Kates Journal

We watched The Boat that Rocked – this, I’m aware got some fairly poor reviews. Reviews, which, having seen it I’d say were unwarranted. It certainly wasn’t narrative genius. It didn’t make me laugh hysterically, nor did it reduce me to a weepy demonstration of just how not-butch I really am.

But it was a passable rom-com, a pleasant way to spend an evening, and it certainly had some excellent music :)

And reminded me of my dad’s tales of running a Pirate Radio station at Uni, and listening to their somewhat awful radiostation on the Reel-to-Reel tapes that lurk about the house. So yes. Not brilliant, not awful.

So, Kathryn’s still not feeling great, and yesterday, in the hope that some fresh air might make her feel better we went for a gentle walk along the Thames; this allowed me to break out my AE-1 from it’s hibernation; the poor thing’s been sat under the bed since my Minolta got it’s moment in the limelight and hasn’t been out since.

Unfortunately, when I did the lens change I noticed that the mirror-stop/bounce-foam has gone manky. A quick look on the interwebz informs me that this is not uncommon, and indeed, I’ve splashed out a fiver to get new mirror-bounce-foam. Apparently the shutter speed might also be drifting, due to it’s age, so that’s something I’ll have to keep an eye on. Hopefully the foam’ll arrive before we head off for our holiday, and hopefully I’ll have time to at least swap the mirror foam, although it also suggests I should swap the light-seal foam on the back of the body too.

I’ve also been quite naughty and spent a few quid on a 28mm lens. I wanted a 17mm or a fish-eye, but am somewhat surprised to find that FD fit lenses seem to have held their value a bit. I was expecting 20 – 30 quid, much like my old Practika fit lenses, but no. They’re still in the priceyness arena – so since I want to save my money, in general, for the new digital SLR then that’s not going to happen. I did have a little wander around town today, Slough obviously being a mecca for photographers.

Yeah-uh-hu. Cash Converters, and Poor-bloody-porn-shop, or whatever they’re called, are the only places I’ve seen second hand lenses in town, and I must admit that I imagined with the recession there’d be a high potential for people flogging off old kit to make money. Yeah. No. No SLRs in one and one DSLR in the other one (not sadly cheap enough for me to want it).

So, I shall keep an eye on ebay for FD fit 17 or 14mm lenses (I’m sure that was the one John loaned me ages ago) – that are cheap. At least, until I decide to make the jump to a DSLR or a nearDSLR. Sadly, the quality of the Jessops scan is about what I remember. 1800×1200 pixels just aint a lot, and I’m not really very convinced by the quality of their scans.

I don’t know where else to go though. I doubt that any of the other local developers are going to be any better :-/

Also in yesterday’s tasks was ‘fixing the stairs’. Two of the steps have been ‘creaky’ since I moved in, and when the carpet was removed it was revealed that they’d obviously been ‘going’ for a long time. There was a split couple of L brackets on one step and some intact L brackets on another. So yesterday I finally lopped a hole in the ceiling and looked up. The quality of the stairs did not astound me. Still, I repaired the split wood with a big L-shaped wooden bracket I made up, consisting of inch-square supporting chunk and lots of glue. This was then glued/screwed to the steps and while they creak, they no longer move significantly; and it doesn’t feel like the widest step is going to give way in a spectacular style. It made me fear, though, the memory of taking the bath and the radiator up that staircase. All that weight on half-inch-thick pine.

I need to plaster the ceiling again where I ripped a hole in it, although I’m tempted to fork out 4 quid for the basic B&Q ‘lamp’ which I think would, in fact, entirely cover it. That’s quite lazy though. Plaster’d be better, wouldn’t it. :-/

Anyway, off to get my hair hacked off…

There are some months that contrive to make you feel lousy. Months where everything you touch seems to be a bit wrong, a bit of a struggle. This month seems to be one of them. I made a mistake in the controlled drug book at work – a write-oh, I assumed it was my attrocious handwriting, but it’s not. Thankfully myself and the nurse I checked the drugs in with independently remembered the same, different to what I wrote and we both signed, values (and really, would we be so dumb as to steal the drugs *after* checking them in?). But it was dumbness of a fairly high order…

…the shower, which appeared fixed is leaking again. I’m 99.9% certain it’s leaking from the frame-seal-to-base, and given the spread of the water I’m fairly certain *where* it’s leaking from. The problem is trying to cure the leak. We’re back to using the bath, which is not very efficient or quick, but doesn’t leak. When it’s dried out a bit I’m going to attack the seal one more time. If I can’t get it this time then I shall be opting for a ‘call the plumber in’ affair.

…while it’s not my fault, the failed tap in the kitchen (the one with the crack in the moulding, definately not my fault) remains unfixed. I keep meaning to look at replacement taps with Kathryn, and completely forgetting. Meaning that it’s gently spraying a jet of water into an empty orange juice carton which has been laid on the windowsill to catch and direct the water into the sink since it started leaking. It feels half-arsed and winds me up each time I see it.

…obviously there’s the whole saga of losing my glasses doing the Commando challenge. It’s ended with a 230 quid pair of glasses which I like, a lot, but which are essentially the same as my old glasses. That and I’m still not sure about contact lenses. I like them, but I don’t seem to be getting on that well with the lenses they gave me, so that may need some adjustment. It’s not quite so urgent now I’ve got glasses though.

…and the final nail in my competence coffin this month, so far, is the radio I built for the DAF. At least I ‘bench’* tested it, because it’s not working. I need to strip it back down and see if I made some silly mistake with the wiring, because I’m hoping that’s it. It didn’t get overly hot when powered up, just simply does not work. There’s also, obviously, the possibility that the markings on it aren’t right, or that there’s an earth that needs to be earth that I missed switching cases. But, whatever, it doesn’t work at the moment which is annoying because I’m bored of traveling in silence. I guess it’s back to headphones and the CD-player :(

I’m hoping that the number of issues this month is going to stop now, because I’m fairly bored of things I do going wrong.

* Bedroom floor

So, at the weekend I did, indeed, complete the Commando Challenge, in a not unrespectable 2 hours. The difference between running on the flat in Slough and running up the hills in Exeter is fairly impressive. The first section of the Commando Challenge shall live in my memory as – “I’m going to die, and my team will hate me”. First up there was the ‘warm up’. This was more exercise than I’d normally partake doing a run. My warm up at home is stretches and such; theirs was sit-ups and press-ups and commando crawls, and crab walking… in front of an audience. I think I acquitted myself adequately…but I realise that I look terrible in the photos – not happy with how I look at all. Must get fitter. :(

Anyhow. After a gentle jog down hill, you’re presented with what seems to be an unrelenting uphill slog, it’s a 3k run before the obstacle course, and so far as I can tell was, as I mentioned, almost entirely up. On the final stretch of the final hill, my body just said “NO!” and I dropped from being at the back of our group to walking. A swift ‘power’ walk, but I just couldn’t get the rhythm to keep running. But once up at the top, and into the ‘challenge’ bit, that was fine. Except…

…on the first ‘water feature’* my glasses headed south. Into a 3′ deep pool of muddy water. After about 5 minutes of arsing around under the water trying to find them (it was fucking freezing) I declared them lost – the army guy said he’d keep people looking for them (!) and we carried on. Those of you who know me, know I’m essentially blind without my glasses. A whole 3″ of forward vision is about what I’ve got – and the entire rest of the 4k challenge and 3k road run back was done like that.

It was, however, awesome fun.

It was also incredibly expensive – in so far as I managed to spectacularly loose my glasses, and have no spares. So Monday was a very stressful day, encountering helpful companies with no stock, and the ever unhelpful Slough branch of Specsavers**, who’s slogan appears to be “No We Can’t”.

I had my sunglasses so, thankfully, could drive into town. Specsavers immediately informed me that they don’t do same-day glasses (I didn’t think so) and would not issue new contacts on either my old prescription or my new one without a new appointment, and no, they couldn’t do an appointment today. The best they could do was glasses sometime by the end of the week, possibly, although it could take 11 days. No promises.

Thus commenced the running. I went to ‘cheap and dodgy opticians’ who could do me a contact lens appointment, and had my lenses in stock (for my 4 year old contact prescription, which it turns out has switched perfectly, so far as I can tell, from one eye to the other). But not until 1020. And they weren’t sure they could do lenses until they’d had the appointment. I booked it.

Vision express didn’t have my lenses in stock, either posh ones for my astigmatism, monthly ordinary ones, or daily ordinary ones. But they could do me a pair of glasses, within the hour.

In the end, at enormous expense I ended up getting glasses (next day) and contacts (that day). They are 3 times the cost of the glasses I had before and essentially exactly the same. Granted it’s a metal frame rather than a plastic one and it has ‘Pepe Jeans’ written on it, where my old ones sported a printed number on the inside to identify the SpecSavers code. The manager of Vision Express is an example of how customer service should be. He actually remembered my name when I walked in the next day, no prompts… He just looked, paused, confirmed my name and then organised my glasses being fitted.

I have to go back on monday for a repeat contact lens appointment, and am painfully broke. But, I did enjoy wearing them again – and having worked out that my eyes have flipped sides (the weaker one is on the R now) and incredibly – comparing the new glasses prescription (well, from March) with the 2005 contact prescription, the power of lens required to correct my crappy eyesight for each eye has exactly switched. Yesterday I tried switching the R & L lenses (BC and Diameter are the same) and lo, I could see *way* better.

I’m happy, although I’m not sure how to break to my optometrist that I’ve done such a thing… :)

To top it off, yesterday, while trying my new glasses and doing that ‘ooh, the world feels odd’ thing that new glasses do if you switch midday, I knocked my bloody cafetiere off the counter, along with a mug I liked. I’ve now managed to loose my favourite mug and one of the better sized second places :(

And I had to make coffee in a tea-filter today :(

I know I’m tired, and thus more prone to acts of extreme clumsyness, but gah.

Anyhow, shower now, then lunch. I forgot to make bread again. So I’ll pop it in to start while I’m here and then take it out later (unless Kathryn does it first).

* I don’t want to see their gardens.
** Although I have a much better understanding of why they’re called Specsavers now.

I have been having a dose of the fear, of late. Perhaps it is in part to blame for my lackadasical, prevaricatious approach to sending off my CRNBC forms. While I want to move to Canada, I want out of this dismal, depressing country, and would like to go to a country where they perhaps value nurses, healthcare and public servants a little more than they do here, it’s a big, scary step.

Seriously.

I’ve lived all over England (I did say ‘all over the UK, but that’s blatantly not true, I’ve only lived in England (indeed the statement ‘all over England’ is perhaps overgenerous, I’ve never lived North of the Midlands)), but England’s small enough that within a day you can traverse it end-to-end. I’ve never been further than that from people I know and care about. Never been further than that away from my family.

While I didn’t see them for weeks, months on end when I lived with she who must not be named I knew they were there. And now I’m moving thousands of miles away, where seeing them is a premeditated, planned decision. It’s weird to think about. And scary.

But I have finally spent the time today copying the forms I need to send off, and I have the piece of paper I need to hand in at work for a reference. I’ve contacted my university for a clarification on the issue of the Transcript. I’ve requested the paperwork from the NMC. It’s all in progress now. Well, it’ll be more in progress when I have an envelope to send the stuff to Canada in. I was meant to get up and do that today, but I’ve spent the day being incredibly lazy*, which is incredibly bad of me.

Some days I suck at getting things done.

Anyhow.

*I’m not entirely sure how I spent my day, objectively the time I spent not doing anything must have been huge, because the only three specific things I did were persuade the fax-copier to do a copy of 12 pages (took a surprising amount of time), baked bread and watched Micro Men** and Spiderman 3.
** Faintly depressing despite being very funny. How the UK squandered it’s huge lead in computing.