Relaxing

Cut back the hedge a little bit more (It didn't get trimmed enough last year, so it's got a bit too big and needs cutting back much harder this year). If I didn't have roses growing through it, I could just tackle it with a hedge trimmer. I'm doing it with secateurs, which is slow, but I'm in no great hurry and why complain when it's a sunny day and there's an emperor dragonfly over the pond, a robin is singing in the laurel and my hawkmoth caterpiller has moved to a much safer spot on an evening primrose.

I've transplanted a bit of orange hawkweed that Molly gave me into the front garden. It's been growing quite well round the back and it has pretty flowers. Let's see if it will grow in a less sunny spot near the front door. Apparantly orange hawkweed is a noxious weed in America - one of the many bad deeds to go over the Atlantic. It's quite well behaved over here, but then evening primrose is a native of America and is a noxious weed in my garden (seeds like wildfire and roots everywhere).

I only wish my hawkmoth caterpillar was actually eating the plant, but I think he's just resting there. Plants without their natural predators are a pain.

(e-mail backlog down to 50. I'm still gaining ground. The further I get, the harder the remaining ones are to reply to as they're the ones that have been put off because they require more work...)

Ebay is driving me crazy

I'm buying an MP3 player on Ebay. It's the first time I've ever used it and I'm going to come out of it with a negative rating...

Why?

On Ebay UK, all the items I looked at in the initial listings had the bid price and the postage price and any insurance was included in the postage figure.

On Ebay (America, I'm guessing), many items don't have postage quoted in the main listing. If you look at the item, there's a postage cost. What you don't see, because it's hidden behind an extra link is a £22 charge for insurance. In other words, various sellers are trying to make their profit on the surcharge and hiding it as best they can.

I didn't spot this until after I'd won the bid. I shall therefore be leaving the seller negative feedback. He'll doubtless retaliate, which will leave me with a totally negative rating and probably unable to deal there again. It's a matter of principle though. When I complained, they simply threatened me with negative feedback. It's a mutual blackmail system with people giving good feedback in order to get good feedback.

I'm also having problems with the payment. The seller offered Paypal or credit card. Turns out that their idea of 'credit card' is 'use your credit card via Paypal'. I don't like Paypal, not least because it offers less legal protection and I consider some of their working methods to be a total rip-off. However, having bid, I'm obligated to pay. I go to Paypal. BUT, and it's a big but, having asked for credit card payment, I now have no data telling me how to do a Paypal payment. I don't know the seller's e-mail address and I can't find it. The seller is in Australia, the item is being mailed from Hong Kong, I'm in Britain, the web site was probably American...