Kates Journal

So, another week of nights approaches, and we’re trying to get a car ready to go on holiday. The minor’s exhaust is fouling the suspension, which should be fairly easily fixed. Rebecca is the most likely candidate; only the noisy gearbox and worn diff and suspension being a problem. Jejy’s right out. Vixy’s heading that way too. In fact, Vixy is looking like she might end up being a parts car for Jejy. In so far as I might pinch the engine, and possibly the seats.

Jejy then gets all new hoses, all new front brakes, new shoes, and a 21k mile engine. Vixy gets a worn out 79k mile engine and shipped off to a new home, keeping her new brake shoes and brake cylinders.

In other news I forked out for a new charger for the batteries. Years ago when I bought some Uniross rechargable NiMHs I went for the nicer charger that they had. It did NiCds and NiMHs and all seemed well, until, obviously, I looked deeper into the ‘my batteries seem to die awfully quickly). It turns out it can’t deal with more than 2,000mAh batteries. It’s timer, not ΔV based, which means it’s never, ever charged the batteries properly. The new charger (VapexTech, had a good review, somewhere) is ΔV based (although it has an over-time shut-off), sports specs for 2900mAh batteries (my highest capacity ones say 3,000mAH but probably aren’t after having never been charged properly), and came with 4 shiny new 2,900mAH batteries. Hopefully the holiday snaps should be snappable.

Also, in the name of longevity it runs on anywhere from 100-250V at anything from 50-60Hz. Woot for portability.

Now, I’m gonna go shower and get working on the DAF. I need to get the rear brake drum off, because there is, what looks like a leak. Impressive, I feel, since when I tried to bleed it no fluid came out. A whole and proper WTF moment.

Anyhow. Shower. Car*.

* We were meant to be going protesting today. Can’t though, ‘cos we need transport. Granted we don’t need transport more than we need to be able to breathe, but it’s all a matter of timing :-/

So, yesterday I was angry, today I’m antsy. I want to do something.

Society in the UK, and elsewhere, is under attack from those who would wish it destroyed. But this isn’t some attack from outside. It’s not extremists and fundamentalists (of any stripe) attacking it. No; this is a sneaky and subtle disintegration of society from the inside by individuals who would have control over me, you, and everyone else.

People who understand that community, trust, friendship and family are things that make them weak and societies strong. People who are scared of losing power because the people have new ways to communicate, new ways to meet and organise, new ways to find each other.

People who don’t just want to maintain the status quo, but who want more control, who want deep and oppressive laws which reach into the very fibre of your every-day existence. Who want you to not trust anyone, not friends, not family, certainly not neighbours, and not your community. Who want you to assume that that which you do not understand must be hostile.

And to do this they must spread fear.

They must spread hate.

I think this has to stop. I think that if society in the UK is to survive it must stop. Now.

But I don’t know how to do that yet. I want ideas, anything that will help us build up communities, develop trust, remind people that that which is different and which we don’t understand does not have to be feared.

We need to transform this fear and repression into something positive, and now is the time to start.

Well, I did some tidying, when I’ve finished my tea I’ll throw a second coat on the wall around the window in the kitchen. Looking at coat 1 I’d say two more and we should be there. It should look smooth enough to paint with real paint :-/

So, via primitivepeople comes Caffenol film developing, a concept which is terribly interesting. We have no dark-room here, though, which makes it more difficult. We don’t even have, as my parents had, a cupboard under the stairs in which you could fairly easily block out nearly all the light (and thereby load and unload film). However, the awesomeness of it, as a concept, entertains me and it’s something I definately want to try.

Uncool is how I’d describe this police campaign. I’m totally with Boingboing on this, it undermines society, it makes people unnecessecarily scared and is a snooper’s charter. Jeeze, if this had been around when I was a kid my parents house would have been raided weekly. My dad’s stock of interesting electrical components and the vast number of chemicals from a youth and adulthood of scientific interest would have caused our neighbours no-end of fear.

What we need instead is a run of this poster (yeah, you know which one) and we need to slather the UK in it. We need to stop these creeps. These people who want you to be scared. They are dragging us all into their police state. When I was young the IRA periodically blew up bits of the UK, there were regular bomb scares, and y’know what, we didn’t go peering into our neighbours bins*, and cow-towing to each and every request to dispose of the privacy we had. The world went along as it always had and we dealt. But now, now the government instead wants us to fear, because then we’ll hand them control over every last bit of our lives…

…How much d’y'think it’d cost to run off enough Keep Calm and Carry On’s to cover the UK’s major cities?

*Unless there was something interesting I wanted, like, say a BBC Micro…

So I’ve sat here all morning, more or less, though to be fair I didn’t get home until after midnight. Interestingly the Late Late wasn’t quite as bad as I’d imagined, although it was more thanks to being a ‘floater’ (charming term ;) ), which means that basically you go where you’re needed. So while it was manically busy, none of it was my responsibility, and I just pottered about doing jobs in majors, minors, and a bit in resus. Popped some stitches in, did a plaster. It was actually quite fun.

Sometimes it can be lousy not being in a specific ‘team’ (Minors/Majors/Resus), but yesterday I was in a cheerfully good mood, and didn’t really mind.

I checked on my nights roster too; I’ve been moved from my night group and was hoping to get back into it; but they’ve redrafted it since and now I’m the most ’skilled’ person in my night group. In-so-far as I stitch ‘most everything, I plaster some stuff, and I ‘triage’. I’ve also noticed people keep asking me questions.

People keep leaving and lots of new people have arrived since I joined, so there are times when you’re the one who’s been there longest, and that’s a freaky-deaky. I don’t feel like I know enough to answer these questions.

Sometimes I do.

But most of the time I still feel like a kid who’s been put in charge of all this stuff.

It’s scary!

Anyhow.

So this morning I’ve been slack. Not getting up ’til 9, not doing anything much since I’ve got up, other than eating breakfast. I’ll have another little dink at the office, I suspect; try and see if I can find the sofa-bed under all the stuff; hang my bike gear up; that kind of thing.

I’m waiting for the bits to arrive for Vixy and Jejy. It’s like waiting for a taxi. I don’t want to get deeply involved in anything because as soon as those bits arrive I want to be out of the door and working on the cars. On the other hand, I doubt that they’ll be here that quickly. I hope they will, but it seems unlikely.

Anyway. Movement is the order of the day I feel. Comfy though the sofa is.

So, my good friend Nikki rang me up after the last post, concerned that I sounded very down and wanting to check I was okay. She’s kind and thoughtful like that.

So I thought I’d just say, I’m okay. It’s perhaps a healthy dose of realism time. I’ve been sticking solidly to the “the house will sell for enough and we’ll go to Canada” belief because of the options we’ve got it’s my favourite. To use the house metaphore, it’s the one I’ve built foundations for, I’d been looking at the plans and preparing to get contractors. It worked thusly:

Buy house
Fix house
Sell house, use funds thus obtained to enable us to
1) Go to Canada
2) Me to pay off *all* my debts
3) Have some savings to live off in Canada if it all goes pearshaped
And I’d added:
4) Hopefully have enough that some of those savings can be scooped off for our notional world trip in a few years time.

There wasn’t really a plan B. I knew that the housing market was going to plummet in just the way that bricks do, I just hoped it did it after I’d (now) we’d sold. Unfortunately, my hopes lacked the strong foundations of reality.

The new ‘plan’, for want of a better word, is to finish the house (because whether we’re living in it, or selling it, I’d rather like it not to niggle like a splinter. The unfinished floor in the lounge, the dirty old door* in our shiny new kitchen), get it valued and make the rest of the plan based on the outcome of that.

- Sell and get to Canada ASAP
- Sell and move somewhere else in the UK (I don’t need to clear my debts to do that**)
- Enjoy the lovely environs of Slough.

I’m rooting for A, hoping that at worst B comes off and trying to think about ways to make C more bearable. Ironically, the house is coming together to be a really lovely place. The garden should be beautiful this year, and even more so next; there should be fruit and fresh veg, herbs and gorgeous flowers…

If it weren’t for the builder’s yard right behind it would be glorious*** .

Anyway, so I’m okay. I’m just…. disappointed.

In other news, I just realised that I’ve owned Rebecca 17 years. That was quite a shock. And in another quirky thing I’ve never noticed before; she was first registered on my mum’s birthday. How bizzare is that? It’s funny how coincidence pops up on you.

Now, What shall I do with this last hour before I go to work? I’ve swept the bedroom (and put clothes away), and looked depressingly at my Student Loan deferment thing (I think I may finally have to actually start paying back the loans****). Hrm, maybe I’ll watch some Holmes on Holmes.

Tomorrow is another day, and I’m hoping a day when bits of DAF might turn up.

* Needs the 1960s hardboard overcoat taking off, then it needs stripping and painting.
** I don’t, I suppose, technically need to clear my debts to move to Canada, but it really makes everything a lot more complicated if I don’t. And it makes living much harder to do. It’s bad enough here where I can go and chat and shuffle my lack of money around. There… well…
*** It *was*, when I moved in, a wild untended lot. It was pretty.
**** Confusingly my loans are owned by two separate companies. I’m not sure if I’ll get two separate student-loan-deferment letters, and need to make payments to two separate companies. That would be distressing. But only one of them has been flagged as ‘needing payment’ in this letter. It appears I won’t make my dream of never paying them back by remaining a poorly paid wage-slave.