OF PONDS AND 'SUPPORT TEAMS'

Good morning dear reader and welcome to Chez Comb. I hope I find you well and in good heart. I sort of am and sort of am not. On the one hand I am nursing a heavy cold and believe me I am nursing it, but on the other hand  it is getting me out of barrowing all that clay soil into a skip as I mentioned last week. Luckily for me our kind neighbour, Andrew, offered to help spouse in the barrowing of the soil and there will be plenty of the good stuff left for him to share in for his garden. Win, win all round I think. Especially for me as I can admire the skip activities from the safety of the house in the happy knowledge that I will not land up in the bottom of it, as spouse has fondly threatened. However, there may yet be talk of needing a second skip so I had better watch my p's and q's for a while yet. 

   I am extremely glad that our skip did not arrive until the latter part of this week, or I could well have been put in it. Spouse, aka Pond Man, had in the course of our garden clearances, put aside various sizes of flagstones with which to secure the pond liner and with the hope that they would make a pleasing decorative edging to our new pond. He duly laid a row of them out along the top of the pond and then the doubts began to creep in. He had measured and made his calculations and thought he had enough of this particular size to do the job, but on further reflection decided this may well not be the case.

   H.Q. was informed, (me) and the decision made to use the larger size flagstones instead, as he knew he had plenty of these, almost enough to circumnavigate the earth with. Alright, maybe quite not so many, but as near as.  Spouse set to work and laid one side of the pond, carried on around the corner and laid the next side. it was all going so well ... until I rose from my writing activities and took myself off down the garden. Yes, you're quite right dear reader - I did not like like what I beheld. The new flags were too darned big in proportion to the pond. They would have to go and the previous ones put back in their place. Pond Man was not a happy Pond Man, believe me dear reader and a certain amount of expostulation and hot air was expended over the situation. Wishing to keep my head attached to my neck I judged it best to make myself scarce at this point and scuttled off back to the laptop, leaving spouse to probably retrieve his wax effigy of me and stick a few pins in it - and order the skip!

   So, as I was speaking of watching p's and q's earlier  I have in my turn had my patience tried to the limit this week and have had had to severely rein in my on-line speech as yet again the company that prints and distributes my books has driven me bannanas. Remember the 'password' contretemps with them a short while ago? This week it was their penchant for sending me another author's sales returns, which I'm sure, she would not wish me to receive nor their rightful monies into my bank account and neither did I. But you try telling the company that and believe me dear reader, I wish you joy of that one. 

   Because dear reader, once again I became entangled with the 'Support Team'. I know I have said it before and now I say it again, if ever there was a misnomer it is 'Support Team'. There is no 'support' about it. For some months I have been receiving sales reports for someone else in addition to my own and duly reported the mistakes to the company. Enter stage left the 'Support Team'. I tried dear reader, really I did.

   This is not my book  ... Yes it is  ...  No, it isn't. I think I know my own books  ...  It is yours, it's on your account number  ...  That's not my account number  ...  Oh yes it is  ...  Oh no it isn't, my account number is xxx  ...  Yes well, the book is on that account number, so it's yours  ...  

   You get the drift dear reader. Back and forth we go - I give them all the ISBN numbers and titles of my books and the ISBN number, title and author name of the book that is not mine. I have to say dear reader that I don't know why the lady I was dealing with was working on the 'Support Team' - her talents for obfuscation are unmatched in my experience.  She is wasted in 'Support'.  Government departments are crying out for people like her to write their leaflets. She is a genius and deserves to head up our Civil Service and keep the whole nation confused for years to come.

   At the end of my week of verbally banging my head against a literary brick wall, the lady informed me 'I'm sorry, your previous email stated you were looking for the report of title xxx. What report are you looking for instead?'
Excuse me? I requested the title report?  Grrrr.  Where has she been? I've been banging on about it for weeks that it is not my title and I never requested it in the first place.

   I have replied to the good lady dear reader. I have not been rude and have indeed minded my p's and q's, but have stated fairly forcefully that the title in question is not mine and please don't send me the details again. However, I am bracing myself for the next monthly reports ... are we taking bets on there still being a literary cuckoo in my nest? I sincerely hope not. The very thought of tangling with the 'Support Team' again makes me want to lie down in a darkened room. 

​   Have a good week dear reader and we will meet again next Sunday, unless I'm the occupant of our next skip or buried in the garden with a new tree planted on top of me - he's been eyeing up several mature species at the gaden centre lately ......