UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

I remember when she and her husband would keep their kid up half the night so they could trot out onstage.

Poor kid.

For me the pinnacle of Cher's career came when she released "If I could turn back time"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsKbw...

And to think that one of the guitarists in that clip is her own son. Now that must have been confusing.

Oh, that's a fine tune, that is.

Didn't watch it. Don't need to. I'm singing it as I type.

Something silly today - the war between mankind and peas.

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...

http://www.teapartytribune.com/wp-con...

http://data.whicdn.com/images/8101271...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-132WO82p0DA...

How hard should it be to order a Starbucks coffee?

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...

Complicated.

Complicated.

It's all screwed up again, Will. :(

Patti - anything for you...

No thanks

It shouldn’t have been difficult. All we wanted were two cups of black coffee, two sandwiches and two muffins. That’s all.

But nothing had prepared us for the horror that was about to happen.

It was late on Sunday evening. I am tempted to say that it was a dark and stormy night because it was. The rain was lashing down on the M25 and M11 motorways like one of the apocalyptic end of the world storms.

We spent two and a half hours with the windscreen wipers chasing a flood across the glass. My eyes were getting scratchy from staring at the streaky red glare of brake lights filtered through rivulets.

We pulled off the M11 at Birchanger services. An oasis of consumerism in a desert of soaking wet tarmac.

The long queue at the Starbucks should have given us a clue. That, and the haunted vacant look of the people in the queue. With hindsight, they had the look of the ancient mariner about them – greybeard loons forever trapped in a nightmare life as a result of ill-advised albatross culling.

We should have noticed how grindingly slow the queue was moving. The long line of people who had ordered but were still waiting for their beverages. The slightly panicked rabbit-in-the-headlights look of the desperately young ladies who were “serving” these weary travellers.

“What’s your name?”

I have become bored of hating that question. There was a time when it annoyed me intensely. Now I am resigned to it. If I have to put up with this company’s ridiculous quirk in order to get a cup of coffee, then so be it.

There must be some bright spark in the customer services department who has convinced themselves that customers like being interrogated when they order coffee. Some focus group must have said that we like the sound of our own names. If we have an unusual name we love explaining how to spell it. And we absolutely writhe with orgasmic pleasure when someone yells our name out across a crowded coffee shop.

I’ve got news for you – we don’t. We’ve just got fed up trying to tell you.

But then the problems began. We had ordered … two cups of black coffee, a croque monsieur, a cheese and ham toastie and two muffins.

Let’s skip over the fact that we have to ask for an “Americano” when all we need is a coffee. We’ve got the hang of that particular affectation.

Incidentally, the word “Americano” comes from American soldiers who came across to Europe in the two world wars. They couldn’t understand the foreign coffees of espressos and capucinos, in the French and Italian coffee bars. So they started asking for American coffee, and the name stuck.

Calling it “Americano” instead of “American” is just a bit of salesmanship. There is nothing Italian at any point in the transaction of an American company employing a Polish girl to sell coffee from places like Colombia to customers in England.

The first problem came when just one muffin appeared on the counter. We waited patiently for its twin to arrive. Meanwhile, the girl who had been serving us had switched her attention to the next customer in the line.

We waited. And we waited.

“Can we have our muffin, please?” my wife asked.

“It’s in front of you,” said one of the girls.

“The other muffin.”

“What other muffin?”

“The other muffin we’ve paid for.”

To fill the time, I looked at the bill. And that’s when I noticed that we had been overcharged. We had paid for three Americanos and not the two that we were hopefully going to receive at some unspecified time in the future.

Naturally, the girl who had served us couldn’t give us a refund until she had served the next customer.

“Is this yours?” asked yet another of the girls. She was holding a bread product.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What it is it?”

“Did you order it?” she asked, as if rephrasing a dumb question made it any less of a dumb question.

“We ordered a cheese and ham toastie and a croque monsieur,” I said. “What is that?”

She peered at the sandwich, bringing the mental capacity of a teenage Sherlock Holmes to bear. This was a three pipe puzzle, and no mistake.

“It’s got cheese and ham in it. I think,” she said.

Now, this didn’t help much. Both the cheese and ham toastie and the croque monsieur have cheese and ham in them. I looked around. None of the other haunted souls in the queue for coffee or food wanted to claim it. So we took it, more out of desperation than anything else.

By now we seemed to have half of our order. Two muffins (after a fight), and one sandwich (after an interrogation).

It was around about now that we noticed that everyone was being served their food and drinks in cardboard bags and polywhatnot cups. There were beautiful white cups and plates on display, but none were being used. Ah well. We sighed the sigh of the resigned and the damned.

“Cheese and ham,” was the next call. “Who ordered the cheese and ham?”

Now this was a tricky one. We had ordered two cheese and ham products. We had hopefully already taken possession of one of them. At least we hoped we had. Now we were being offered another. But was this the second half of the order or someone else’s cheese and ham consumable?

“Is that a croque monsieur or a toastie?” I asked.

She peered down into the paper bag. “It’s cheese and ham,” she said.

Fair reader, forgive me. I was losing my patience at this point. So I took it. If someone else in the queue had ordered something involving curdled milk and pig flesh, I am very sorry. We took it.

Finally our coffee arrived. By now, I think the entire serving staff had marked me down as a troublemaker. So our coffees arrived after several other people had been served. We had ordered the simplest coffee variant in the world – just coffee, no milk, no sugar, no vanilla extract. It was neither skinny nor decaffeinated or fiddled about with in any way. It was just coffee.

And still we had to wait for somebody’s frothy chocolatey thing to be made ahead of us. I think the serving girls were trying to make a point.

Of course, they didn’t announce it by name. After all the fuss of taking my name several hours earlier, all I got was “are you the two black coffees?”.

Which you have to admit is not something you are asked every day of your life.

The serving girl with a degree in surly (the fourth we had encountered) then placed our coffees on the very edge of the counter nearest her. I had to reach over the width of the counter to get at them. I could just imagine her smirking about that one. We’ll show him…

Our order complete, we found a seat and some sanity returned. Of course, the coffee was scaldingly hot in the cardboard cups. The melted cheese stuck to the paper bag. But we had survived the nightmare that passes for customer services.

I noticed something odd about the receipt. Against several of the items there was written the words “no thanks”.

And that puzzled me.

Why had the computerised cash register written “no thanks”? Was the serving girl supposed to ask me a question at that point, to which the answer would have been either “yes please” or “no thanks”? Like “do you want milk in your coffee?”

Or was the receipt noting that I hadn’t said “thanks” at some required moment?

But that was a minor puzzle, a soupcon of comic relief amidst the frustration. We sipped our too-hot coffee, tried to avoid burning our fingers on the polywhatnot cup, pulled the melted cheese that had congealed into the paper bags and picked muffin crumbs from paper.

And when we had finished, the collection of paper bags on our table looked like a vagrant’s bed. And, yes, I know all of this is a first world problem and that people are dying from terrorism and ebola and all sorts of other nasty things. But all the same. It was just coffee, sandwich and cake. We didn’t know it was going to be such torture.

Will we go back again?

No thanks.

Ah, the joy that is motorway services in the UK.

I'll never forget the first time Dave introduced me to a full English at Little Chef.

I betcha I'm still digesting it...

Serves you right for going to Starbucks.
Next time go somewhere who have caffeine in their coffee :-)

http://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffe...

Well, yes, but you don't always get the choice. Last night our choice was Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, Burger King, Harry Ramsdens and Subway. In other words ... how bad would you like your food and/or coffee?

That or drive for 3½ hours solid in the pouring rain.

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Ah, the joy that is motorway services in the UK.

I'll never forget the first time Dave introduced me to a full English at Little Chef..."

I'm one of the privileged few who have been to a Red Hen. I'm like Rhod Gilbert in that respect, if no other: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIp8-v...

Villainous villainy ... what makes a good literary or real world villain?

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...

Insightful post Will

I dunno. My favourite villains have always had a kernel of goodness in them.

Patti (baconater) wrote: "I dunno. My favourite villains have always had a kernel of goodness in them."

I've been thinking about this recently. I'm getting more interested in people (characters) who do bad things for good reasons, or good things for bad reasons.

Yep. Makes you care, eh?

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Yep. Makes you care, eh?"

Partly.

But also, even serial-killing psychopaths do what they do for what seems to them to be compelling reasons.

Just being a 'baddie' for the sake of it, isn't that interesting. One of the reasons why Mr Mercedes - for example - works so well is that the baddie has complex reasons for what he does and what he does makes sense to him.

I see what you mean, David.

I agree.

We have just had builders in, so the house has been in chaos. Which has also led to no blogging for a while.

We've finally managed a semblance of order.

So here is today's ... the curse of cold calling and why this may mean that money is broken.

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...

A smoke alarm bleeping in the night ... and the giving and receiving of feedback about books.

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...

Let's go demon hunting. It's a scary and unpleasant job, but someone has got to do it. Everyone in the village go fetch a pitchfork and meet me at the Slaughtered Lamb inn, at midnight.

First on the list is the procrastination demon ...


http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...

Ruminations on the meaning of tattoos and Waitrose Aberdeen Angus beef.

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...

I don't think you really need the technical reasons behind the waitrose slogan, so I won't trouble you with them unless you specifically ask :-)

Actually I would be interested, and I know that you are the best man to ask! Why does Waitrose tell me about my beef's Daddy having sex with my beef's Mummy?

Today's blog is a follow-up to the Procrastination Demon. How to stop procrastinating in five not-so-easy steps...

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/10...

Will wrote: "Actually I would be interested, and I know that you are the best man to ask! Why does Waitrose tell me about my beef's Daddy having sex with my beef's Mummy?"

It's one of them things.
About 70% of UK beef is produced by animals who are bred for milk anyway.
Some of them are served with a 'beef' bull of which Angus is one option.
If you're going to insist on the animal being 'pure native Aberdeen Angus', according to the RBST there are 150 to 250 of them in the country.
If you're willing to accept AA from imported bloodlines (which left our shores and went out to the rest of the world) then there are doubtless a couple of thousand of them (I've not got figures)

But if you insist on this you're talking about seriously niche categories, nowhere near a market waitrose could operate in. With the first class, one butcher's shop could cope with the annual throughput

So what they do is classify the animal as AA for the purposes of the scheme if the father is a registered AA bull.

Because it's the only way they can get the sort of numbers they need

I'm really fed up with your posts not loading prospering on my iPad.

Properly, dammit.

Which ones do you need? I'll PM them to you.

Since the 20th please.

Thanks so much, Will!

Gonna save them to read with my coffee on the weekend.

Mmmmmmwwwwaaaahhhh!

The riddle of reviews - how can authors get their books reviewed if readers don't read books until they have lots of reviews?

There's a lot of murky stuff going on at the lower rungs of the self-published ladder...

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/11...

Talking of trustworthy reviews, here is part two of the review riddle...

... in which our hero discovers some suspicious goings on in a shadowy corner of the internet.

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/11...

That's very true, but I think I'd stop short of the skip.

This business has more than one way to hurt you. Some folks find that they can't get noticed. Others get noticed for all the wrong reasons.

I suppose the trick is to keep plugging on. If people think my writing is rubbish, that ought to be a prompt for me to try to make it better.

I don't subscribe to the point of view that you either can or can't write. Anyone can write, as long as they are prepared to listen to criticism and keep on learning.

For me, the two extremes to avoid are "I can't write, so there's no point in bothering" and "I'm a brilliant writer, there's no way I can improve".

Nearly all of us are somewhere between those two extremes. The next thing I write will be better than the last thing I did. Repeat.

Reviews are simply a way of telling you where you are on that journey. Apart from the 200+ gushy sock-puppet reviews that I've been reading today! ;-)

Umble pie ... or should that be humble pie?

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/11...

Not just books though, Will.

Restaurants, hotels, all sorts. Even international schools. The Internet is full of dodgy reviews.

One just has to learn to look for the real ones in amongst the rubbish. Takes some practice, I've learned!

That's very true. There used to be professional gatekeepers - editors/ publishers for books, professional food critics for restaurants/ travel writers, school inspectors.

Now it seems that we, the punters are the gatekeepers. We get to see the horror that is the slush pile. And we get to give reviews - both honest and not-so-honest.

I think that means that we punters are having to learn some of the skills of the former gatekeepers. In particular, how to spot a genuine review from a fake one.

The Mem and I are addicted to Tripaviser, but you have to read the reviews with a pinch of salt. Filter out the glowing reviews at one end of the spectrum and the misery-guts whiners at the other end. Somewhere in the middle is the truth. Usually.

Yep. I'm a constant user of trip advisor. It's much better than lonely planet books now. Lonely planet used to be my bible but seems once a place makes it into the planet, it usually goes to the dogs.

Having so many widely travelled friends helps. I seek out their reviews or their friends' reviews. Personal reccies are always best, in all things.

The thing I find fascinating is playing detective with reviewers, not the thing they are reviewing. They often give clues about what sort of a person they are.

Then you can click on their name to see other reviews they have written. Are they naturally harsh or fair reviewers? I spend many a happy hour chasing rabbits like this.

Mind you, I also like to pick up discarded shopping lists and till receipts at supermarkets to see if I can work out what kind of people they are.

All good research!

Or ummm.

Voyeurism? ;)

A man, a woman (both mid twenties) and a young boy (aged 5-6) at the checkout ahead of us yesterday.

The man and woman hardly speak to each other. He spends most of the time on his mobile phone.

The boy helps the woman load all of the shopping onto the till. He calls her by her first name, not "Mummy".

Although they only have one trolley, they divide their shopping into two. He pays for her shopping first. She leaves on her own. The man and the boy then pay for the remaining shopping and leave.

So what's the story?

Oh now, this is fun.

I'm betting on something boring like she's the kid's aunt and gave them a lift to the shop.

Probably her brother and his son.

She went to load the car with her stuff while they paid for their's.

Dave and I do this sort of thing in restaurants and airports.

Today's post is about the writerly trick of "show not tell" ... as exemplified by the film Star Wars.

http://willonce.wordpress.com/2014/11...

She's the girlfriend, who went out to bring the car near the store so that it is easier to put the bags in the boot of the car.

People / couples are not chatting with each other during aisle-hunting!

Possibly. But why did the child call her by her first name and not Mum or Mummy?

And why did they split their shopping into two lumps, but he paid for both of them?

Will, the boy and the guy are father and son! Come on! She's the girlfriend. Why should the boy call her mummy???!

She doesn't live with them, hence the separate shopping bags. It's her car. She left first to bring it over.