A touch of glass

St Tanguy

Did you see what I did there?

Our Velux windows were due for collection today. Being organised (Who said 'that makes a change?' I'll get you later), I decided to call the store yesterday to be sure that they would be there this morning.

Automated machine tells me to make my selection. That was easy 'Press one to verify the status of your order'.

Thank you. 'Please hold and you will be transferred to the relevant department'.

Goodie.

'Please enter the 10 digit order number'.

OK. Done that.

'Your order number is 1234567890. Press 1 for correct, press 2 to re-enter'

Pressed 1.

'Your order is not available. Good bye'

What? 'Hold on, I want to talk to someone'

Disconnected.

Tried again. Exactly the same thing, no option to talk to a human being.

So I thought I'd look at the website and see if that was any more helpful. Oh yes it was. I entered the the number of the first order. 'Your order is not yet available'. Tried the other order 'Your order is not yet available'. The website told me that the order was expected to be available today but I believe nothing.

You can therefore imagine my surprise when I went through the whole rigmarole again today only to learn that my order IS available. Lovely. My chauffeur collected me, drove me to the store, we collected the windows and brought them home.

As I felt we were on a winning roll, I suggested that this afternoon we try for the fifth time (no exaggeration) to purchase two pieces of glass, one for a small window in the loft and the other to replace the glass in our 'bullseye' window through which gales howl even on a still day.

My chauffeur from this morning had suggested a little shop which we had never been to before. It is slightly out of town and seemed to be a wallpaper and ceramic tile shop. However we thought it worth a try.

A very nice young man asked if he could help us as soon as we entered the shop. Did he cut glass for windows? Certainly he did. We gave him the measurements and were told to go shopping for an hour.

An hour later we returned, were given to pieces of, not unsubstantial, glass and charged the princely sum of 5 Euros and 5 centimes. Wow! The same glass in the UK would have cost me at least 20 quid!

Now we have to wait for our builder friend to come and fit the Velux, hopefully next week, and meanwhile Jon will be learning how to make window frames for the two 'awkward' windows.