Kates Journal

As long as the staff of the NHS continue to do the impossible with the insufficient nothing will change.

Yesterday we finally took some bits and bobs down to the charity shop, and after some gentle poking the night before I also went through my clothing and put some (quite a lot by my standards) in to be charity shop’d. The 3.5 bags of stuff was carried by us down to the store; the idea being that Kathryn could pick out some holiday tees and me some new jeans. I had no luck on the jeans front but did, unfortunately, find quite a lot of books that I wanted; including a recent Ben Elton Nobel; some Michael Moore and most awesomely of all, Sara Paretsky’s Bleeding Kansas which I’ve wanted since I heard she was writing it… And shown great restraint in not buying, several times. Despite our carefully reorganised bookshelves now overflowing yet again we classed this as a win.

The kitchen tap developing a hairline fracture and spraying a fine mist of water out, less of a win. I need to hunt through the receipts and see if I can find which e-bay seller it came from and then see if I can coax them into replacing it… Bah.

So for the past (N) months I’ve been occasionally beating myself up over the plumbing. The failure of the shower to drain properly has been annoying me and I’d wondered if I’d ever get it fixed. It seemed that every few months the problem would return, sometimes more frequently, and I couldn’t really work out why.

I thought that the drop in the bathroom was pretty close to minimum fall, and perhaps I’d got it wrong, because the floor in there’s sure as biscuits not level. I blamed myself for the many and manifold faults I perceived to exist. Although I did vaguely wonder if the bucket-loads of grout that had been washed down from the shower had something to do with it.

I also assumed that it was leaking…because the sink sure as hell is, only slightly, but the drain fitting on the sink seems to persistently leak.

Yesterday I finally took the floor up, and found that no, it’s not leaking, but it is sodden from the leaking valve (which is fixed now). So the floor’s going to stay up for a while until the great big chunks of wood under there have dried out. Then they’ll get some rot-killer & hardener just to be sure. Unfortunately I cut through the pipework taking it out – and found that yes, it’s full of tile grout. Well, what came out when I dragged a high-tech cleaning thingie through the rest of the pipework to the outside world* was a mixture of mould and gunk that looked like it might once have been tile grout.

The problem seems to have multiplied itself as the final run of pipe (outside) appears to have suffered from the very-slow-running-water and had lots of gunk in it too, which it’s never really had before. So that was cleaned out.

The pipe section I cut through was replaced, and lo, the shower now drains. I also took apart the sink’s drain hole, and that proved to be an issue with cheapness. The nasty cheap drain I put in has a propensity to trap hair inbetween the shiny stainless steel top piece and the plastic underneath. This then slowly grows mould which eventually starts to block the sink drain in a way it’s very difficult to see, and impossible to resolve without taking it apart.

I’m tempted to replace it with a much nicer metal object.

And the shower? Not leaking. Not even slightly wet. Going to have to keep checking it for a while now that I’ve had to take it apart and put it back together, but I’m hoping it’ll stay dry and that this will once and for all resolve the problems.

In other news, the DAF is sporting a new, ill fitting door. Well it fits okay, but I suspect the original door might be a better bet if I clean it up, fill it appropriately, respray it, and put the window winder mechanism in from this door. But it means we have a working window winder for our trip. And some Evostick to take with us incase the crappy cheap bostik stuff that was all store I went to initially had fails and the door seal comes off half way around Europe. The car is running a bit better, for having it’s mixture enriched, although the difference isn’t huge – once she’s warm she’s fine, it’s just when cold there’s a startling lack of power. When we get back I hope we can make it to a DAF meet and someone way more experienced with them can perhaps tweak her to a successful running state. Hopefully we’re good to go.

* A sock (x2) on a piece of string. Did wonders.

So yesterday we vanquished many foes…

The weeds were attacked, there’s still more but their army of green-seedy-evil is much weakened.
The trellis was raised in defence, protecting the joyous garden from the pile-of-earth-currently being taken over (with some assistance) by wild strawberries.
The unplanted were granted a home (two decorative grasses are now in the front garden).
The extra-hair-of-longness was shortened and spiked.
And the Jaggery-of-required-for-cooking-dinner was located, purchased and used to make a very fine Thai curry.

We also now sport a complete selection of spare bulbs for travelling in continental Europe where they’re much stricter on these sorts of things than we are in the UK. The camping stuff has arrived or been purchased – I think we’re now fully equipped on that front (I hope so, because for a cheap holiday it’s turning out to be much more pricey).

We also went and collected the DAF manual, because I couldn’t work out how to get the door off, and it agrees with everyone else. Just knock the hinge pins out, it says. I’m wondering if the things I’m seeing are some kind of cappy thing that I need to lift off, so I’ll have a bit of a better look.

Unfortunately the demon that is the non-draining shower has returned. I’m going to lift the floor and take apart the waste-water plumbing and see if it is, as I suspect, full of tile grout that needs to be removed. But today, today we are visiting my mum :)

It’s white! The blue door is white. And looks moderately respectable. Obviously it’ll need a bucketload of polishing, but it is the right colour (at least on the outside). I’ll throw a coat or two of spray on tomorrow on the other side and then we can go for fitting it, which is terribly exciting.

Uh, after I’ve worked out how to switch locks over. Unless I’m beyond lucky and the existing lock happens to match the key that we’ve got.

Still contemplating writing stuff. P’raps I should. I should say how lucky I am to have Kathryn in my life; she’s just awesome and sat and held me for a while when she came home because I was feeling a little in need of some cuddles.