Tesco - discounts that don't!

As a rule I do my grocery shopping online with Tesco and before I hear cries along the lines of 'lazy moo, she doesn't even go to work', I have what I at least consider to be a valid excuse for not trundling my way around the store!

As a bankrupt (albeit long since discharged) I am not allowed the privilege of plastic, I do two to four weeks shopping in a hit, I never know how much it will cost and I'll be damned if I am going to risk going through the performance of not having enough cash on me at the checkout....hence I do it online where Fletch's plastic will 'do very nicely sir' and as a bonus I also don't have to tolerate the screaming kids, wayward trolleys and isle-blockers who seem to enjoy spending their entire day in the place.

And if I'm honest, in the main the online service is excellent, with one exception, there's always one isn't there?

Over time I have received in my email various discount coupons, usually along the lines of 'you are a loyal customer here is a fiver off'. This week I had another, this one noting that I hadn't shopped with them for a time and they were sorry if they had displeased me in some way. They hadn't displeased me in any way, I had just been away on holiday....but they were about to displease me greatly!

The thing with these online coupons is that to date I have never managed to get one to actually work. They never work! In the past I have just ignored it but today my 'displeasure' got the better of me and determined, to just once actually get the discount, I called their helpline.

Hmmmmm. Helplines!

Suffice to say, I might suggest to Tesco that next time they run a training session for helpline staff they remind them that because a record of the emailed coupon in question seems not to be on their database, it doesn't automatically mean I am lying! I might also suggest that if that same system dictates that as a replacement it can only offer the customer an £8 voucher as opposed to the original £7.50 voucher, the helpline operator doesn't tell me with such gusto that this is 'bad for Tesco'!!! Somehow it is perhaps my fault that their software doesn't allow for the anomaly??

I think Tesco can stand the 50p don't you?

Jeez....what kind of customer service training do these people get??

They might not have pissed me off prior to my 'have we upset you' voucher but they certainly have now!

It's a rare day....

....that I wake up before the alarm and spring out of bed in a civil frame of mind and feeling positively full of beans from the off, but today I did just that! Why?

Well, in the first instance we had a fab weekend full of fun, food, friends and family and the merest hint of a possibility of something happening that would be 'heaven on a stick'! I won't go into details at this stage but should a small miracle occur and it actually transpire, you will be the first to know!

Secondly and more importantly, this is the week I have been waiting to arrive for what feels like forever, the week that sees my best friend Lisa arrive on UK soil at Heathrow for a visit and finally, after over four years of a continuous ten (or fifty) a day email conversation habit, we get to meet for real next Saturday!!!

In fact it seems impossible that we haven't already met in many ways, it's hard to believe that we haven't, it feels like we have, it feels like after all we have shared over the years we must have but now at last we are going too and I can't wait!! It's only 5 days away now and I am soooo excited I'm like a hyperactive five year old at Christmas!!!!

With passion!

At the beach

We are off again this evening for another weekend away, this time to the outlaws on the south coast which contrary to popular belief is a good thing, my outlaws are fab people.....hey I earned it, v1 through 3 were quite the reverse!

Add to that, it means time at the beach, much hilarity, yummy food and drink and even a cat, a big, fluffy, ginger cat, who of course will be made the most of and who will just have to sleep with us despite any protestations that may be offered up by Fletch!

Life could be a lot worse. :o)

....and it's only six days now until Lisa arrives!!!

Pretty pussy?

I'm sorry but be warned, despite the title this post has absolutely nothing to do with things feline and cute, rather it concerns the somewhat worrying upward trend there has apparently been of women seeking vaginoplasty or labiaplasty, surgery to improve the appearance and function of the female genitalia.

Have the women who choose to undergo this type of surgery gone completely nuts??

As an individual I wouldn't subject myself to surgery of any kind unless it was for the purpose of saving my life and whilst I appreciate I am maybe particularly cowardly where the surgeons knife is concerned, I am still at a loss to understand why I or anyone else would want to even consider vaginal surgery in most cases.

I do understand of course, that there are a few women for whom these procedures are medically appropriate, I won't go into too indelicate a list of specifics but perhaps for example, after a particularly physiologically traumatic child birth, but the fact is that the majority of those opting for this surgery do so purely for cosmetic reasons, I can only imagine is the result of media pressure to look good and a serious degree of personal insecurity about one's appearance.

It's bad enough that women feel the need to have breast augmentation, nose jobs, face lifts and numerous other kinds of body tucks but perhaps that is marginally more understandable, those body parts are at least visible to others as we go about our daily life and whilst I wouldn't do it, if it improves an individuals confidence in themselves then maybe, just maybe I can see the purpose. Vaginal surgery however is a whole different ball game.

Let's face it ladies, unless we are nubile young porn stars our genitalia is not generally on show and he or she to whom it is, has chosen to be there and therefor presumably finds whatever they are 'presented' with aesthetically acceptable. If they don't then I'm sorry but they can exit my bedroom post haste and go elsewhere.

Are we not individuals? Is that not the fun part?

We are all of different appearance and that applies to our entire body. I for one have no wish to be a clone and vaginoplasty not only strikes me as gruesome and entirely unnecessary in most instances, but it also seems very sad that anyone would even begin to consider it appropriate or suitable purely from a cosmetic aspect.

We can't escape the fact that when genitalia was invented it had more to do with function than aesthetics. Vaginas and penises where not at the top of the list when they hit the creation design studio but the rising popularity for surgery to create designer vaginas, is in my opinion, way too extreme and those considering it might want instead to consider a session of self esteem counselling before they hit the operating room!

Smile!

Along the way on our travels I caught one or two amusing bits on camera. By virtue of their immediacy the pictures aren't up to much but they might raise a smile.

1.Swiss traffic control!
2. A lorry that took a short cut, got stuck under a bridge and had a 100km detour to get to the other side.


3. A stork on a lampost, yes really, and.....
4. taking a stroll at a French service station!


5. Touring cyclists in Switzerland who's child transporting contraption actually housed a big and apparently very cheerful dog and...
6. a three legged dog?!


And lastly
7. Sex and
8. Champagne for sale at the services....why do services in the UK not sell anything as interesting?!


(All clickable)

Ten things I learned in Europe!

1. In Southern Italy you are not utilising a 50cc scooter appropriately unless you are carrying at least 2 adults, 2 children, one or more dogs or items of livestock and a months groceries!

2. Dehydration is not fun and turns what were perfectly adequate legs into something uncontrollably useless.

3. If you're not kicking the ass of 100mph on the motorways stay firmly on the inside lanes....except in France where there is suddenly an over-zealous influx of gatzo wielding cops.

4. Fletch can build a pretty fine dam!

5. You don't realise how patient and polite we Brits are sometimes until you have been to Italy.

6. Lonely Planet phrase books always have the phrases you don't need (that was good for me how was it for you? 'romance section') but not the phrases you do need like 'where is the bathroom please'?!

7. Using a German washing machine is not simple when you don't speak the language and results in much frustration.

8. If you smile sweetly at customs when they choose your car to pull apart and syphon you off into a dark corner, you can change their minds and just be wished a good holiday!

9. Tampons in Switzerland cost £6 for 20!!!

10. Belgian waffles (with chocolate and cream of course) are to absolutely to die for.

Reality bites

That's it then, the holiday is over and apparently today is the first day of autumn, or so Google inform me. Certainly here it's looking pretty autumnal, we woke for the first time this season to mist on the river and a definate chill in the air.

Fletch has pottered off to work with the 'first day back' miseries and his face tripping him and for me it's back to the hamster for company and a renewal of my efforts at finding a way to make a living, though I do have a new plan, which may soon become apparent.

So, reality bites in gemmak's-ville again, though with some pretty good memories and the next highlight to look forward to....it's only ten days now until Lisa arrives in the UK!

I can't wait!

Europe part 4 - Bloggers, beer & Brussels

The holiday tales are almost over, there is just one more to tell.... and a particularly special one at that!

We left the mountains and headed north in readiness for our sailing home from Calais on Saturday. En route we intended to visit Koblenz and the Ardennes. We did in fact make it to both destinations, Koblenz was a small disaster I won't regale you with and the Ardene we drove through without stopping, having decided for various reasons en route, to spend our last two days in relative luxury in a hotel.

We chose Leuven, a city 30km from Brussels. Well in actual fact we didn't choose it, having been charged with booking a room via the internet on my phone while we were on the road, and having inadvertently misunderstood what I was reading I booked us into the hotel in Leuven by mistake, we had intended to be in the centre of Brussels! Fletch is unlikely to let me live that one down, but it was a happy accident, Leuven was beautiful and laid back, none of the frantic-ness of bigger cities and we spent two lovely days investigating and eating the most massive chocolate and cream covered waffles!

Our choice of the Brussels area for our last day or two was not entirely motivated by its proximity to Calais for our return journey. I had in my mind that if it were do-able we would try and hook up with a fellow blogger who lives thereabouts....the much awarded and hilarious Zoe, who's blog, My Boyfriend is a Twat, you will all know. I had emailed Zoe on our arrival in the area and she and Quarsan (The twat) very kindly invited us for dinner on our final night. And what a night!!! What can I say....absolutely mad, hilarious, high octane fun, fun, fun, we had an absolute ball and it was hard to believe it was the first time we had all met.

Quarsan expertly fed us all a completely scrummy dinner and we talked and we laughed and we drank and we rolled around the floor (don't ask) and we talked and we laughed and we drank....and we drank...and we drank, into the wee small hours! As you know, I'm usually not very comfortable posting pictures of myself, ditto Zoe and Fletch but just this once it is worth it!

A true night to remember!....and a big thank you to Zoe and Quarsan for their hospitality and company, we had a fab night guys, thank you.

Oh...and I came away clutching my very own signed and dedicated copy of the book, gifted! How cool is that?!

And so that was it, holiday over, all that remained was a six hour (result of Euro star fire) wait at Calais the next day and then back to Blightey.

A fabulous holiday, the stuff that life is about :o)

Doubtless there will be one or two more odds and sods posted here ref. holiday stuff but in the main if you have managed to wade your way through these posts you deserve a medal and are now relieved from duty! ;o)

....in the unlikely event you can stand anymore pictures the rest can be found HERE.

'Speed me towards death' - gemmak drives Stelvio pass

Two posts today, this one, a little movie put together in true Fletch style of my Stelvio Pass driving exploits..... and below our time in the Swiss Alps :o)

Sound on.

Europe part 3 - The Swiss Alps

This takes us into the second week and aside from the wedding itself probably my favourite part of the holiday, the Swiss Alps, glaciers, snow capped mountains and all things green and beautiful...though my desperation to escape the heat of the previous week seemed a little odd even to myself when on arriving it became apparent that the temperature was almost at that of a UK winter and at night hovered at something around 3 degrees! A far cry from the 40's of Southern Italy and making my still rampant heat rash look amusingly out of place!

This journey was only a little over 200 miles but it took 7 hours and was the most beautiful!!

At each turn in the road we were presented with yet another breathtaking speactacle of nature, tree covered mountain sides, blue-green glacial rivers and lakes, amazing cloud formations, snow, sunshine, massive crags of mountains and the greenest green hillsides you ever saw. They (whoever 'they' are, say England is green, England has nothing on Switzerland)


If you ask Fletch why it should take so long to cover such a small distance he will tell you it was because I kept asking him to stop the car so I could take photographs...I reason however that it was as a result of the entire route being on winding Alpine roads! ;o)

Our destination on this occasion was a little town in central Switzerland called Engelberg, chosen because it is home not only to the only glacier in central switzerland, the Titlis Glacier but also because it boasts a campsite directly at the foot of said glacier!


Stunning....absolutely stunning, to wake up in the morning to the sight of our very own glacier, and see the sunrise lighting the early morning, dew drenched fields and hills was something else....if very cold!


We spent three days here just marvelling at the scenery and wandering around the pristine town set in the valley surrounded on all sides by mountains. The sun shone, and the clean fresh air gave everything an unsurpassed clarity.

The highlight however was my first ever cable car ride! These things are damned expensive as we were to discover, 80 Euros a hit for the most famous one!!....but as luck would have it a smaller and much steeper (hell, if you're gonna do it you might as well really do it)one, the Furenalp Gondola, was located right next to the camp site and at a more reasonable cost.

I don't 'do' heights but as with most things I don't do that very fact meant I had to do it, the view from the top and the experience had to be worth it...though it was with a degree of trepidation that I stepped into the not overly modern gondola and looked up at the mountain ahead of me and the almost vertical path of the cables!

Pah! What was there to be concerned about, the ride up the mountain side was fabulous, completely un-scary and utterly stunning! I seem to keep using the 'amazing/stunning/fabulous' kind of words in these posts but really, it was, it all was, without exageration all of those things

Once ontop of the mountain we stood almost level with the Titlis peak and the glacier, I don't have words to describe the sheer magnitude or beauty, nothing I say and no photograph could convey what being up there was like, just how truly amazing it is!




We walked a while and we just stood and looked and we walked some more to a place where we understood there should be wild Marmots (Murmeltier) in residence....and there were! Though it took a fair amount of time and patience (not my forte!) sitting in absolute silence (no mean feat for me I promise you) for them to appear.....and more time sat in silence to ensure they didn't detect us (luckily we were down wind of them) and scream there high decibel, high volume warning to one another and disappear again. We had seen them before in less 'natuaral' surroundings but seeing them in the wild going about their business was a whole different thing. We did take pictures but alas, short lenses don't really cut it for wildlife photography so if you want to see one go HERE.

There was however other 'wildlife' that made somewhat less demanding subjects!


Right then, that takes us to the last few days in Germany and Brussels (??) the question marks will be explained later....only one more holiday post I promise!

Continental Kittens!

There are always kittens to be found wherever you go...in this case Positano, where there were six at the villa (two of which are the ones feeding from their mum) and Laas where the two ginger ones, who we discovered were the offspring of last years 'camping kitten', lived at the campsite and spend their days 'visiting visitors'! (Sound on)

A once only offer......

.....and never to be repeated!

Ok ok...I give in, I am bowing to mounting chorus of pressure to post a picture of 'the dress' in situ so to speak!

As the title says it's a once only offer and there are no guarantees how long it will remain here.

The last time I wore a dress I was still at junior school and it will probably be as long again until the next time I do! ;o)

Jeans, where are my jeans??

Europe part two - The Italian Alps

So, once the bride and groom were successfully and happily transformed into 'Mr & Mrs', Himself and I spent the next two days staying at the aforementioned villa in Positano, enjoying time with the rest of his family who had also made the trip. The villa is worthy of a post all of it's own and I'll get to that eventually for alone it was an experience, but suffice to say for now, whilst I hate to mention money this was a £700 a night affair and way out of our current budget options but we were very generously offered two nights gratis....and for one of them got the best room in the joint!

From there we crept out at 5am on the Thursday in the dark (trying not to fall into the pool) and set off on our escape from the heat! By now I was sporting not a beautiful all over golden tan but instead a very un-beautiful case of all over heat rash, that was fast morphing into all over eczema....me and the sun don't do too well together and whilst I love it, a spell in the not so hot Alps was looking even more an attractive proposition than it already was, given that the mountains are very high on our 'favourite places' list.


At a little over 700 miles this was to be the longest single journey of the trip and we drove for almost ten hours, through almost every conceivable landscape, from the parched dust of southern Italy, back past Napoli, Florence, Modena and Rome (too hot to 'do' cities) through beautiful muted Umbrian colours, on through Tuscany with it's fields of sunflowers and terracotta landscapes, past the magnificence of the Dolomites and finally to our destination, Laas in Northern Italy. So northern in fact they speak German not Italian! Damn.


Laas is a place we visited last year on the bike and we had a purpose for re-visiting it. Last year we rode the Stevilo Pass on the bike, Fletch of course on the front end....this year it was my turn, I might not be able to ride it myself but I was sure as hell gonna drive it, even if that meant doing it in Fletch's over sized company car!


And I did, in pouring rain and with cloud reducing visibility to approx. 10 meters in places, I drove the whole thing....and if I say so myself I got a pretty hot line on some of the corners. Wow...what an experience, it might make you very well aware of your mortality in places but hell it's fun!



The following day we were woken at 5am by what transpired, after much investigation in our very poor German, to be constant cannon fire....which continued for 3 hours!!! We had thought that given this is a marble mining town, the racket ( I mean seriously loud...the last time I heard anything similar it was an I.R.A. bomb!) was perhaps mining explosions but it seems it is tradition when a local lad is getting married that his friends in other valleys wake him on the morning of his wedding with hours of high powered home-made cannon fire! These bits of kit are serious stuff powered by gas and you have no idea how loud they were from inside a tent! The locals just seem to ignore it and were slightly surprised that we took such an interest.....telling us only that usually it starts at 3am! Too funny.

The rest of the day we spent driving two more glorious mountain passes, Passo Rombo and Passo Giovo, drinking excellent coffee (there is no such thing as bad coffee in Italy) chilling out in the cooler sun (it's was only cloudy up high in the mountains) and playing with the kittens that were resident on the camp site.....and who 'assisted' with the washing up! Amazingly these adorable kittens turned out to be the offspring of the kitten we befriended at the same site last year! :o) Kittens were a recurring theme of this holiday but again, that's another post!


And then it was time to pack up the tent again and head off somewhere else.....

(Click for the big ones as ever)

And.....

....God made the laundry pile....and the laundry pile made the ironing pile...and the ironing pile made the putting away pile.....and the putting away pile made the no space in the cupboards pile.....

Europe part one - Cambridge to Positano

Where to begin, you are going to be sooo bored by the time this is all done, we seemed to fit so much into our two weeks away I really don't know what to include and what to leave out but I will endeavour not to be too long winded! (yeah I know, famous last words).

So...the purpose of the trip was in the main to attend a family wedding in Positano. We 'did' Western Europe last year on the bike and had intended to do the East this year but circumstances resulted in the re-visit and though we were on the dreaded four wheels and covered way less miles (yes, less is bad) than last year it was fabulous.


We left the UK via Dover early on the Saturday morning after very little sleep. Fletch's flight home from work the previous evening was as ever delayed and by the time we had booked our crossing and sorted out some insurance (plan ahead? Nooo, never, that's all part of the fun) it was already well into the wee small hours.

The crossing was sunny and uneventful but somehow in my ignorance I had imagined a small rest at that point....but no, we were straight onto the road for the 450 miles to Strasbourg and a utility night in an Ibis hotel. Fed and watered we slept like babies and continued on again early the next morning to overnight stop #2 in Florence. Another Ibis, no time for sightseeing, just sleep and dinner and off again at the crack of dawn for the final 600 mile haul to Southern Italy via Vesuvius (thankfully not erupting), Napoli (OMG the place looks like a shanty town in the sun), Sorrento (No opinion it whizzed by in a blur) and finally our destination, Positano.


What can I say....HOT, HOT, HOT about does it!

Positano itself is beautiful in a kind of upmarket way, the only campsite (tent remember) however was what I can best describe as not beautiful though it's great saving grace was a private beach within 20 meters, the reason I assume they felt it appropriate to charge extortionate fees for otherwise low grade facilities! It was by now late afternoon, we were very hot and dusty from erecting said tent on parched mud so we hit the beach and I had my first ever swim in the Med. Fantastic, I really never believed it could be so warm and clear....things were however about to take on something of a challenging nature.


Our tent is a two man (yes, very small) four seasons affair, built to withstand the worst the Himalayas can throw at it, our sleeping bags suffice down to minus 20 degrees...this is soooo not good in 40 plus degrees! I thought I might expire, despite leaving every doorway wide open and not venturing into my bag there wasn't a breath of air or breeze to be had and the temperature inside the tent soared well into the 50's. Add to that we had pitched under a tree for a little shade, only to discover at night something we had overlooked in our desperate search for shade. It was a fig tree and the ripe figs continually 'plopped' noisily onto the tent roof all night long.....most of the night I just drifted around outside in the dark and waited for the sun to rise.


Which of course it did, with blistering heat. Let me tell you, trying to get suited and booted into wedding attire in a small tent in that heat is probably not the best experience of my life....it was however very funny and in my usual less than discreet way I gave up, abandoning any sense of decorum and just quit the tent and got ready outside. Hell, everyone else was in bathing gear, what difference is under-gear?!

And onto the wedding. A stunning affair, the bride looked the most beautiful I have seen any bride look, the small relaxed ceremony took place on a balcony over the sea with the sunlight dancing like a million bright stars on it's surface, a soft breeze finally came from nowhere and the sun shone on in all it's glory against the backdrop of the hills. Perfect.



The reception was held at a fabulous hotel high up in the cliffs a few miles across the bay, the only reasonable access to which was by motor cruiser, which very kindly took the longer route to our destination while we gently rode the swell drinking champagne and listening to soft music. Probably one of the most relaxing and soothing experiences of my life.


Everything was beautiful. The celebrations took place on another balcony overlooking the sea and the cliffs, the long table was set beautifully, the glass, china and linen were immaculate, the service was almost faultless and we ate drank, laughed and listened to some of the best wedding speeches I have ever heard, as the sun went down on the sea and darkness fell into candlelight.

When the celebrations were over we had a moonlight trip back across the bay where a taxi picked us up to whisk us to what was to be our next two days accommodation....the most amazing villa set into a hillside, complete with frescos, pool and cats!


But that's a whole other post!

(Images clickable)

3500 miles....

....later and I'm back having had the most amazing time. We've done six countries, done temperatures from 3-43 degrees, swum in warm seas, been up in the mountains among the glaciers and met and enjoyed a fabulous evening with a blogger in Brussels you will all know!

But for now the reality is instead mountains of laundry to catch up on and 3 gig of photos to sort out so I will bore you with more once I have caught up. For now just a couple of pictures from the Italian Alps. They really can't convey the sheer magnitude of the mountains but for an idea check out the buildings in the right hand corner of the second image! These are pretty big hills!

Postcard from Switzerland

An update from Gem:

Hello :-)

I managed to get a little bit of charge in my phone at last. I hooked it up in the car but i could only do it for a little while! I'm beginning to miss sleeping in a real bed... Where everything isn't damp! The tent is fab but no matter what, you cant stop it from getting condensation when it gets so cold @ night.

I think we are moving on to Germany today.

Yesterday i made it up to the top of a mountain in a cable car... Eekk! It was almost vertical and 2500 meters but i loved it... Apart from the bit where it 'falls' off the top of the mountain. That was really scary. There is a bigger one but its £80 for the 2 of us to ride so i dont think we will do it! They are really expensive.... Everything in Switzerland is sooo expensive. Food is almost 3 times what it is in the uk!

It's beautiful tho :-) We sat in silence for ages at the top of the mountain and finally saw some wild marmots :-) lol

I think that's about everything now. :)

Hanging out in the Italian Alps

They're tenting it in a cooler climate now, and finding these, as they go along:

This is not the first cat along the way. Gem will have loads more pics for you when they get back. :)

Photograph from Positano

Monday night, from the tent (or a big hill nearby)

Very flaky signal had to walk to top of big hill to get anything at all! Lol. So hot here just south of sorrento in tent tonight. Family wedding tomorrow then we can move on. God knows how im gonna get dressed up in a tent! Lol.

Two cats here :-) ... And fig trees :-) prob awol tomorrow... Signal even worse there. See u soon!

Travelling Update

So, here are some travel updates from Miss, who someone talked into leaving the flat without actually having a laptop. Good on her! A nice holiday comes along too few and far between for laptop usage in the mix of seeing the sights, drinking beer, tasting authentic food, and finding local coffee and chocolate vendors.

The updates are direct from the mobile phone, which seems to experiencing a fading signal at this point:

Ferry to France, where there was champagne available in the petrol
station.

Switzerland - Sexy lingerie is available in the service
station. Smoking is allowed everwhere.

Looking at mountains and glaciers (Mt. Vesuvius.

Driving through a 17km tunnel and still getting a phone signal.

Bought cigarettes... one fifth the price of cigs in the UK.
Florence is lovely.

Good food, good coffee and beer. This is the life!

Driving 400 more miles (are we there yet). Next stop: Positano. It's hot and my cell signal is fading. (I love air conditioning!)

Here's hoping for lots of lovely photos and a very relaxed and happy Gem upon her return. :)

Have fun!
Lisa