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Can't believe it's 621 years to the day since we lost Pope Boniface IX. Sadly even after this short amount of time, most media outlets don't even mention the anniversary. How soon they forget.
We have a magnetic ring again. It's not the original one, alas, which still has not revealed its mystery. But the one we bought from ebay has turned up and the hob now works without the laborious workaround.
I guess the reason this has happened to us is to act as a lesson to everyone with induction hobs with detachable magnetic controls.
Always take care of your ring.
Especially if it's magnetic.
The nightmare is over, but our dreams will still be haunted
Last week I was feeling pretty happy with my life and on the whole I still am, but I've had to deal with some very first world problems since Friday that have been a source of tension. Firstly, and I can't remember if I mentioned it, my magnetic hob controller went missing which literally cost me a sleepless night. I've also been trying to find a home for our lovely antique dining table and chairs that fit into our old 18th Century house (I believe the table at least is 18th Century too, though can only take the word of the place that sold it to us on that) but don't fit into our new house. It's all been in storage for 7 months and the cost of that is ticking upwards.
It's pretty hard to sell a 12 seater antique dining table. The place we bought it from has not answered our emails, which might well be because they probably massively overcharged us for it and would have to admit that it they bought it back. I've found one dealer who said he might take it, but unsurprisingly he's trying to get it as cheaply as possible. In March he told me that it was worth about 20% of what I paid for it (to him at least, he'd be selling it for more, but we certainly paid twice its value if this guy is right) and that it would be hard to sell in the Spring so he'd have to store it til the run up to Christmas. I thought I'd see if he could give us a better offer now that I've paid to store it and Christmas is coming up, but if anything he gave us a worse offer.
When I offered to sell it for the upper limit of his offer, but we'd pay the £200 to deliver it to him, he came back with saying he'd give us the lower limit of his offer (£500 less) and we'd have to pay for delivery. Which was getting very close to him getting a free table. Or at least us selling it for nothing.
He was playing hard ball and fair enough. He has to store and sell the thing. And he sensed our weakness.
His ball was too hard though (something I know a lot about) and so I passed. I don't think it's any skin off his nose. He's taking a punt and it might take him time to sell it. It felt rude to give us an offer that was essentially £200 less than the lowest offer he'd already offered.
Obviously selling it direct to someone will mean we will get a more reasonable price for this and I don't want to turn my blog into Facebook Marketplace, but if anyone (probably in the Hertfordshire area) is looking for a huge 12 seater dining table (it has removable leaves in it and the picture shows it with one of them taken out) then drop me an email at
herring1967@gmail.com. Obviously it'd be nice to scrape back a bit of the money we spent on this, but we really just want it to go to a good home so if you know anyone who is in the market for a huge and lovely old table get in touch and we'll see what we can do. We are very much a soft touch, but suddenly turn self-defeatingly hard if someone is taking the piss. And we'd rather give it to someone nice (or even charity) rather than someone taking the mickey.
Get in touch if you want to own a table once owned by Taskmaster Champion of Champions Richard Herring and possibly Charles Dickens or George Washington (we may never know for sure if they owned it, but it has to be possible). Or if you just know someone who would appreciate it.
It's lovely for Christmas, dinner parties and playing poker on (needs a little bit of French polishing)
RHLSTP with Taskmaster contestant Ania Magliano is now up wherever you get your podcasts. At time of recording she was really able to talk about the programme, but you can learn lots about this sparky contestant and very funny comedian
by listening here. 
