Remember, not everyone's on holiday (or, how, no matter how chilled you are, it pays to keep your eye on the ball)

The old saying 'you never think it's going to happen to you' rings particularly true for something that happened whilst we were on holiday in Spain recently.

We've been there lots of times. Indeed, we have had a small apartment there for the past six years (pictured). Tucked away in a very quiet spot away from the main drag, it was meant to be an investment, but sods law we bought it at the time the property market had peaked and the euro was 1.65 against the pound. Today it's worth less than we paid for it, plus one English pound only equates to around 1.14 in euros, which means in effect that everything costs a good 40% more than it used to. But all that's another story!

Three days from the end of our break this time round and one of our friends had recommended a beach we hadn't been to before, El Rosario, which is between Marbella and Calahonda on the Mijas Costa (or 'Costa del Sol' as it is better, but not in a good way, known). 'Very good for kids' he said. 'Goes out a long way before getting too deep to paddle in'.

Always game to act upon a recommendation, we set off, first for the shopping centre to get a few bits and pieces and then on to El Rosario.

Sure enough, it is a lovely beach. Very busy at this time of year, but once you get your pitch it's a great place to while away an afternoon with the kids.

Except for one thing.

All the time we were there we had kept a careful eye on our belongings and one of us was always within touching distance of our almost two year old son who, mid afternoon, dropped off in his pushchair for his usual nap.

We decided to leave around 10 to 5, gathered up our stuff and made our way back to the car, which was parked some 300 yards away.

It was only upon getting back to the car however, that my wife made a horrible discovery. Her bag was missing. Passport, driving licence, credit cards, 150 euros on cash, camera phone complete with pictures taken during the holiday as well as a customised ring tone of our older son singing - all gone.

Of course we did the usual running back to the beach and looking in places we knew it wouldn't be in, but it soon sunk in that it had been stolen, on the beach in broad daylight whilst we milled around the 'pitch' that we had chosen for the day. How, we're not quite sure, but that somehow wasn't important at that precise moment. We had to somehow remedy the situation the best we could.

A trip to the police station some 30 minutes away followed. In the interim one of my brother in law's back in the UK had texted me the numbers to cancel the credit cards.

When my wife phoned the card company she was told that someone had tried to draw out 200 euros barely 15 minutes beforehand. Luckily they had failed in their quest but it was evidence enough that it had been stolen, not mislaid.

As it happened on a Friday afternoon, there was nothing we could do about getting an emergency passport until after the weekend on what was meant to be the last morning of our holiday. We were flying at 3.30pm so had to leave early to go to the British Consulate in Malaga, whereupon we had to shell out 115 euros for a passport that is valid for one trip! You could say it was an expensive trip!

So, a word of warning - it CAN happen to you, particularly when you're so chilled that you're not keeping your eye on the ball - or in this instance, bag.

My Virgin media saga (or how, just when I thought it was resolved, they threw in a curve ball!)

I got a new smartcard from Virgin Media recently. I put it in the slot somewhat apprehensively but it was fine, everything worked...until the next morning. Then began a catalogue of events that had me almost literally tearing my hair out.

I phoned Virgin Media's technical support at around 8.15 in the morning and explained that when switching the computer on that morning I got a ‘self-assigned’ ‘169.’ IP address. I was told it could be a fault with my computer’s network adapter. I suggested that as I had only previous afternoon installed the new smart card I had been sent that perhaps it could be something to do with that. I was told quite categorically that the smart card had nothing to do with broadband and thus couldn’t affect it.

I had to take my son to school, but upon my return home I phoned technical support again and was told by the second person I spoke to that day that I would be better off having a stand alone modem which would be installed free of charge. I was then put through to someone else (we’ll call him person 3) who told me because I had a set top box it would be £35 installation and that they couldn’t send someone out until 5th June at the earliest. I said that that timescale was ridiculous and I would think about it.

Having thought very briefly about their pretty rubbish offer, I phoned back and asked to speak to a Mac specialist. I got through to someone (Person 4) who suggested I try their wonderful digital home support service. £6 a month for as much technical assistance over the phone as you need. I said it sounded good and that I’d happily pay it if they could get me back online.

I was then again put through to someone else (Person 5) who tried to talk me through fixing the problem via me accessing the computer’s ‘terminal’. He then realised after we tried a few remedial bits and pieces that I was using a Mac and said he couldn’t help but that the Mac specialist started at 4pm and I should call back then.

I called about 4.15pm only to be told by Person 6 that the Mac specialist had gone into a meeting and that I could only speak to him if I was a Digital Home Support service subscriber. They then chucked into the conversation the fact that digital home support doesn’t actually cover those with a set top box! The only solution would therefore be to get a modem and the next available appointment was not until the 10th June - 5 days later than I had been told just a few hours earlier! It begged the question 'how many technicians work in my area and do they travel by horse and cart? Eleven days waiting time is a disgrace and merely added insult to injury for a problem that I hadn’t created.

Somewhere along the way I was also told by one of Persons 1 - 6 that Virgin are phasing out set top boxes and that the old server I used to get my IP address from is no longer active! So why send me a new smartcard for my set top box then? That doesn’t suggest to me that they are phasing out set top boxes. Why not instead a letter stating in no uncertain terms that if I do not get a stand alone modem I will never be able to go online again?

I was also told later in the day by someone in their Teesside Customer Services/Relations that they had heard of the same problem i.e. people getting a new smart card and then being unable to go online - from some customers in Leeds. Confused? I was. I was also rapidly losing the will to live so asked to speak to a manager, which I duly did.

The Manager couldn’t really do anything for me other than apologise, but pointed me in the direction of a technical specialist who would, he assured me, call me the following morning. He also gave me a direct line number, just in case I didn’t hear anything.

That evening, more out of desperation than hope, I rebooted the system again and to my surprise got a ‘10.40’ IP address. I phoned technical assistance and Person, let me see, it would be Number 9 I think, said it looked promising. We went through the computer provisioning log in screen and I rebooted again – but still no broadband connection. When I went back to the phone, Number 9 had been cut off or hung up. It was late in the evening and frankly I was tired of spending so many hours on the phone being told different things by each different person I spoke to.

The next day I waited in all morning before phoning the direct line I had been given. The phone rang for 4 minutes (no voicemail, there’s a surprise!) before I gave up. I then spoke to someone in customer services (or customer relations, who knows? They have department's called both) in Sheffield this time (it’s a lucky dip system, Sheffield or Teesside. Where it stops no one knows!). I asked them to email the Manager I had spoken to the previous day for an update.

My phone then rang at 12.16pm. I picked it up after one ring but whoever had called had had second thoughts. I did a 1471 and a redial and lo and behold it was a nice message from the Virgin customer team saying ‘you need do nothing, the time and date of the appointment for an engineer to come out has been confirmed’ – I hadn’t even agreed a time and date! That was the whole point! I had questioned the need to wait eleven days to rectify something that wasn’t my fault and was waiting for this technical guru to phone me and have a crack at resolving the issue without the need to resort to modem boxes – and, if it turned out I needed a modem, I wanted one much sooner than in eleven days time.

It was after 4pm by the time the manager phoned me to apologise for no one getting back to me sooner - and no, he doesn't have a voicemail on his phone. He then promised me that a fault technician would come out the following Monday (the bank holiday just gone) between 12 & 4pm, which he duly did and the problem was sorted in 15 minutes after he installed the modem I had previously been told for the last day and a half that I couldn't have until the 10th June!

But the story doesn't end there.

Out of courtesy I phoned Virgin Media on the following Monday, a couple of days before the engineer was due to come out. After all I didnt need him anymore and is is only polite to cancel unnecessary appointments. Bad move.

I discovered after the person at the other end of the phone cancelled the appointment my broadband had been cut off!

I immediately phoned back and spoke to another person who then told me it would be escalated to 2nd level IT and may take some time. How long? I enquired - BETWEEN FIVE AND SEVEN DAYS!!! I was told. What followed was, I must admit, a bit of a tirade of expletives from me, but come on, this was madness! A bad dream. For taking the trouble to cancel an appointment, Virgin Media cut off my broadband and then tell me that I may not be online for a week? You really couldn't write it as a sitcom, people wouldn't believe you, but believe me, this was no comedy, well it was, one of error after error. Shakespeare has nothing on Virgin media.

I honestly didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Here I was, having been dicked around for days the week before, the fault technician managing to do in minutes what countless people between them couldn't do in the previous 5 days and now here i was, once again the victim of Virgin media's incompetence. I honestly felt like was on the verge of a breakdown such was the exasperation of the situation.

I resigned myself to another few webless days and recounted the story to a few friends and members of my family. Each were totally amazed at the lack of cohesion that exists at Virgin media. An arse elbow situation they said. And it was. And is.

Thankfully, one bright spark somewhere in the bowels of this multi-site, multi-hymn book (none of them the same sadly) organisation spotted that someone had 'left a bit of code' in the wrong place and that this is what was causing the loss of broadband. Once again, a simple solution to a problem that Virgin media had made sound irretrievable within a timescale of less than 5 days. Incredible!

Put simply, it's the worst case of customer service I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. One department doesn’t know what the other is doing or talking about. I was passed around the Virgin Media organisation from person to person and on the first occasion, after maybe 5 hours spent on the phone over a day and a half was no nearer a resolution until they finally told me they would send out a fault technician. (Why didn't they do that at the beginning of my calls, rather than some 32 hours later?). Then a week later I had to go through a similar scenario once again because of a fault of Virgin Media's creation, not mine.

I tell you, if Virgin Media were a brewery there would be no piss ups! I've been with them for 15 years but am seriously considering a move. No one could be worse than them customer service wise could they?

Never take driving lessons from a Swedish au pair

This week a story from my youth that still makes me chuckle after all these years. At the time I wasn't quite so jocular about it though....

One Friday night in the local pub, me and a few friends were having a couple of beers when in walk these two very attractive girls, Inge and Brigitta.

I knew Inge vaguely as she had been going out with one of my friends, Craig, the last time I saw her.

When she saw me she came across and said 'hi', introduced her friend and announced, very matter of factly, that she was no longer with Craig.

Seeing a window of opportunity open up there and then in front of my very eyes, I offered to buy them both a drink and invited them to join our table. How cool was that? My friends were well impressed I can tell you!

Anyway for some reason, maybe because we were at that age, the talk somehow got round to driving lessons.

I admitted to never having had any lessons and nonchalantly explained that as I lived in London during the week I really didn’t need a car. It was impossibly expensive to run a car up in London and frankly there was nowhere to park it. No, I assured them, driving wasn’t an issue for me.

The fact that a lot of my friends by that time had either passed their test or were well on the way to passing it, and accordingly were pulling the girls left, right and centre, never even entered my head - honestly!

After my rather poor attempt at justifying myself, Inge turned to me and said, again, very matter of factly, ‘I could give you a driving lesson if you like’ at which point my mates were egging me on and reading every possible innuendo into the situation.

‘Go on, let her give you a lesson’ and other very silly and suggestive comments were flying about.

Blushingly, I said ‘Look I’ve had a couple of pints. Maybe another time’. ‘No it will be fine’ said Inge. I just need to drop my friend off at the hospital (her friend, incidentally, was a not only Scandinavian, but a nurse as well would you believe?) ‘And then I will give you the lesson’.

Under so much pressure from my friends and not wanting to appear like a complete and utter wimp, I agreed and left the pub with the Swedish au pair and Danish nurse, the cheers of my friends ringing in my ears. How I wished I’d had a camera, just for posterity.

They must have envied me that night - hell of course they did. After all, how many of them were going to score with a Swedish au pair?

We headed back to Inge’s car.

As Inge opened the car door and pulled the seat back to let me in the back, I was greeted by a huge English sheep dog which proceeded to leap up and start licking my face and barking furiously.

Rather than say ‘What on earth is that dog doing there’ and in the process blowing my chances with Inge completely, I politely asked, as this giant dog now began to cover me with fur, how it came to be there.

It turned out the dog belonged to the family she was working for and, because they were out, she thought it would be a good idea to bring him along! Personally I wasn’t so sure.

Yes, it made sense that her friend should sit in the front as she was getting out first, but if this carried on much longer I was in serious danger of looking like a giant fur ball and smelling strongly of dog by the time I got Inge back to my place.

In between dog licks and barks, my mind was beginning to work overtime.

I was starting to think to myself, as all young men in my position would, ‘hang on a minute, you are on to a real winner here. If you can get her to drop her friend off at the hospital, convince her that you don’t want the driving lesson and get her to take you back to your place, you are home and dry. Well, mildly wet from dog spittle. The dog was happy enough sat in the car whilst she was in the pub so it can stay in there whilst she comes into your house, which very conveniently just happens to be empty apart from you because everyone is away on holiday, remember? You can quickly nip to the bathroom, wash your face, splash on a bit of ‘Shag for men’ and you’re away’.

‘Oh joy! Unbridled lust continental style, and with a Swedish au pair to boot. Just wait until your mates here about this one!

I concluded to myself that the 'lady CV' was not only going to get qualifications on it, it was getting an honours degree from the University of Stockholm!

Phase one accomplished, we waved our fond farewells to her friend, dropping her off in the hospital car park ‘Take care. Lovely to meet you. Goodnight. See you soon. Yup, you too’. Look, just go will you’ is running through my head as the anticipation of what is to come gets nearer to being a full blown reality.

On any other occasion I would have happily have spent an eternity saying goodbye to her friend who was, in all honesty, a very attractive young lady. But this particular night I was on a mission. It was my destiny - and you really shouldn’t get in the way of destiny, even if you are an extremely attractive Danish nurse.

Phase two didn’t go so well.

Despite my protestations that I really shouldn't drive, Inge insisted that it would be OK. ‘We will just drive round this car park first and then, if you are doing good, you can drive back to your house, OK’?

It was a tough call I have to admit. I could have flatly refused. I could have feigned a heart attack or shrapnel wound in a sort of Basil Fawlty style, but no, Inge was quite insistent that I should drive. A quick glance round the deserted car park made up my mind for me. What could possibly go wrong?

I finally managed to wrestle the dog away from my face and climbed out of the fur-infested back seat and straight into the drivers. Inge then ran through the basic gist of what I was to do. Start the ignition, depress the clutch, put it into first gear, release the handbrake, slight revs, off you go.

It all sounded so easy.

By now my mind was working overtime thinking ‘Look, you’re not drunk, you’ve had a couple of pints, that’s all. Do the driving bit, get her back to yours and you are going to be the happiest bunny in the whole of bunnyland’.

There was one slight problem though.

As I started the ignition, depressed the clutch, engaged first gear, released the handbrake and gave it ‘slight revs’, I put my foot on the accelerator a bit too hard and the car shot straight into a wall whilst Inge screaming the words ‘brakes, brakes’ echoed in my ears.

Thankfully I had driven into the ward where they treat burns victims.

I say thankfully because if it had been a cardiac unit I daresay the bang that echoed around the car park and into the surrounding countryside would have wiped out most of the patients.

Let’s keep things in perspective here. At least I didn’t have mass murder on my hands – but I guessed that my chances of a shag had just diminished rapidly in those fateful few seconds.

Not for the first time in my life, panic and despair set in. We quickly swopped places. Add one barking sheepdog into the equation and you can imagine how I felt when the bursar came out to find out what was going on.

I didn’t actually look at his face. I was too ashamed to look anywhere, so I just listened to their conversation.

‘Is everything OK? What happened’? he enquired. ‘Oh I am so sorry. I just skidded on a patch of ice and lost control of the car for a second’ said Inge in her friendliest Swedish accent. ‘Oh that’s quite alright’ he replied, adding ‘You need to be careful in this cold weather you know’. A laugh and a wave later and he was gone!

Isn’t it amazing what a bit of feminine charm can do?

I mean, imagine if the roles had been reversed and I had been at the wheel. The police would have been called and I would have spent a night in the cells, no doubt accidentally banging my head on the wall on the way down. ‘Mind those steps, they are very slippery sir’.

I suppose I should have been thankful that I wasn’t caught sitting in the drivers seat, but instead I was cursing my bad luck and desperately wishing that the dog would shut up when it dawned on me that I had better do the gentlemanly thing and get out and assess the damage I had caused. Maybe I could retrieve the situation yet!

Not a chance.

In my very short career at the wheel, I had managed to crush the drivers side wheel arch down onto the tyre so that when Inge tried to pull away it made a high pitched howling noise that could be heard for miles around. The dog sounded positively like a diva by comparison.

Quite how it was possible to inflict so much damage on a vehicle in what could have been, at most, a ten yard run up, I have no idea. The body of the car must have been made of recycled drinks cans or something!

I soon found out that it wasn’t though when I tried a bit of the ‘he man’ thing (I never was much good at being one to be honest). I managed to move the arch ever so slightly so that, as we drove off, the noise was now only marginally worse than the sound of chalk scraping down a blackboard being amplified through a set of speakers and played back in an empty Albert Hall.

Suffice to say, the journey back to my house was spent mostly in embarrassed silence - only broken by me apologising profusely and wishing I could just die or simply disappear.

Inge was very good about it I must admit, but I didn’t have the guts to pipe up with that classic line ‘I suppose a shag is out of the question’.

I saw Inge a couple of weeks later. Apparently for all my worrying, and visions of her ‘boss’ coming round to my house and shoving a car jack up my arse or hospitalising me with a wheel brace, they were fine, only being concerned about her and the dog’s welfare.

The car was sent down to the local garage, had the panel beaten out and that was the end of the matter as far as they were concerned.

The damage to my ego took slightly longer to repair.

The last time I met Inge was in a night club in East Grinstead, shortly before she went home to Sweden.

As I sat at the end of the night as usual watching couples slow dancing together and wishing it was me someone was clinging to, Inge put her head on my shoulder and told me that if she hadn’t been going home maybe things could have developed between us.

The story of my life.

We laughed about the car incident, I gave her a quick peck on the cheek and we said our goodbyes - forever.

What a difference a few days make

When I came back from Spain last Tuesday, little did I know what would unfold just 48 hours later. My daughter went off on a hen party to Majorca for four days on the Thursday and won't now be able to get back until Saturday night - and even then only by flying on the only flight they could get, to Doncaster (not Gatwick where they set off from). If they wanted to return to Gatwick they wouldn't be able to get on a flight until Wednesday week! Oh and even if they could get to the Spanish mainland (I've suggested hiring a pedalo) the ferries from Santander are fully booked until the 28th and I am not sure how much faith I have in the Navy being able to pick everyone up. How many people can an aircraft carrier hold and where would they sleep?

To cap it all the French border police put paid to any chance of a repeat of the Dunkirk flotilla being raised. A pity that because it would be great seeing a mixture of pleasure boats, dinghies and barges crossing the channel to do their bit to get our brave tourists and business people back anytime soon.

I am sure there re very good reasons for the total ban on flights, but it does beg the question, is this the only serious volcanic eruption in recent history? I am not questioning the severity of it, but you'd expect at the very least a bit of a hazy sky or maybe a bit of darkness and swirly stuff. Instead Britain is relatively basking in its best weather for quite a while.

All this can't be doing much for the economic recovery. I expect Brown will get the blame somehow.

Is it OK to slag off the oppo in public?

OK, this seems a bit random, but a debate has been raging this morning after an advertising agency posted a couple of tweets, the first which boasted about making less loss than another, and the second which took a pop at a rival agency for going bust in one of the countries they operate in and thus bringing into question their 'global' claim.

Now, the debate is this - to the outsider who doesn't know the agency in question it seems like a blatant dig at one of their competitors. The flip side of the coin is that to those who know this particular agency, their comments should always be seen to be a bit tongue in cheek as they are 'a quirky bunch'.

My take on it? It may attract attention but I am not sure the attention is purely positive. Potential clients reading such tweets might judge it as being in poor taste and unnecessary, particularly the heralding of a business going bust and jobs being lost, wherever they might be.

What's your take? Keep quiet on such matters and be judged by your results or post seemingly damning stuff then hide behind your company's whacky persona?

I'm a judged by results man myself. I made a profit last year. That must make me better than the lot of them!

PS- Showing my age, but it reminds me of the Saatchi's and JWT I think it was, spat years ago. One slagged off the other in Campaign one week, so the very next the other took out a full page ad saying something along the lines of "being slagged off by them is like being savaged by a dead sheep". It created quite a stir at the time. I could have crushed several grapes I can tell you!

Telling your children what you did - Part 1

I had a random thought the other day. My dad died when I was 13, so I really never got to know what he did for a living. I know he worked for ICI and was in PR and I know he spent a lot of time in Westminster, presumably lobbying MPs, but that's about it.

Anyway, it got me thinking, with all this technology at our disposal these days, finding images of places where I used to work and writing a bit about them would be a nice thing to do for my children. It would be good to write about the jobs I had and the places I worked so that they could be better informed about what it was their dad actually did than I was about mine.

It was only some time later, after a few lengthy searches that I discovered that three of the buildings I used to work in have been demolished - and I can't even find an image of one of them anywhere

We're not going back eons here, but the building where I started my career working in offices as a Clerical Assistant in the Department of Transport was knocked down in 2003. Here's an extract from the report "one of SE1's ugliest monstrosities - St Christopher's House, described in the GLA planning decision report as 'deeply unattractive', has been demolished."

Not a great start then. The trouble was, I knew that my next place of employment had also suffered the same fate. Marsham Towers, pictured above, were only put up in 1971, yet were soon described as "the very image of faceless bureaucracy", whilst local people nicknamed them "the three ugly sisters". No surprise then when they were taken down in 2003. I was a Clerical Officer in the Contracts (Highways) Department there for 3 years.

It doesn't get any better either, for my next port of call for some seven years was a building called Gotch House in St. Bride Street, EC4 where I worked as a Classified Advertising Sales Executive for The Daily Telegraph. Guess what? That's been knocked down too.

From there I went to work in the same field, i.e. ad sales, at The Brighton Evening Argus. Last I heard the building was still standing, but it's not newspaper offices anymore. They relocated quite a few years ago so it would come as no surprise to find that it was derelict or indeed demolished too. Part of me doesn't want to find out!

So there you have it. Three places of work, three demolitions, with a fourth possible if I am brave enough to dig a bit deeper. 89 North Road, Brighton was the address from memory. If anyone knows the fate of that building, please don't tell me . Oh go on then! Put me out of my misery why don't you?

In part 2 I will investigate my workplaces in Soho Square, a road behind Marylebone High Street W1 whose name I can't remember offhand , Rivington Street EC2, High Holborn, Fitzroy Street W1 and Chancery Lane WC2. I am not holding much hope for some of their chances. I know that all of them no longer house the companies I used to work for. As for the building's fate, stay tuned! I could be a demolition jinx!

Welcome to my big black blog

No idea what am going to write about on here, but everyone's got a blog these days haven't they? So, even though I am a guest blogger in a couple of places, I thought I'd create one of my own.

I'll have a think about what direction I want to take with this particular blog and be back later.

Until then....