Switch off

Goodness, it has been a tiresome sort of day.

I have been, like Paddington, At A Lewse End.

There were all sorts of things that I should have done, like starting to tidy up the loft or clearing the clutter out of the conservatory, but somehow they were all just too difficult and I really didn’t want to start on any of them.

It is Sunday, I think, and the already-shut world was even shutter than usual. Apart from Mark, who went to work just like every other day, because of needing to compensate for my current unemployment, nobody moved. The streets were empty and silent, and the world whispered in post-apocalypse mode.

I woke Oliver up and we went for a walk, but it was cut regrettably short when he slid down a frozen stream and got his trousers soaked through. It was an exciting slide, if somewhat bumpy, but the melting snow everywhere made it fairly comprehensively wet, and we thought it might be sensible to go home after that.

When we got home I sighed and sloped about and could not be bothered to do anything. I swept and tidied and hung up washing, and then sat in front of the computer to consider our newly colossal electricity bill. This month has been the biggest bill we have ever had. This was not especially surprising. We had all four of us at home in the middle of the winter, having showers and running the washing machine and charging all of our telephones and laptop computers. Usually in winter we are at work every night, but now we are in the house. We switch the lights on and watch the television and I write things on the big desk computer, which is where I am now.

I had never considered how very much cheaper it is to be at work at night.

I thought that I would try and find a less costly electricity provider. This is a responsible way of managing your finances.  I know that because it said so in an article in the Daily Telegraph. This assured me that the average family could save as much as six hundred and fourteen pounds every year simply by changing their electricity provider.

Six hundred quid is a lot of money and would come in very useful.

I spent a very boring half an hour entering my email address into comparison websites, all of which repaid me by filling my inbox with junk, and in the end they all assured me that if I switched provider to some random green-looking energy company, I could possibly save myself as much as a hundred and fifty four pounds a year.

That is thirteen pounds every month, which is not a very lot, but desperate times.

I looked at the site carefully.

When I calculated the prices per Kilowatt Hour, whatever that is, and added on the daily charge, which seemed to have been unaccountably left out of the total, in fact the new provider worked out at three pounds and ninety seven pence more expensive than my current provider, every year.

I did not Go For The Switch!, and was torn between congratulating myself on already spending the smallest amount possible, and feeling disgruntled that none of the hundreds of pounds in savings faithfully promised by the Daily Telegraph had materialised.

I sloped about a bit more, and cleaned the sink and the cooker and put dinner in the oven.

Then I wrote to some publishers to see if any of them might publish a play that I wrote ages ago. One of them, rather to my surprise, wrote back and said that he might, maybe, although don’t hold your breath. I double checked it to see if it was a scam, but it wasn’t, just a chap stuck at home in front of his computer who had probably also got fed up with comparing his electricity bill and cooking dinner and wondering if he would get parole before Easter.

I felt cross with myself for a wasted day after that, because it was starting to get dark.

I do not want to drip my life away on comparison websites.

I will do better tomorrow.

Have a picture from yesterday’s walk, which is of Roger Poopy wishing that we would hurry up.

I haven’t taken one today.