Cheese
The people of Sturminster Newton love cheese and were not going to have their annual celebration of fermented dairy produce taken away so cruelly. Cheese Festival Plan B went ahead, a selection of cheesy morsels available for sampling in the small carpark outside the local hardware shop. Pros: It was free (an extortionate fee of £2 is normally charged). Cons: it was only a fraction of what is normally available. Oh well... There were also some craft exhibitions in the town hall. I acquired a small knitted behatted duck named Wilberforce, and a couple of greetings cards from a local landscape photographer. It was also the first sunny day we've seen in a while.
Family
Sisters (who are both now living at some distance) came home for the weekend with boyfriends which meant everybody was there except dgym who had his own family things to go to. Much curry was eaten and wine was drunk on Friday night. I went back home on Saturday night for a bit of a breather and back to the parents' place for Sunday lunch
The Polish bloke and the hammer
I was awoken at about 7:30 on Sunday morning by the screeching of tyres and the scraping of metal along a wall. Living on a rather dangerous bend, I guess it was only a matter of time before I was going to hear that sound. Threw on a dressing gown and flip flops and ran outside to find a concerned looking bloke standing next to a rather dented and battered silver Mondeo. He looked physically intact, I asked if he was OK and it quickly became obvious he was foreign (sounded Polish) and didn't particularly want to talk back. The car had skidded on the corner, scraped along the wall that runs along the side of the road, and hit a telegraph pole.
He got me to help him push the car away so it wasn't blocking the road, and then started trying to get into the drivers side, which he couldn't because the locking had kicked in. He started trying to break the glass with his elbow but couldn't. I got him a hammer. I'm not sure why he was trying to get in (I thought maybe he was going to move the car further off the road?) and I'm not sure whether I should have got him a hammer, but I did and he broke the glass and started getting some stuff out.
Two ladies in a car stopped to help, and called the police. He was bleeding from his hand at that point (from breaking the window I think), I tried to get him to come and sit down, get cleaned up etc. as he was probably in shock, and guided him towards the house. and I said something about the police. For whatever reason, that scared him and he started to back away and head up the road. I probably should have gone after him, I can't remember why i didn't. I think I went in to get a hazard warning triangle to put round the bend. By the time I came back out he was out of sight. I ran up the road to find him but no luck. Neighbours drove up the road a couple of minutes later but no sign of him. Apparently they were out there before I was and there was also a girl who had run off almost straight away. Police showed up, took details & descriptions, road closed, car taken away. I don't know what happened after that, whether they found the people, or why they ran away.
Unfortunately in hitting the telegraph pole this bloke had knocked it to one side, bringing down all the lines connected to it, including the one that goes to our house which was brutally ripped from the wall. Neighbours told us last time the phone line was down BT took two months to replace it - not good news for somebody who runs an internet-based business. We got a mobile data connection in place, but fortunately it only took 2 days to replace the pole and all the lines. It's not often I have anything good to say about a telecommunications provider but BT have been really good this time.
Work
At least the internet outage has forced me to move my network monitoring onto a 3rd party vps rather than running it at home, something I should have done before then... getting a VPS from one of our more successful and well-regarded competitors has been an interesting experience.
Got 2 new orders last week. One (a big one) has paid up, the other we are still waiting on. We have started a habit of going out to lunch or dinner to celebrate each new customer - they're few and far between at this stage and it's nice to have something to look forward to.
There really aren't enough hours in the day right now.
The people of Sturminster Newton love cheese and were not going to have their annual celebration of fermented dairy produce taken away so cruelly. Cheese Festival Plan B went ahead, a selection of cheesy morsels available for sampling in the small carpark outside the local hardware shop. Pros: It was free (an extortionate fee of £2 is normally charged). Cons: it was only a fraction of what is normally available. Oh well... There were also some craft exhibitions in the town hall. I acquired a small knitted behatted duck named Wilberforce, and a couple of greetings cards from a local landscape photographer. It was also the first sunny day we've seen in a while.
Family
Sisters (who are both now living at some distance) came home for the weekend with boyfriends which meant everybody was there except dgym who had his own family things to go to. Much curry was eaten and wine was drunk on Friday night. I went back home on Saturday night for a bit of a breather and back to the parents' place for Sunday lunch
The Polish bloke and the hammer
I was awoken at about 7:30 on Sunday morning by the screeching of tyres and the scraping of metal along a wall. Living on a rather dangerous bend, I guess it was only a matter of time before I was going to hear that sound. Threw on a dressing gown and flip flops and ran outside to find a concerned looking bloke standing next to a rather dented and battered silver Mondeo. He looked physically intact, I asked if he was OK and it quickly became obvious he was foreign (sounded Polish) and didn't particularly want to talk back. The car had skidded on the corner, scraped along the wall that runs along the side of the road, and hit a telegraph pole.
He got me to help him push the car away so it wasn't blocking the road, and then started trying to get into the drivers side, which he couldn't because the locking had kicked in. He started trying to break the glass with his elbow but couldn't. I got him a hammer. I'm not sure why he was trying to get in (I thought maybe he was going to move the car further off the road?) and I'm not sure whether I should have got him a hammer, but I did and he broke the glass and started getting some stuff out.
Two ladies in a car stopped to help, and called the police. He was bleeding from his hand at that point (from breaking the window I think), I tried to get him to come and sit down, get cleaned up etc. as he was probably in shock, and guided him towards the house. and I said something about the police. For whatever reason, that scared him and he started to back away and head up the road. I probably should have gone after him, I can't remember why i didn't. I think I went in to get a hazard warning triangle to put round the bend. By the time I came back out he was out of sight. I ran up the road to find him but no luck. Neighbours drove up the road a couple of minutes later but no sign of him. Apparently they were out there before I was and there was also a girl who had run off almost straight away. Police showed up, took details & descriptions, road closed, car taken away. I don't know what happened after that, whether they found the people, or why they ran away.
Unfortunately in hitting the telegraph pole this bloke had knocked it to one side, bringing down all the lines connected to it, including the one that goes to our house which was brutally ripped from the wall. Neighbours told us last time the phone line was down BT took two months to replace it - not good news for somebody who runs an internet-based business. We got a mobile data connection in place, but fortunately it only took 2 days to replace the pole and all the lines. It's not often I have anything good to say about a telecommunications provider but BT have been really good this time.
Work
At least the internet outage has forced me to move my network monitoring onto a 3rd party vps rather than running it at home, something I should have done before then... getting a VPS from one of our more successful and well-regarded competitors has been an interesting experience.
Got 2 new orders last week. One (a big one) has paid up, the other we are still waiting on. We have started a habit of going out to lunch or dinner to celebrate each new customer - they're few and far between at this stage and it's nice to have something to look forward to.
There really aren't enough hours in the day right now.
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