Becoming A Pensioner

From Facebook Archives

22 August 2022 at 13.11

Just filled in my State Pension application form.

Does anyone else feel sick filling in official forms or is it just my own phobia?

Now to go to Max Spielman to get a passport photo for my buspass application.

The question is; hair up or hair down?

FifiD  Hair up!!! Good luck xx

Drummerman  Haring down is quicker…

Fay  Crikey do you need to apply if you’ve been paying in forever and they know? Should we be wishing you “good luck” as if they might turn you down? X

Bentonbag  Oh goodness yes.   

The DWP can't give you anything without the paperwork (or online).  It's partly so you can defer it to a later date if you want.   The form comes automatically three and a half months before your qualifying birthday.  Also they need to know about current marital status and his/her NI number, birthdate etc.

Fay  It makes sense now! X

Mr E Twin  Except when it doesn't! I spent weeks trying to get mine last year (pension, not bus pass).

Mrs Lasagne  Up xxxxx

Woolerwoman  Half and half!! Make sure you look awful - it's bad form to look attractive.

Cousin Daisy  Hair up. I feel the same about forms.

 

Autistic Communication

 

From Facebook Archives

21 August 2015 at 10.27

I think this should be made into t-shirts or posters or postcards. 

The bit about eye-contact is so right. 

We tried so hard for so long to make Ferretfingers make eye contact, not realising how cruel we were being.

I just realised a few weeks ago that the best way to ask Ferretfingers a question, or tell him something important, is to write it down.  

A notepad and biro has made a world of difference!  

His one-to-one and day centre staff are doing it and it works for them too.  

He's started writing notes to us as well.

He's been able to read since before he was 5. 

Can you imagine the difference if I'd thought of it then?

School "experts" suggested 'visual stories' and using cards and bits of magnetic stuff with icons and images on.

"What in this house?! We have enough clutter"

If someone had simply suggested a bit of paper and a pen .....

Sorry - just went off on one - and breathe ...

https://bentonbag.blogspot.com/2019/04/sample-communication.html

https://bentonbag.blogspot.com/2022/02/history-repeating.html

https://bentonbag.blogspot.com/2021/01/on-holocaust-memorial-day.html

https://bentonbag.blogspot.com/2020/03/shrodingers-appointment.html

https://bentonbag.blogspot.com/2023/09/god-save-us-all.html

Satellite Navigation

Dad would have loved this ...

From Facebook archives

19 August 2023 at 09.02

Just for the record.

This made me laugh out loud on a morning when:-

Fester woke up at 6am feverish and poorly and has spent ever since lying in bed loudly sighing and swearing.

Ferretfingers is out of sorts because the expected trip out with his father is cancelled.

I've just had to clean and dress the exploding pus filled carbuncle on Thunderthighs' neck (if you were wondering what the screams were 

Miss Doozer).

I'd say 'things can only get better' but I've learnt different.

Drummerman  Someone deserves a good pommelling for that.

Bentonbag  I thought it would stirrup something in your tacky mind, but I bit my tongue and hoped you'd rein it in.

Miss Doozer  C'mon, chaps...

Drummerman  I bridled at that (I’d considered something with bit and rein, but saw you’d snaffled them).

Miss Doozer  Nah didn't hear the screaming.  I think I tune it out now.  It's normally either that a collection of things has deconstructed itself, or discomfort of a personal nature.  Neither of which I can help with.

If you ever really need to grab our attention, break a window.  Or WhatsApp me.

Bentonbag  I don't do WhatsApp so the window it is!

 

Virgin On The Ridiculous

From Facebook Archives

15 August 2023 at 16.01

Up here checking emails (ok scrolling through catalogues) and hear noises of distress from downstairs, which I ignore.

 

"Mu-um I've broken the remote."

It's come apart before and I've managed to click it all back together again, but this time it's comprehensively kit-formed. I have no idea where that little spring thing by the batteries go and the outer casing is in two bits (superglue?)

So I phone Virgin for a new tivo remote.

Go through various menus and eventually get to 

"Press the key with the third letter of your memorable word."

WTF! 

I've been with Virgin since before the millennium FFS.   

Yesterday, watching Pointless, I couldn't remember the name of prime minister 

Harold MacMillan.

"We can send a link to your mobile phone."

Yeah, right, that'll do a lot of good on my not smart phone.

Keep pressing # until they give up and put me through to a human.

Name, phone number, security details from my last bill?

Back upstairs to the office, go into emails, find July's bill.

We're back to the memorable word...

"For goodness sake young woman, I've been with Virgin since before the millennium, I've got the bill up, I can tell you what and when I last paid."

"Can you give me your bank sort code so we can pass security?"

Back downstairs to get purse from handbag muttering "up and down the stairs like an effing monkey."

Finally satisfy the woman that I really am the person in charge of this account and I really do have the authority to purchase a new tivo remote.

It's going to cost £9.99 and arrive in the next three days.

Oh, and they're going to send an email asking how the call went.

I bet it's not open ended questions.

The Squireen  Is that from an old TiVo box. I have one you can have.

Bentonbag  It's a V6 whatever that means.

The Squireen  I will pop up later with it

Bentonbag  Thank you. It will save a lot of heartache. Would you like some jam or chutney?

The Squireen  No thank you. I have been given some by Sandy.

Later

Bentonbag  Hurrah it works. Thank you Squireen

Later still

Bentonbag  Just for fun I tried putting it back together and - bugger me! - it works.  Hence all the tapes.

So if/when Virgin's arrives we shall have two spares.

Despite the God-awful-fall-off-everything design I'm impressed by how sturdy the damn thing is.

PS It still works, mostly.

 

A Longer Day

From Facebook Archives

10 August 2020

Some days are longer than others.

I've just had to explain to Fester that there is a microphone as well as a video camera in the webcam set up, and point it out to him.    

I'm not sure how he thought the other people in Haymarket Zoom meetings could hear him without one.  

Maybe I'm being unfair.   

It's not like Entomology is a science.

Gin Tube  Ben, he's on a higher plane than most of us.   

I would have thought you'd noticed by now... ?

Mrs Quilt  I know exactly!

Mrs GG  I've believed for years that very intelligent people (on the whole) have less common sense than us mere normal brained people.  I think their brains are full of 'clever' so there's not much room for 'common sense' x

Kentishlady  Couldn't agree more!  I used to share a house with very intelligent PhD students. I spent so much time explaining the simple things to them.

Paganess  It's a man thing!

Bess Cavalier  I used to manage the admin office for the Chemical Engineering Department at what was then Teesside Polytechnic.  I very soon came to the conclusion that common sense was often in inverse proportion to intellectual ability.