A Day off School

by Alan Cole · Published Saturday, March 5th, 2011 · Updated Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

The schools were closed on Thursday for polling, so Morgan was at home with me and I was forced to take a day off work (almost). It doesn’t take much persuasion mind you if I can manage it.

What with the builders here and Morgan to entertain, the day flew by. We also seemed to get lots of deliveries which then turned the day into a bit of a Mail-Order Misery. First my bike that I’ve had on order since Christmas was delayed for yet another month, so I’ve decided to cancel the order and get something else – no doubt spending yet more money in the process.

Next, my new Ice-Hockey helmet arrived, to replace the one that came a couple of weeks ago that was too large. Trouble is, this one is far too small. The company have been really helpful so far so hopefully they’ll exchange it for one in between.

It is a little annoying, and the cost of sending these things back negates any savings made by buying them online. Although in this case we have no choice as there isn’t anywhere here that we could buy one anyway. I guess that’s the price we have to pay for living the dream here in West Wales. I had the same issue with some cycling shoes recently. The first ones were too small, but the new ones (which did fit) arrived yesterday.

After that I had a delivery of energy drink powder and recovery drink powder from Wiggle, but as I opened the box to put them on the shelf the powder leaked out all over the place and I discovered that both tubs had splits in them. Wiggle have of course promised to send out new ones (the are always really good with such things), so in the end I’ll do OK out of it as I’m sure I can salvage some of the powder from the broken tubs anyway.

Next, I had a letter from Fedex saying that I had to pay import duites on some things I bought from America recently. The total order value was £40.65 but somehow the import duties and charges came to £28.31. Seems a bit steep to me, but even with that I guess it still worked out cheaper than buying the items from the UK and they did arrive a couple of days after I ordered them so I can’t complain too much.

After all of that, Morgan and I did manage to get out for some fun. We flew our kites on the beach in some pretty strong winds. Morgan is gradually getting the hang of his new kite, although he isn’t quite there yet and doesn’t really persevere for long enough. I had a quick fly of my 4.9m Blade kite as well, something I haven’t done for years. I didn’t manage to get any photos though as I needed to be holding on to Morgan the whole time he was flying to prevent him from being dragged to Ireland by his kite.

After that we played in the garden and Morgan climbed some trees which did give me a chance to get some photos. All in all a nice day at home with Morgan and I’m sure the mail-order madness will get sorted in the end.