shop for tomorrow.
While all this has been going on, Graham has given the kitchen walls and ceiling a quick lick of paint and so now, a great slice of the house is fully presentable.
“Can I take a photo now?” I asked.
“Wait till later in the week. I want to to give the place a proper bottoming before you go poking your cameras in cobwebby corners.”
“There aren’t any cobwebby corners. We got rid of the last of the cobwebs weeks again, after the last self-respecting spider decided that two duster-maniacs and a Mega-Cat had rendered the place arachnid-non-grata once and for all.”
“Don’t argue. You know exactly what I mean.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.”
