leavings

What a dreadful half-baked revamp has just been imposed upon us, and with no opting out unless you like cookies.
The new Met Office Forecast website seems to have been designed, if that is even the right word, on a smartphone for a smartphone. I can't find any redeeming feature to indicate that it has been tested on other platforms such as Windows 11, or browsers (I have Win11 + Edge and Firefox); that surely should be standard procedure.
On my Win11 laptop, the result is a jumble of data and other features. The layout looks generally unbalanced and undifferentiated, and at the same time shouty. It may look OK on a smartphone - I've checked - but again the robustness of the layout should have been tested across a range of platforms. And, insofar as my laptop is concerned, the resultant acres of white space, occasionally peppered with over-sized headers, are not just visually ugly but also an irritant to someone who craves Input, input, rather than staring into vacant space.
A comprehensive view of the entire day/week's forecast for the chosen location, instantly viewable on the old website, has been sacrificed in favour of a little bit of this and a little bit of that. In my setup (which is no way extraordinary), this means that the initial chart - a mere summary - of weather data requires three 'clicks' forward just to cover the one day. And it is so rudimentary: wind speeds are labelled 'strong' or whatever, but nothing there to indicate actual speed or direction. It's also needlessly, even unhelpfully, repetitious.
So, suppressing a yawn, you must then scroll. Past a map - a colourful if rather ugly distraction, and IMO hardly a priority in the scheme of things - onwards to the [Location] Overview together with a tab for that chosen location's Detailed Forecast (DF).
At last. Here under the DF tab I can see the day's full forecast, with eg wind speed and gusts in mph, plus wind direction, plus a selection of other filters, eg snow/rain, sea, humidity, UV. And, depending I guess on your chosen location (it's probably not very helpful halfway up Pen y Fan), data re tides, waves, etc is prominently offered in location Overview. Now that is excellent.
But blink, as I did, and you'll miss the link under DF to "Tomorrow's" forecast - it's actually to the next few days though you can't instantly select one day or t'other. What's more, if you should happen to change the day under DF, you're stuck with that changed day if you then switch back to Overview and want to see a summary of another day. Clunky.
(One curiosity... As I clicked through the days in DF I found that the colour settings changed here and there in Edge for some reason, though not in Firefox).
It may not be a particularly big deal, but there's no facility from the start to switch between celsius and fahrenheit. Nope, in the layout on my Win11 device you have to scroll down to the [Location] Overview/Detailed Forecast area to find the toggle. Oh dear, shades of 'he marched them up to the top of the hill, and he marched them down again...'
In sum, though previously I rated the Met better than the Beeb for the forecasting of weather in my neck of the woods, a well-ordered display of data counts for a lot. I cannot be faffed to engage with such a disordered layout, so the Met Office has been booted from my bookmarks until it cooks up something better. BBC Weather remains there, alongside Windy (which presents a different view, sometimes even different weather).
Btw how does one change the default location...? I want mine to be xxxx (Beach) not simply xxxx. But it appears uncle M (not auntie B for once) knows best.

I had a last minute flash of inspiration/imagination and ordered a couple of delightful stone gremlins for decorating a new front wall which is nearing completion, asking if they could be dispatched pdq. Which they were. Then I wondered if they ought to be sealed against the rigours of outdoor life. Emailed them (Wells Reclamation, not the gremlins - perish the thought!) and received a very helpful reply from Oli within a couple of hours. Excellent service.

'We've sent you an important message... Please go to your digital banking inbox...' bla bla. Erm, Lloyds, I sent YOU an important message via your bot (as instructed) some while back, closing my online bank account.
But since then I have received two emails from you telling me to look at an 'important message' in my account's Inbox. Duh?
My login details still work (which I am not at all happy about) but once I'm logged-in the cupboard is bare. Nothing to see. That's actually as I would expect in the circumstances, but it surely smacks of unjoined-up thinking on Lloyds' part.
Keep my account records back of house if you must for the mandatory n years, but do a little thought-through front of house admin in the meantime. Please.

No way am I a technophobe, but like some other reviewers here I am not happy that first direct seems to be pushing its customers towards getting the app, at the expense of providing a fully functional web-based service.
While I was logged in online and looking at my main account I saw an offer, tailored to me, re transferring my maturing savings to a new, quite attractive, product. Naturally, I expected to be able to set it in motion there and then, as has been possible in the past. Nope. No sign of it being that simple.
Having clicked on 'Apply now' I was taken instead to the public face of first direct where - incredibly, considering how I got there - the only apparent way to apply was via the app, QR code helpfully(?) supplied. Or, wow, you could chat with a bot. A phone number - ostensibly for those applying for a joint account - was in much smaller print. What an unthought-through palaver.
Being impatient of such faffing, I ditched that idea and went elsewhere to a bank which does still comprehensively accommodate online banking. The rate for a directly comparable product was 0.1% lower, but the ease of setting up the account more than made up for the sacrifice.
I'll be the first to app-laud first direct if it shows its app-reciation in actions rather than just words that, for a variety of reasons, not everyone wants apps.

A short while ago the battery in my trusty but ageing Dell laptop went into a terminal decline. The laptop was running Windows 10, for which time is running out, and I knew it didn't have the wellie for Windows 11. So I geared myself up for a complete change.
I'd done transfers from one OS to another and from one PC to another in the distant past and didn't enjoy the experience at all, and I'd certainly been winging it in choosing the right spec/configuration. What better this time than to offload all the burden onto Scott at JS Computing Services in Sheringham.
I wanted another Dell, and asked Scott to source it for me. No problem. In fact, he went beyond. He not only identified a Dell of similar spec to my old one, but also came up with a couple of different brand equivalents. The choice made, I asked him to transfer all the gubbins from Grandad onto Delboy, also to do all the re-registering of the AV software, Office 365 etc etc. What an easy life for me!
Though there was a hiccup. Shortly after I collected Delboy it threw a wobbly. Straight back to JSCS. Scott immediately diagnosed a dodgy graphics card, and without hesitation he referred the laptop back to Dell. It was soon sorted out.
All in all, a Proper Job. Well worth the money. Thank you, Scott.
I just wish I could be anywhere near as complimentary about Windows 11...

Five stars to Kevin (IIRC?), the milkman who delivers to my part of the north Norfolk coast. Being able to depend on the home delivery particularly of milk and juice at some unearthly hour in the darkness makes all the difference. Thank you!
But I can't in all honesty award five stars to Milk and More in its present guise. I remain especially disappointed that they no longer offer unhomogenised full milk, other, that is, than Channel Islands gold star, where burrowing through the glorious but impenetrable top-of-the-milk to the liquid underneath is nothing if not A Challenge! None of the alternatives rock either my boat or my palate, any more than do the reasons offered by M&M for the disappearance of bogstandard unhomogenised - and hence less 'processed' - full milk. I could go on...
And the range of foods on offer has become overwhelmingly and depressingly mainstream. I, for one, miss the cans of delicious, plump, Perello gordal olives, as well as other such relatively unusual stuff that used to be on offer and was worth exploring. As for the pains au chocolat, what, but what, has happened to the recipe over the last few weeks? Previously they were a tasty breakfast to look forward to at the end of each week, but they are now utterly tasteless. So much so that I've switched to crumpets. Though, oh dear, I hate to point it out to M&M, but I can buy Warburtons crumpets any day of the week at my local Tesco...
Unlike Kevin and his ilk, who find their way to our doorsteps without fail even in the dark, I can't help feeling that M&M has rather lost its way of late... Or perhaps, after many years, we're now just out of step? Such a shame.

Regarding Tesco Italian unsmoked diced pancetta there is an alarming and IMO potentially dangerous lack of information both on the webpage and on the packaging. Nowhere is it said whether the product is suitable for freezing or not. Looking elsewhere online, M&S/Ocado and Aldi for example are quite explicit that their unsmoked diced pancetta is Not suitable for freezing. I can only imagine that this is because of a potential for food poisoning. I think Tesco needs to look into this issue immediately.
I would have contacted (ie emailed - people do still communicate that way) Tesco customer services direct, had that been possible. Not so. The alternatives offered on the 'Help' page are direly inadequate, particularly where complaints are concerned, even a travesty of the term. So here I am instead, making public my concern.

First Direct tell me they feel that their text message banking service 'doesn't give you the right information when you want it'.
For some years now I have been getting these twice weekly mini-statements first thing in the morning. As good as a wake up call. They are handy and timely snapshots of the most recent transactions and balance, instantly viewable. No they're not comprehensive if you're a go-mad shopper - they're snapshots - but you get them without having to faff, remember, or bother with logging on. Confirmation of large debits/credits is also being dumped.
As I invariably logon via my laptop to the website, in deliberate preference to any other way, push notifications won't work for me. I also currently only login about once a month, but that has been with the knowledge that I get these regular text messages. Without them, it all means I'm going to have to make major changes to the way I work, just in order to accommodate IMO fd's frankly delusioned decision. So thanks fd. For nothing. You are about to deprive me of 'the right information when I want it'. And, I might add, how I want it.
As a measure of my disapprobation. I have never before submitted such a negative review to TP of a business that in all other respects I have been more than happy with for years.

It would be respectful, if nothing else, if in replying to its less satisfied customers Milk and More's representatives would at least attempt to deal with the issues raised by responding appropriately.
I did not need to scroll far before coming across instances where the drivel about no longer being able to supply Silver Top (a case of the tail of the supplier wagging the customers' dog?), and how Red Top homogenised is just as good (not in my book), has been trotted out in reply to complaints over totally different matters, such as Nina's on 19 Feb 2024 and Susan Watkins' on 23 Feb. Mine of 22 Feb, which WAS about our being deprived of Silver Top was also misread and a wrong 'button' pressed in reply.
Not M&M's finest hour.

So. No more Silver Top whole milk. And all because the 'current supplier for my area' - like somewhere in Yorkshire supplying East Anglia - can't 'do' Silver Top? Seriously?
Instead we are offered the homogenised variety as the closest alternative, even though I for one can tell the difference not only in quality but in longevity (such as staying fresh after 8 hrs or so on the doorstep overnight in summer) and flavour. Or lack of the same. A USA site which describes non-homo whole milk in detail farmerscreamerydotcom says much the same thing, though more knowledgeably.
The availability of Silver Top has been the principal reason I have stuck with MilkandMore (or its predecessor(s)) for over a decade. Well, it looks like that happy relationship isn't going to continue much longer.
I'm disappointed - no, angered - to say the very least.
In Response to M&M's reply:-
That was almost a Press Button B reply. I did not complain about any 'recent decline in quality'; rather that I am being expected by M&M to believe that cows in my part of the UK can only produce milk that is blasted through a nozzle at high pressure and high temperature. (I can't help wondering what their calves think about that...)

I'm pleasantly surprised. My heart sank initially when I read some other reviews on TP of DustDeal.co.uk / DustDeal.com *after* I'd placed my order via the UK website for a replacement hose for an ageing but otherwise totally serviceable Miele vacuum cleaner. But I had been left with no choice: the 'customer services' (hah) at Miele had failed repeatedly to answer a simple question I had about what attachments came with their hose.
So I am delighted that within a few days of placing the order with DustDeal the hose arrived, together with attachments at both ends. Which makes putting the Miele back together a doddle.
In fact, if the image, spec and price on the Miele website is anything to go by, with DustDeal I have got much the better deal.

I'm pleasantly surprised. My heart sank initially when I read some other reviews on TP of DustDeal.co.uk / DustDeal.com, *after* I'd placed my order for a replacement hose for an ageing but otherwise totally serviceable Miele vacuum cleaner. But I had been left with no choice: the 'customer services' (hah) at Miele had failed repeatedly to answer a simple question I had about what attachments came with their hose.
So I am delighted that within a few days of placing the order with DustDeal the hose arrived, together with attachments at both ends. Which makes putting the Miele back together a doddle.
In fact, if the image, spec and price on the Miele website is anything to go by, with DustDeal I have got much the better deal.

I first came across Southwest Garlic Farm's products at my local greengrocer, somewhere along the North Norfolk coast, which happened to stock the garlic salt, black garlic salt, and ooooh Black garlic peeled and ready to eat. They are all delicious in their different usages, but the peeled and ready to eat black garlic particularly so. I can best liken the flavour to that of sweet and smokey mushrooms - so unlike the somewhat strident flavour of ('white') garlic that one might usually expect. Actually, go to their website: they describe black garlic far more poetically than I ever could. And, heretical or not, I actually prefer the cloves to chocolates, they're so more-ish.
SWGF have an efficient online presence as well as through discerning greengrocers etc. Well worth checking out.

I've happily stayed put with Octopus for some years now. So, as far as I'm concerned, it was a rare occurrence: For once, the website stuttered and went into hanging mode, just as I was trying to commit to one of Octopus's Octoplus Saving Sessions.
I fired off an email, this was at gone 9 in the evening, and within minutes received a reply - a courteous, helpful reply - from Saumya.
Now timely, courteous and helpful replies from Octopus are NOT a rare occurrence! It makes such a change, when other businesses' primary points of contact with customers are through wretchedly, frustratingly unintelligent chatbots.
Thank you Octopus. Please stay human.