Mrs Tara Plumbing

Those drivers who sit in the middle lane of the motorway, not overtaking, and going too slow, are annoying to most of us, unless you are that person.

What should you do if you are behind them?

• Drive as close as possible whilst flashing your lights? Absolutely not - this is very dangerous.
• Over take on the inside lane? Again - no very dangerous.

If you do not know why these things are dangerous then you really should not be driving.

Mr Tara Plumbing was pursued yesterday by one of these tailgating, lights flashing, undertaking maniacs - but Mr T.P. was not dawdling down the motorway in the ‘fast’ lane. He was travelling along the Thanet Way, in an easterly direction, in the overtaking lane - as he should, because he was overtaking the slower traffic. Maniac was close to Mr T.P.’s bumper, flashing his lights and swerving from left to right to get a look at the road ahead of Mr T.P.

Mr T.P., by the way, was driving a large white van; which means he only has wing mirrors for visibility; and the slower traffic in the left hand lane was pretty solid. Changing lanes to allow Speedy Gonzales to pass was not an option.

The slower traffic were all turning off to Whitstable, so as he passed this junction Mr T.P. (in his very large van) indicated to move into the left hand lane, only to find the Maniac behind him was trying to overtaking him in this lane. (N.B. That it why it is dangerous). Maniac, pulled back. Maniac then overtakes in the normal fashion, that is slowing down when next to Mr T.P. in order to make some tribal gestures.

It all makes more sense to me when Mr T.P. told me the maniac was driving a blue BMW. I lived in inner city London for many years and I can tell you BMW are the car of choose for wannaby gangsters and drug dealers and they are often stolen. A sensible drivers drive sensible cars: a VW Passat, a Volvo, an Escort - these cars are not stolen by boys who like to show off.

My confession - years ago, not long after passing my test, I found myself being one of those annoying slow people in the middle of the motorway. It was at one of those unfortunate junctions where 2 motorways meet. I found myself in the middle of the motorway - a scary place to be and I didn’t want to be there. I would have moved over to the left immediately but a load of boy in a van decided to do the driving up close behind me gesturing and flashing thing.

This was back in the days when cars did not have a passenger side wing mirror. By driving so close, in a large van, they had completely blocked my rear visibility so I could not see if it was safe for me to move lanes. After all, some other thoughtful driver could take that moment to overtake on my inside.

Toilets should be left with the lid down, Mr Tara Plumbing believes, it looks tidier.

Perhaps he is influenced by the Feng Shui notion that all the good energy which is swirling around the house seeking a means of escape will find it by plunging into the pan.  With all our internal door constantly open AND the lid up we are doomed!  Strangely, there is no suggestion that negative, bad energy would feel compelled to drown in the toilet water.  I’m a little cynical, myself.

A few days ago I knocked Mr T.P.’s toothbrush out of the cupboard and straight down the loo.  No I didn’t swill it in the sink and put it back! I owned up and threw it away.  So, that is why the lid should be down!

I had suspected it was an equality campaign.  If those who stand up to wee are to lift the seat and replace it when they have finished, then there is a certain equality if we all have to lift and close the lid. As you can imagine, this very subject is the focus for many a web page, for various reasons most seem to agree with Mr TP, although, don’t quote me on that as I did not conduct a full review! For those interested on what others have to say just search on the title of this page.  This blog site is dedicated to it:http://www.icbe.org/icbe.shtml

 is walking distance from my house. Based on my one visit on a mums’ night out I would highly recommend the restaurant and so does Mark Palmer in the Daily Telegraph.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wine/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/wine/2007/06/16/edtable116.xml

It is French, of course, the menu is for the dairy-loving carnivore. With just 2 hours notice they were able to come up with a delicious choice of vegan options for one guest, which is the sign of a good chef. Now, let me tell you, I don’t do food reviews. My vocabulary has no adjectives which can be applied to comestibles. The food was interesting delicious, portions sizes were generous. The food was excellent, fresh, tasty, interesting and well presented. Bon Appétit is expensive (relative to the area), but you get what you pay for (expect to pay £25-£40pp (depending on how much you like your puddings and alcohol), it is worth it. In an elevated position under the Royal Harbour Yacht Club it has a great view over the harbour.

Whenever a large group go to dinner, that tricky issue of the bill with inevitably arise. I hoped someone would say, “Don’t worry everyone, I’ll get this”! I ‘ve been for dinner with strangers many times. I remember once being most impressed by the local lawyer sitting next to me who suddenly produced a tiny note of everything he had, with the price. He had obviously written this, very discretely, through the evening. As a regular member of that group he told me the end of the evening was always chaotic as everyone paid for what they had eaten.

With another group that I regularly eat with we also pay for our own meal. I have no problem doing a quick mental tally of my own consumption, but I’ve always been impressed by the woman who brings her calculator and works it out to the penny (no rounding it up to the nearest pound) she then meticulously adds on 12.5%. Actually she multiplies by 1.125 as she is using a scientific machine. She’s a girl with a math’s degree on a budget!

The mum’s divided the bill equally, always a recipe for confrontation among strangers! Who didn’t have a pudding? Who only drank tap water? Not me - I ate and drank as much as I could! You don’t keep this wobbly tummy without working on it!  How much should we leave as a tip? At least 12.5% is a minimum guideline if you have had good food and good service.

I heard a very interesting programme on Radio 4 this week. Did you know that it is legal and common in the restaurant business to pay staff less than the minimum wage! It is expected that wages will be made up by tips AND income tax is paid on those tips. If you had a good night out, with good service and sat at a table for several hours, the least you can do is reward the low paid staff with the best tip you can afford! 10% is the absolute minimum, in my opinion, 15-20% is quite reasonable. I’m known for being thrifty, so if I don’t feel I can afford the tip then I would eat somewhere cheaper - Beano Cafe have a good reputation! 

I’m sure buffet, eat as much as you can type places thrive because of groups of strangers. At such places the food might be somewhere between awful to palatable. At least there is not much chance of arguing over the bill and a generous tip might not be required.

By the way, if you check out the review for Bon Appétit (link above) you will note Ramsgate is up and coming! The author mentions that we have a Waitrose and a Cafe Nero. Mr Tara Plumbing recalls the Waitrose opening in the early 1980’s and as an apprentice plumber he worked in there at one of its refits in the 1980’s. Apparently it was built on the site of a former brewery.

More : http://www.restaurant-guide.com/bon-appetit-5.htm

“…You may want to find an alternative company… “ Just occasionally I have been known to  suggest this to a potential customer or even hang-up the phone.

What are people saying to provoke such a response, you may wonder.

Comments about wanting to speak to the ‘organ grinder and not the monkey’,

or to someone ‘who makes the decisions’ really do not bode well.

I make the decision that the call is going nowhere!

Then there are the people who can’t wait a few days for the appointment time that we offer them.  Perhaps they think we should drop everything to rush over and fix their boiler, regardless of any other customers we have booked in.  By the way, we do not advertise or offer a 24/7 emergency call out service, companies that do are a lot more expensive.

Mr T.P. will go out of his way to help someone in need, however, some people have a very selfish and impatient attitude, when there is NO emergency. Strangely, they don’t ever offer any extra money for us to pay a plumber to help them out, ‘after hours’.

I don’t know anyone who will drop everything at a moments notice, to go out to work for a few hours in the evening (including travelling time) for no extra money.

To be honest, I also think most people in this country work long enough hours and our leisure time should be protected.

I like good customer service but I don’t like those few loud arrogant people who are overly demanding of the staff, have unrealistic expectations and are just plain rude. It never hurts to be friendly and polite - that applies to customers as much as staff. If I’m not happy with the service in a shop, restaurant or other business I usually leave, I don’t return and I may tell every one I know about my poor experience.

Only the other day Mr Tare Plumbing left a shop because there were no shop assistants! Some people were complaining that they had been waiting ages. Mr T.P.’s view was that they must all be crazy, as there were plenty of other shops where they could go and spend their pennies. Obviously, this was not so much a problem of bad service as poor management.

Some people, however, probably receive a poor quality of service due to their own bad behaviour, such as the justice dealt out in the funny, fictional Hotel Babylon. If your complaint about the corked wine is justified it will be replaced. If you are just deliberately being annoying then Gino, the Latin Barman, may just dunk his Balls in your wine before returning it to you in a fresh glass!

I may have been on the receiving end of such treatment in a Beans & Chips Cafe once. I ordered black coffee, when the waiter bought out a mug of white coffee, I said:

“I asked for black coffee”.

My companion looked shocked and told me I was a bit harsh.

Apparently, it sounded as if I had shouted:

“You fool! How dare you come before me with such a beverage. When I demand Black coffee, no other substitute will suffice. Run back to your little kitchen and do not dare to show your face in this room again without bringing a delicious Mug of the finest Instant Black Coffee.” It is not what I intended but that is how it came across.Obviously, there would be no genitals dunking in my hot coffee, but I do remember a study finding ‘foreign bodies’ in restaurant food was very common, the most memorable being semen from a number of different men all in one curry. Yuk! I must add I think the study was in London, I’m sure such things do not happen in Kent.Mr Tara Plumbing says I’m always so abrupt, that’s why he’s scared to take me out in public! As for whether I prefer to swallow dairy products or semen? I never take milk in my coffee as I am vegan!

I’m sure many low paid shop assistants have wanted to say something to the effect of, “I really don’t like you, please leave the shop.”

The nice thing about being your own boss is that you do not have to chase every potential client and worry about being fired. So on more than one occasion I’ve had the pleasure of suggesting that someone may like to find a different company to do the work.

I could not disagree more with Julian Brazier, MP for Canterbury and Whitstable, he wrote about Education in the Adscene, this week. This is a relief as I was worried when I found myself in agreement with the sentiments of leader of the Tory party recently. Am I mellowing in old age?

As a local MP, not surprisingly, he is over enthusiastic about the Kent education system, a very strange system of 11+ and selective grammar schools for those who perform best in a test at 10-11 years old. He says he is concerned “that four fifths of the country has no selection and does not have enough good schools.”

Which implies there are more ‘good schools’ in Kent compared to the rest of the country, relative to children numbers, and that this is connected to selective education. On what evidence? There are Comprehensive state schools which appear higher in the league tables than the Kent Grammars - however, I do not think position in league tables of GCSE results is the total measure of a ‘good school’.

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/performancetables/

As a new comer to Kent, my impression gained from several years of hearing parents complain about the selection procedure is that it is a shambles or a disaster for the majority of children. I’m sure there are many good schools, the problem is the process for getting in to them.

I went to a High School in Worcester. There was no 11+ and no grammars. The children came from all social back grounds and all abilities. Mathematics and English were streamed by ability from our first year of entry, and most other subjects were taught in mixed ability groups in the first year. As we got older, almost all subjects were streamed.

Before I reveal to you just how well or badly my old school performs let me list the numerous advantage of my school experience:

in my junior school (1970’s) there was no training, pressure or competition to pass the 11+ (it didn’t exist);

at secondary school we mixed with others of all abilities and back grounds;

all children had the opportunity to move up or down the streams as a result of their intelligence and effort;

children could be brilliant in some subjects and poor in others.

Julian Brazier is worried that a mixed ability Comprehensive school can not challenge the brightest children, he says:

“Even with streaming, a school in a poor area is unlikely to have enough bright mathematicians in each year to fill a whole class.”We do not need to guess the answer to this, as the vast majority of the country does NOT have selection.Whilst I was at school, in my Comprehensive, I remember other pupils passing the Oxbridge entrance exam.

I was not the only child in the school to get an ‘A’ in my ‘O’level Maths (the best result

you could get in those days). Clearly, our maths lessons were as good as they could be, as was the rest of our education.

Friends Reunite reveals that many of my year went on to University or professional/higher education (at a time when only 5% of the population went to Uni.).

What about the vast majority who FAIL the exam in Kent? Some of these children also have grade A potential in some subjects but in Kent, they will not mix with the most able. I could go on and on…. but I think there is overwhelming feeling against selective education, which was so unpopular and, therefore, scrapped in most of the country a long time ago.

Being the kind of woman I am I must say SIZE IS IMPORTANT, probably.

I really do not like the idea of secondary schools with a thousand students or more. I suspect size is important: my school had around 500. The children knew all the teachers, and they knew all of us. All children could be made to feel important and valued.

We can’t all be Einstein! A debate about grammars is irrelevant to most people. The really important issue is how to engage, interest, teach or train the majority of young people who are not going to be doing well in GCSEs.  The children who would have left school at age 14 or 15 in my grandfather’s day.  He did very well for himself through the old apprentice system.What about the offspring of Mr & Mrs T.P.?  Like any parent I want the best for him. His parents have brilliant brains so he may genetically blessed in the IQ department. In other parts of the country I would be happy for him to go to a good Comprehensive. As he is only 5 we have a few years to see what life will bring.

As someone with varied life and a string of academic achievements I feel quite strongly that is more important in childhood to develop skills for living rather than obtain umpteen grade A exam passes.

Life skills that all children could learn: numeracy and literacy, of course, but also to have social skills. To be able to communicate clearly, confidently and politely. Good manners, good posture and charm will get most people a long way in life and are more useful than A levels in most situations!

You may think calculating the price for a quotation is easy, after all we do it all the time. No, if you are seeking a quote from a builder or plumber in Kent, each job is quite unique and the spreadsheet we use has space for the following items:

1.Material

2. Labour

3. Fuel (hour far is the job)

4. car parking (if applicable)

5. a proportion of our overheads (you know, insurance and advertising)

6. smokers in the house? daily penalty for inconvenience. We may decline the work as we have to consider health and safety in the work place and providing a safe work environment for employees.

7. pets in the house? Possible penalty for inconvenience

8. Interesting people with interesting hobbies - price will include a discount - because we are interested in meeting you again and hearing more about your charity work, collection of African wood carvings or whatever (mostly because Mr Tara Plumbing and I are lonely people with no friends!)

9. friendly (sexy) housewife? secures discount of about 10% - the guys will enjoy working there.

10. Over the top sexy housewife who greets the workers in dressing gown or similar - add £100 per day danger money as no man can be left to work alone for his own safety. (Despite appearances, the men are frightened of these ladies!)

11. young children - usually discount - sympathy for sleepless nights, worry, single income household, etc…

12. teenage children - penalty due to obnoxious behaviour and the possibility they may destroy the work we’ve done whilst it is still in our guarantee period.

13. Messy house - may incur penalty depending on work

14. Rudeness on telephone or when we attend the house - huge penalty - we are not keen to see you again so we need a huge incentive to put up with you.

15. Invite us to a swinging couples party in your hot tub! We will come to the party but we won’t do the work in your house!

16. Then finally, add V. A. T., of course, 17.5%

So you see, it is not as simple as it looks.

Note: Item 6 & 7 depend largely on smell and there may be no charge if there is no inconvenience (& no smell).