Clean up on.. Black Friday

 

Before we rush headlong into 2008 or whatever next year will be calling itself I thought I'd ask a question. What did you order during the frenzy that was Black Friday..or was it Black Friday week or month..anyway extended black autumn winter sales. Tv? New phone? Electric toothbrush? . I ordered a mop head. To be exact I ordered 5 mop heads because that seems to be the sweet spot with value for money and postage.
Why a mophead you ask? Well partly because flash super dooper swifty speedy mops are pants when dealing with..well anything really, and we happen to have an aging,epilectic and  increasingly incontinent canine  that needs following around with something a lot more effective than a glorified babywipe on a flimsy 4 piece stick. Seriously I have no idea why we bought one of these things in the first place they've taken a simple and effective cleaning tool and turned it into a subscription for hideously expensive and largely ineffective disposable wipe refills. It's a masterclass in advertising. One wipe and you're done?..my arse but you certainly have been.

Anyhoo After being duped into buying a flashysuperspeedieshitemop sometime during the pandemic I congratulated myself on coming to my senses and bought a proper mop with wooden handle from Wilkos so we could kill 99.999% of known nasties easily with a bucket of water and a capful of knock off Dettol before granddaughter visits. When Its head needed changing after several months of sterling service I thought I'd return to town for another before realising that Wilkos had gone tits up leaving our high street a collection of charity shops, betting shops, pound shops, vape shops and dodgy looking fast food joints, none of which can be classed as purveyors of fine galvanized steel socket cotton string mop heads.
Reluctantly to the internet I went and ordered a pack of 5 mop heads from a seller on eBay with a name something like the dustpan and brush shop.

 My wife pointed out that I should have found a vendor that sounded more like mop and bucket store however a  string mop head is a mop head right? I expect reader you would think along the same sort of lines as me in that how it attaches to the handle i.e. large plastic screw thread or just a socket for a wooden handle would be the the only variables to worry about.
The package seemed rather small when the nice lady from Hermes handed it to me and I initially thought maybe it was something else. But no when opening there were 5 of these.....

which is OK if you live in a Wendy house. I did some further research...

Although I had successfully avoided all types of flash mops, auto squeegees, circular mops, strip mops,microfibre,spray,spin and Kentucky style mops (which apparently need to be accompanied by a large cleaning trolley, janitor uniform, full ppe and a risk assessment) and correctly indicated my requirement regarding a metal galvanised socket connector foolishly in my haste I'd overlooked the type/size and mistakenly ordered  'py10' ... As a layman and strictly amateur mop jockey I then assumed that size 20 would be twice as big as the size 10 toy version currently looking dwarfed in the mop bucket and would get me back to floor cleaning utopia. So I placed another order for 5 of those (avoiding the dustpan and brush store this time just in case the wife was on to something) and awaited the arrival of the courier.

 This is what turned up.

 At this point I'm giving up because clearly mop sizing isn't logical or have any internationally recognised standards and ordering another 5 in say size 14 might put me on a government watchlist as a mopfetishist. I'm just about to order some heavy duty shears for mop modification purposes.

 I miss Wilkos.  

Take a seat.

Forgive me reader if this post presents itself as rather euphoric but I believe humanity has finally truly evolved to its next level.
'How so?' I suspect you are thinking, current events, earthquakes and other natural disasters, not to mention nuclear threats in Asia and terror in the Middle East surely point towards Armageddon especially if you have happened to stray over onto the more errr eccentric side of Youtube recently.

Well going about my usual business in Aldi this morning I found on sale a toilet seat..it gets better reader.. down from £15.99 to an almost affordable £8.50 in the up to 50% reduced special buys bins. Woohoo thought I knowing that for several months the upstairs khazi has been adorned with a lime green plastic affair prone to slippage and recently missing its outer lid.

   
Normally I check carefully prospective  purchases before adding them to the shopping trolley, however I spotted the words soft close and after picking up the box and finding it reassuringly heavy nestled it straight in amongst the baby maris pipers, own brand cola and everyday essentials real butter...salted if you were wondering.

Now on its own this might have put me in a good mood, after all there is something mildly satisfying about a quality bathroom fitting. Having one's posterior met  by upmarket warm thermoset plastic on a cold morning has a lot to be said for it especially if like me you can remember the days of the outside bog and its freezing hard black seat. Coupled with a luxurious soft close hydraulically dampened hinge you can see how my general disposition may have been elevated..

This particular throne topper though with its smooth action and top quality material is a thing designed for palaces and landed gentry. In fact I would suspect even the ablution facilities adjoining Valhalla may lack this feature.. On reading the fitting instructions I found It's quick release. The whole thing comes off at the push of a button for...errr... hang on.. oh yes cleaning
.
The owners manual however doesn't mention the other obvious benefits of such a mechanism. Quick release means portable. everyone in the house could have one, even public conveniences could be fitted with the attachment points so you would never again need to perform a dreaded hover dump over municipal porcelain. Worrying about looters stealing it after a hurricane? Never fear simply click and take it to the nearest shelter with you.

It could spawn a whole industry of accessories, monogrammed carry bags, custom release buttons,  branded wet wipes and maintenance kits.  I have seen the future reader and it's in the middle Isle of Dudley Aldi. I kid you not.  

Photo*!#cket

Pictures. I like them. I take lots of them. I also uploaded loads of them to photobucket.com so they'd magically appear on here.. Except now they seem to want $400 a year before they will do any wand waving. Words like Ransomware and extortion spring to mind...

Hmmm...fortunately being reasonably proficient in casting the odd web spell myself I've figured out that sites.google.com will kindly throw pixie dust on my photoblog pictures so they appear where I want them... however re-writing my incantations to remove the three separate references to photobucket.com for every picture that appears in my photo gallery entries still took up most of last weekend.

 Expelliarmus eh reader?

Hello 167(..Stu's blog)

So readers it's been a week and I’ve resisted the urge to post anything about Yahoo profiles as I resisted similar urges to whinge or post any final farewell its been great thanks type blogs on Yahoo 360 during the last week or so of that being open. It's not that I didn’t want to mind you, I just found it impossible when confronted with a blank word document not to end up with something containing the words Yahoo, Profiles, Useless, Bastards, 360, Piss-up and Brewery.

Anyhow, to the few that might see this here Thanks for reading my stuff over the last 3 and a half years over there. I’m pretty sure I won’t be re-launching the Sunnyvale flavoured version of Stu’s Blog so it looks like I’ll be spouting stuff and nonsense at irregular intervals mostly from the confines of these here Google servers. Please adjust your bookmarks/objectionable site filtering software to suit.