siskinbob

A Call To Action – Radio Paradise

Almost every day I tune in to Radio Paradise and stream their music feed continuously for up to 8 hours. They are, in my opinion, by far the best station out there on the interweb. Occasionally, I will stray from the path, search out alternatives. But, I always find myself returning to RP.

Radio Paradise is a listener supported station. That is, they don’t charge a regular subscription fee. Rather they rely on donations from their listeners. Many, like me, probably make sporadic donations. A few pounds here, a few there. I haven’t felt the call to make a regular payment to RP, even though I do subscribe to the likes of Tidal and Spotify.

So what’s the difference ? I guess the primary difference is that RP provides me with a random eclectic selection of music, no adverts and no inane DJ chatter. There are tracks on rotation, but not as regular as the stuff you hear on commercial radio or even the BBC.

Spotify and Tidal are rather like an enormous record collection through which I have to sift and make choices. There are customised/personalised playlists too. But you have to choose and I find I spend as much time sifting as I do actually listening.

There is room in my world for both types of music stream. However, the point of this post is

For 22 years, RP has been a 100% word-of-mouth venture. We believe the funds raised by the station should only go toward the smooth running, improvement, and general operation of the station. It’s a moral obligation to take the generous support you all give each year into making RP the best we can make it. Putting your hard-earned dollars into the hands of ad companies or other various traditional marketing channels is simply not something we’re interested in or willing to do.

Lucky for us, you do an amazing job helping us share the music far and wide. In essence, you are our marketing team. And what a team it is! We receive countless emails and comments about how you already do this on a regular basis. It shows and we are incredibly grateful for this fact. With that said, we want to enlist those who are so inspired to make one large concerted effort to spread the music this new year.

If RP is a part of your daily life, please consider the following…..

First, send an email and/or post on social media encouraging people to tune in. Make it five of your closest friends and family…or 10…or send it out in your company newsletter or with an organization you volunteer for, whatever inspires you. (We’d love to hear about it in our comment section!)

Secondly, if you use our app, go in and rate the app. As much as we don’t care about such things, the powers that be at Google and Apple put a lot of weight on such things. The more ratings and the higher they are the more likely someone is to find RP in the app stores.

RP’s goal for 2023 is to go from 3.3 million unique site visitors to 6.6 million. It’s a big goal but we’re up for the task. We love what we do and want to share it with many more people around the world come 2023.
Alanna at radioparadise.com

If you like music uninterrupted by inane chatter from DJs and their gangs/posses/teams or whatever the term is for a collection of white noise drones. If you like music uninterrupted by advertisements for breakfast cereal, instant coffee and the latest supermarket bargains. If you like music that isn’t tied to music industry or radio station charts.

Since I started typing this blog post, RP has played the following …

Coming Home – k.d. lang
Can’t Get It Out Of My Head – ELO
Rocky World – Daniel Lanois
Wild Eagle – Andrew White
Sing, Theresa Says – Greg Laswell
Satisfaction – Cat Power
Held – Spoon
Robbin’ My Honeycomb – Tony Joe White
Lullaby – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Stones – Sonic Youth
Huron Beltane Fire Dance – Loreen McKennitt
My Love – Florence + the Machine

Go on, give Radio Paradise a try. Your ears, heart and mind will thank you for it.

Scottish Power Not So SmartMeter

A couple of years ago I submitted to the wave of advertising singing the praises of SmartMeters. I contacted our energy company and a smart meter was duly installed. One of the primary reasons for me agreeing to the smart meter installation was to mitigate the sheer mountain of stuff that I had to move whenever Scottish Power wanted a meter reading. Invariably their rep would turn up while we were eating. Our house is one of six , of this style, on this development. However, it is the only one that has its garage attached to the end of the house. The utility meters are situated on that end wall, which means that the meters are inside the garage. A big thank you to the builders for that decision.

So meter installed and I can now read my energy usage via an app on my phone. Around December of 2021 the smart meter ceased recording my gas usage. Scottish Power continued taking my payments but started sending me messages similar to the one below …

We’re unable to communicate with your meter at the moment. To help us provide you with an accurate bill, please read your meter and submit the reading at http://www.scottishpower.co.uk/my-account/meter-readings/authenticate?ca=81401146019 Need help to read your meter? Visit http://www.scottishpower.co.uk/read-your-meter

Earlier this year, due to another request for a meter reading, I caved in and moved my junk to gain access to the meters. Did the electric reading no bother. However the gas meter display was blank. Obviously I was not surprised since they had not been able to take the readings since the previous December. This being August. A phone call was required.

After being on hold for a very long time I eventually got to speak to a rep. She gave me instructions on how to wake up my meter and take the reading. Of course, I took this opportunity to raise the issue of my less than smart meter and its inability to take the gas readings.

I asked why they, Scottish Power, knowing my meter wasn’t passing on my energy usage data, hadn’t sent someone out to fix it ???

Then she dropped the bomb …… I wasn’t alone !!!

Apparently, many of us who jumped on the SmartMeter bandwagon were literally in the same boat. We had the Gen 1 meters and they had a software bug. Those who had delayed getting the SmartMeter typically had the Gen 2 meter and were not experiencing issues.

Don’t worry she said, because a fix is going to be rolled out. Everyone will be back up working by the end of October. Well, you guessed it. October came and then became a fast receding memory. No Fix.

Nothings changed. Well actually that isn’t entirely true. My SmartMeter no longer records the electricity usage. So now, no gas readings, no electricity readings. Unless I move my junk and take a manual reading. Bloody marvellous.

So, Scottish Power continue to inform me that my SmartMeter isn’t working, continue to request manual readings and continue to do nothing about fixing my meter.

Biggest slap in the face is that they continue to advertise the merits of having a smart meter installed.

And worst of all, due to the current energy crisis, I am trapped as their customer.

No energy companies are taking on new customers.

Taking The Edge Off

Merry Christmas to you all. And I truly mean that. I hope you have managed to have a great time, and that you have managed to stay healthy, despite Covids best efforts and those of the other seasonal diseases that tend to crop up at this time of the year.

Over past years Gerry and / or I have managed to contract one of the various bugs doing the rounds during the Christmas period. Being sick really does take the edge off things especially when it means not seeing the grandkids opening their presents.

However, an unexpected benefit of the precautions taken, during the Covid pandemic ,seemed to be a reduction in the number of these seasonal infections. Sadly, now that many of the precautions have been relaxed there are many bugs doing the rounds. And, of course, Gerry has gone down with the dreaded lurgy, yet again. I say yet again, as this must be the third bug she has contracted this year.

Usually we are scanning around for the culprit, hunting down patient zero, searching for the one that passed on their germs. However, this year there are several candidates.

On the Friday before Christmas we were visited by a friend who said her husband was suffering with something. On the Saturday, Christmas Eve and our 45th Wedding Anniversary, we were visited by our daughter Angie and her husband Jon. He was suffering with a sore throat, croaking well.

That brings us to Christmas Day itself. Our granddaughter Keeley was hosting us this year, and of course nobody wanted to call it off, but, Keeley and her eldest, were both suffering with their own lurgy variant. And we didn’t see her youngest as he was in bed all day doing battle with his own lurgy. Although we had a good time and the food was yummy, the day was a little subdued. The edge had definitely been taken off.

Obviously, the odds were not in our favour and Gerry started with a tickly, then sore, throat late on Monday, Boxing Day. And there we have it, multiple folks at which to point the finger of blame.

Our concern is, as always, that anytime Gerry contracts one of these coughy cold/flu things, it invariably travels down onto her chest and evolves into a chest infection. Earlier this year she had two such episodes resulting in three prescriptions of antibiotics.

This morning, wanting to get a jump on things, I started the marathon task of trying to get an appointment to see / speak to a doctor. To stand a chance of getting an appointment, you have to start calling Crookhorn Surgery at 08:00. I started calling on the dot, with the following results ……

75 Calls = Number of attempted calls when the line was engaged.
This is only possible when using a modern phone, hitting redial immediately the system drops the call. I can’t imagine what folks do that are still reliant on landline phones and those that aren’t au fait with modern technology.

7 Calls = Number of calls picked up by the automated system, where I had to listen, excitedly, to a message which informed me that they were busy and to call back later. At which point the call is cut leading to huge disappointment.

At 08:13, after some 82 redials, I managed to break through to join a queue where I was informed, regularly, that my wait time was one minute. After some time I actually spoke to a human. The net result, after just under 10 minutes, was that we had been triaged and informed that we would receive a call from a doctor by 13:00.

This is better than last time where we attempted to get through, and, after 40 minutes were informed that there were no more appointments that day and that we would have to call back the following morning.

The good news from this, is that we had received the call from the GP, who duly prescribed the antibiotics. At 10:21 I received a text from the pharmacy to say that the script was ready for collection. By 11:30 Gerry had taken her initial dose.

Obviously, this is an improvement over our previous experience. But it does not reflect well on the NHS. Covid regularly gets the blame for whatever ails the NHS. All I can say is that prior to 2019 we were able to get appointments fairly easily, that we actually got to see a doctor on almost every occasion. Since 2019, trying to phone for an appointment is a chore, which rarely results in a face to face appointment.

Today my wife was called by a doctor who prescribed antibiotics over the phone. He didn’t see my wife, didn’t take her temperature, didn’t listen to her chest / lungs. This is not the NHS service that we are used to. But it seems that we are going to have to accept this as the new norm.

View From The Conservatory

Tomatoes Ripening – Gardeners Delight

View From The Conservatory

View From The Conservatory

View From The Conservatory

A second flush of flowers after several dry weeks. Thankfully the recent rain hasn’t damaged the flowers too much.

St. Mary’s House

Before all this Covid craziness began, my sisters and I used to get together, two or three times a year. Thursday, a fortnight ago was just such a day. The difference being that this was the first time since mid 2019.

As we live around ninety miles apart our normal routine is to select some historic pile, at roughly the halfway point between our homes.

Most times we will select a location known to us. Not this time. Thursdays choice, St. Mary’s House at Bramber in Sussex, was unknown to any of us. A true mystery house.

St. Mary’s is an historic pilgrim inn (c1450) featuring approximately five acres of beautiful gardens including animal topiary, the ‘Secret’ Garden with original Victorian fruit wall and pineapple pits, a rose garden, King’s Garden, circular English Poetry Garden, Landscape Water Garden and Rural Museum.