What a crap day. First, the “small” edits I needed to do to one of the animations I did a couple of weeks ago turned out to take most of the day – God I hate Flash. The program isn’t just completely un-intuitive, but it also makes the most obvious and simple tasks overly complex.

Not only that, but it’s unfathomable programming language seems to change its syntax with every new release – so even if you search for solutions on the Internet, the chances are they won’t work with the version you’re using….

On top of that, the newsletter I’m now writing has just changed its rules – instead of wanting me to write two newsletters, they want to do just one, with the same content as both the originally suggested ones – but they only want to pay me for one – so I’ll have to re-negotiate the fee – which I hate doing.


To top it all off, I’ve just had a call from a credit agency – about a TV rental from Forbes Direct – who are turning out to be a very untrustworthy company.

I rented a TV from them years ago when I lived in Brockley. When I left, I cancelled the agreement, but they didn’t collect the TV (most rental companies don’t bother to collect old TVs after they’ve stopped being rented – as they’re pretty much useless by then).

I thought no more about it until I realised they were still taking money out of my account a year later. I cancelled the direct debit and heard nothing for several months.

They then contacted me wanting the TV and payment of three months extra rental despite the fact they’d already had taken a year’s rental illegally from my account.

I argued with them and eventually emailed to say they could pick up the TV on a given date on the condition that the illegal demand for extra rental was dropped. They picked it up – and I noted the condition on their delivery note so there could be no confusion.

I agreed to overlook the extra year’s payments on that condition – rather generously I thought.

Anyway, I heard nothing for another year – only now, today, I get a call from a debt collection agency who first try to trick me into giving them confidential details – and then reveal that they’re in fact chasing up this rental money.

This shouldn’t surprise me, Forbes Direct are a big company – and if every time someone moves house and cancels their order they “accidentally” forget to wipe the account, they must make hundreds of thousands per year out of the omission. I guess there’s no reason for them to be particularly studious in filing their closed accounts.