A journal of my sailing, my dogs, my band. I can promise photos, but not consistency; as far as subject matter goes I'm a bit of a nomad, so can at times drift about the place with seeming abandon.
www.instagram.com/tatali0n
Still no sign of Carlos, but in the end a nice chap called Paul from DPD did deliver the Ninja to my door, as originally promised. Okay, as originally promised but eleven days later. Ninja Kitchens UK then sent me an email asking for another review for their website, rather than TrustPilot's, which I submitted with one star, a title "Soup Maker a Win, Customer Service an Abject Fail" and accompanying words to the effect of "great gadget shame about the customer service".
They moderated and rejected the review, concluding "Our staff has read your review and values your contribution even though it did not meet all our website guidelines. Thanks for sharing, and we hope to publish next time!" which, I guess, tells you all you need to know about the reliability of reviews left on the actual manufacturer website.
Needless to say, I don't think I'll be buying direct from them again.
And so, to conclude with a final song, this time no AI involved whatsoever, I give you "The Ballad of Sweet Potato, Carrot and Ginger Soup" . . . .
Weekend is almost here; usual plan, a couple of gigs Friday and Saturday then racing the GP14 on Sunday. Amanda's away this weekend, so a young man called Alex (aged 12) will be crewing with me.
Amanda and I took the GP14 out yesterday for her maiden race. Westerly, 15 knots gusting to a shade over 25, though to be fair, it felt more at times. As it almost always does when you're in the teeth of it. I couldn't persuade Amanda to fly the kite, but, secretly, was kind of glad one of us was being sensible about things.
She's a lovely boat, very good fun. Lower to the water than the Albacore, shorter in length but beamy and a little heavier, I think. The Albacore kind of glides through the tacks and gybes, whereas I found the GP14 more prone to stalling briefly. That could have been the conditions. It could be practice. It could be the fact that the balance of the GP is so much more biased towards the relatively huge genoa. With the Albie, when I pump in the main as we come back out of a roll tack, I feel a definite response. With the GP14 yesterday, not so much.
On the other hand, the GP is a slower boat, with a commensurately higher handicap, so you're very much in the thick of the racing with the other boats in a mixed fleet, which is definitely good fun.
With regards to the racing, we definitely did not cover ourselves in glory.
We were slow getting onto the water so very late on the start for the first race. But that wasn't unexpected, we were rigging a new boat for the first time with the help of the previous owner. Better to ask the questions and get things right in the first place. It's so much more complicated fixing things once you're on the water.
The second race initially looked much more promising. A small crowd of eleven boats made the start, and we hit the line close to the pin and moving nicely just as the gun went, which put us ahead of most of the pack as we rounded the windward mark.
Clean air and uncomplicated mark roundings made for a fast race, only spoilt by me on the third lap when we forgot that buoy #4 was a mark of the course and sailed a fast, fun, spray-soaked reach to #6 instead. We didn't spot our mistake until almost making the same unforced error on the fourth lap, at which point it was far to late to correct and so, in effect, retired.
But we were having fun so continued to race, despite the fact we knew our race was already over.
I've been occasionally know to peruse the Guardian's website (okay, occasionally as in most days, me being, according to some, a Guardian reading, tofu eating, bleeding heart liberal woke leftie) and at the beginning of this month a particular article caught my eye:
Intrigued by the idea that there was a kitchen gadget that would make me soup, I decided I definitely needed one in my life, so hunted down the endearingly named "Ninja Foodi blender and soup maker" on Ninja Kitchen's website, and was thrilled to find that not only had they discounted it to £129.99 but that they were also offering a 10% introductory discount on the first purchase of anybody registering with them.
This was the 4th of Feb. Mindful that it would be imprudent to raid my savings account for what amounted to yet another impulse purchase, I put a note in my diary to revisit the idea on my next payday, the 10th.
The 10th rolls around, and I find myself still dreaming of soup for lunch. So, debit card gripped firmly between my teeth, I go surf the web back to the afore mentioned website, and buy myself a magic maker of soup from the Ninja people.
In short order, I receive a confirmation email and a promise of next day delivery via DPD.
Next day, an email from DPD telling me Carlos has my package, and that he'll be with me sometime between 1339 & 1439 that afternoon. I'm working from home anyway, so I note it's on its way, and duly forget about it.
And here's where it all goes wrong. Nikki, unusually, has the day off. She's looking after the twins as my daughter is still away up north (remember I had them the day before? now it's her turn). Around lunchtime, I'm getting hungry, the twins are getting noisy, and Nanny Nikki is looking a little fraught, so I suggest we take the kids out to KFC's for lunch.
Around an hour later, we get home, and I find a note from DPD in the letter box saying sorry but Carlos had missed us, but providing little other information other than a direction to go back to their website.
The tracking information on the DPD site shows the parcel arriving back at their depot at 0216 on the morning of Thursday 12th, where it sits until 1438, when they report that they have my parcel and it's now on its way to me. Yey!
Except at 1439 the site then reports "Your DPD driver Carlos has been delayed" and that's it. Radio silence ensues.
The weekend passes, and nothing. I try to contact DPD, but they demand a package reference and delivery postcode, and then claim the package reference I give them doesn't exist.
Tuesday, and an invitation to review my new purchase on TrustPilot turns up in my inbox. So I post a one-star review observing that they evidently seem incapable of delivering the goods they sell and it's next to impossible to contact anybody for help. Within a very short while, I get an email from an endearingly titled "SharkNinja Consumer Experience Advocate" saying "Firstly, we're sorry to hear about your experience, and we'd like to make this right" and asking for some further details, which I immediately email back.
Three days of silence then follow. But the fact they reached out for me did enable Ninja to post a seeming prompt reply to my negative review to suggest they were dealing with it with all due dispatch. I guess appearance is everything in customer service these days.
By Wednesday I've found a "contact us" form in the Customer Care section of Ninja's website. I message them via this, whilst also emailing back the previously mentioned SharkNinja Consumer Experience Advocate to ask for an update. Both ghost me.
Annoyingly, the DPD warehouse where, presumably, my missing gadget is currently lodged, is behind my own office, little more than a stone's throw away, as you can see from the picture at the top of this post. Although I'm acutely conscious that if I actually start throwing stones, I might get into trouble.
So I take my frustrations onto Facebook, tagging in both Ninja Kitchen UK's page and DPD UK's and getting ignored by both, but I do get lots of sympathy from friends after I post a screenshot of the DPD tracking page, voicing my growing concerns for Carlos, who hasn't been seen since Thursday 12th. Suggestions are made that he might have eloped with my Soup Maker; one friend, Hayley, mentions they've just seen Carlos on TikTok with his new show, "Making soup with Carlos"
Then another friend, Jen, suggests the whole thing sounds like a country song.
So I ask ChatGPT to write me the lyrics to a country song called "Carlos and the Lost Ninja Soup Maker" and threaten Ninja Kitchen UK and DPD UK to find and deliver my soup maker safe and sound and unharmed within the next 24 hours, or I'm going to put a tune and some chords to those AI-fever-dream lyrics and record them a song. I observe that the world really doesn't want me to start singing Country (although singing along to Country songs is, in fact, one of my guilty pleasures in life)
Of course, I'd overlooked the fact that if I can use AI to generate some lyrics, a cousin of mine, Matt, following the story along with some amusement, can easily use it (in this case, Suno AI) to create the full production. Which he duly produced.
This then, is the ballad of Carlos and the Lost Soup Maker, credits to Matt G (and Suno AI) for the composition, production and recording and yours truly (and ChatGPT) for the lyrics.
I found myself both amused, impressed and just a little bit frightened. And I'm seriously thinking about actually covering the song with my band.
Having been ghosted my both their Customer Care website and their "SharkNinja Consumer Experience Advocate" I finally resorted to messaging Ninja Kitchen UK's Facebook page, detailing the history of my frustrations, and sending them a link to the song we'd written for them.
This morning, to my delight (and a little trepidation) I find a message back from them saying how sad they are about this situation (I guess Country music will do that to a body) and that they've marked the original order as lost in transit and that a replacement order was on its way.
So, it looks like Soup for Monday!
Or, as they now say in Country and Western circles, "Sometimes you lose your soup, to find a better day."
In something of an impulse purchase, Amanda and I have downsized from the Albacore to a GP14. It's a boat I know quite well, quite often viewed from astern as we've raced against her for more than a few years at South Cerney.
Aside from having been immaculately maintained and looked after, with an excellent pedigree of results, the main attraction is that the GP14 has a spinnaker. I've only ever used them rarely, and never raced with one; until last Sunday when we took the boat out for a trial, Amanda had never flown a spinnaker before.
So, a new challenge, with new skills to learn. This coming Sunday will be our first race. I'm not expecting much; I'll be happy if we just manage to get the kite up a couple of times without going for a swim.
Meanwhile, if you happen to know anybody that might be interested in a much loved, hard used Albacore?
I've never been especially big on cards, and firmly believe chocolates and flowers shouldn't be reserved as gifts for a particular day of the year. Jaded romantic that I am, I do make a point of wishing my wife a happy Valentine's on the morning of the day concerned, and one of us will aim to cook the other something nice for supper.
This year, with the day concerned falling on a Saturday, instead I had a gig.
The soundtrack to the above video is a song I wrote some years ago. I think we recorded it for the band's second album, so the vintage would be distinctly pre-millennium.
With the advent and accessibility of home-recording in recent years, it was one of the songs I re-recorded for myself, free from the meddling influence of the other musicians in my band. I love playing with the band, but it's nice having full, creative control (for better, or I guess, more often worse) of all the instruments and aspects of a song's production and recording.
At some point last week, this song came up on rotation on the morning alarm that gets me grudgingly out of bed each day, and in my sleep-fogged state of mind, I irrationally thought "I wonder if I can find some clever AI on the Internet to create a video for this song? I think it should involve a couple of mice!"
Then I climbed blearily out of bed, brushed my teeth, showered, and once dressed to meet the day, went looking. This was the result.
The song is called Tame the Moon, penned and recorded by yours truly, the video is by some monster AI entity (freebeat.ai) that, I suspect, will one day devour the world. It is, of course, dedicated to my wife, Nikki.
Oh, and as for Valentine's? I invited Nik to the gig, but she gracefully declined and said she'd rather enjoy a night in. I got home early hours Sunday morning to find her asleep on the sofa "waiting up for me" and a still warm lasagne waiting for me in the oven.
cradled within the promise of a storm life is desperate poetry a manic tapestry caught within the snare of where you're from stolen moments unexpected draw a map
I could have been almost happy free of burden and debt and responsibility alone with my guitar a small boat and the wide wild sea I could have been almost complete without tie obligation or commitment just the open road and an honest song
I could have been almost free
but life is tapestry of broken hearts and second chances a patchwork of opportunity lost and found taken or not you were my first chance and my last you are my first choice and my last as inevitable as the tide you leave me high as the sky
you are the only chance I need
It's that time of year again, when the highlight of the week is that I built bookshelf and tidied my room. Boo seems impressed, Lottie somewhat less so. Actually, building the bookshelf was fun, and finally getting my various bags and cases off the floor rewarding. As was having a place for my few remaining books, which appear to cover cooking, sailing, karate and music. The rest of my library is on my Kindle these days.
I also changed a kitchen tap and fixed a leaking sink later in this same week; it's been a very practical minded February for me so far. But the highlight of the week was taking the day off work Tuesday to look after the twins.
My daughter had to travel north to look after a friend, and Nikki couldn't get the day off, so Grandad volunteered to the amusement of both, and slight if unspoken concern of my daughter. You'd think from her poorly obscured nervousness at leaving the three of us unsupervised I'd never done this before.
To be fair, from the moment I got them up to the moment I put them to bed, it was exhausting, occasionally very messy, but very good fun. They're great company. Both very distinct characters now, but both very mobile, adventurous, curious and robust. Keeping up with them all day was certainly a full time job.
Naturally, I took them to town for lunch. The conclusion to which is we clearly don't pay our serving staff enough.
