My Favourite Shop

Crocket the Ironmonger in Glasgow is a fine shop (despite selling me leaky wellies the other day), but it isn't what it used to be. Recently I see they've got rid of the real hardware bit where you could buy individual screws and lengths of chain. Now everything is in a packet. Competition from the big chains, as it were.....

They also didn't have any metal plugs, as I thought I'd cheer myself up by replacing the black rubber articles cheapskate Taylor Wimpey have provided us with. Apparently they keep getting stolen. By Taylor Wimpey customers, presumably.

I needed cheering up as someone drove into me this morning (broke the bumper but everyone is OK), so now I have to get the car fixed - hopefully at no cost to me.

I also got one of those messages from Scottish Power saying they were putting my direct debit up, and when I phoned to point out a) I didn't want them to and b) their calculation was wrong because the period they were looking at was actually six weeks longer than they thought, the girl I was speaking to totally failed to grasp this and refused to change it back. It was a head against the wall scenario where we kept repeating ourselves until she disappeared off the line and someone else came on and told me off for upsetting her! I rather took exception to that as I did that same job for about 5 years and I wasn't rude or threatening, and she should have escalated the call if she couldn't cope. The new person did reduce my direct debit back to the original amount.

So, generally, today has been a bit of a fail on the customer services front. But I did get in Crocket's some nylon cord by the metre, to rehang Mr HPW's picture. I also checked the cookware dept and they still sell dry measures, so all is still mostly OK with the world.