Corraling chaos. I hope.

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So, talk about different days. Yesterday was a disaster, almost completely and entirely.

I went out this morning to fix my car and found that that wasn’t going to happen. The starter has, indeed, given it’s last turn – at least until it’s been stripped and rebuilt. After whining and deliberating, I opted to take Cherry. Now, this was against my promises to my friends, and to myself. I wasn’t intending to ride wearing my worn out and tired bike gear. At least, not on the motorway. My bike’s still being run in and long motorway runs aren’t really ideal (apparently far less ideal than I thought, it only achieved an astonishingly poor 35mpg, given that it can do up to around 60… It may need tuning a little). To say that I was nervous about this trip doesn’t really cover it. I’ve not been any great distance on the bike for months, and the last trip wasn’t an unqualified success (the engine pouring oil everywhere and deciding that 50mph was it’s maximum). I was more swimming in a wet suit in the sea of paranoia, while having paranoia rain down on me in a torrential downpour.

So yeah, I spent the entire journey caressing the clutch lever – and wishing it’d stop raining. But in the end we cruised down there at a steady 80km/h, wandering up periodically to the heady heights of 95km/h, but for the most part it was a steady trundle. Of course, I did notice that my engine was sharing it’s 2 stroke with the world. I may not love the 2-stroke I’ve bought, but that doesn’t mean I want to gently drip it across the motorway; I suspect it’s coming out from the exhaust port, and also, that it’s related to my bike running wildly outside it’s powerband, and me having a tendancy to twist the throttle open further and further. (It didn’t do it on the way back).

Having got to my mums, I arranged a couple of house viewings and we switched to the Skoda and headed on into Slough. We bought my mum a GPS and then headed in to look at the house. It said in the description ‘requires complete renovation’, but we’d rung (well, I’d rung) and they’d said it’s bascially decorative, and no heating. But structurally sound.

Often when you go into a house with no heating it’s cold and damp. This one wasn’t. There was no sign of damp anywhere, and if anyone’s sneakilly covered it up, they’ve done a damn good job, ‘cos the wallpaper looks period. By period, I’m refering specifically to the famous and much admired ‘tasteless 70’s decor’ period. Anyway, yes, I ended up putting an offer on the house, which is a 1930s terrace, double glazed, and basically unmodified since about 1970. It has terrifying features like a heater in the light above the bath, and original 1930s wiring to the lights… …and probably to the sockets…

Still. It could be really nice.

Actually, it didn’t occur to me to check that it had modern, or indeed any sockets. Never mind.

So. Yeah, then we headed to Chertsey so I could hand in my shiny shiny CRB form. That done, I found out when I start my job. Things are… tight.

Infact, I thought at this point I’d dive from my sea of paranoia into the sea of chaos. See, it works, or doesn’t work like this:

  • It takes 3 weeks, absolute minimum in the UK to buy a house, or so I’m told. If the nice happy man takes my nice shiny money, the earliest I could possibly have my nice and lovely house is the 12 October.
  • I have had no confirmation that I’ve got this house beyond the 8th October. I suspect, therefore, that they’ve chosen to ignore my desire to keep the house. This, however, could be a good thing because…
  • I start my job on the 2nd October. Given that I won’t be able to live anywhere near there until… at the earliest, the 12th, I’ve had to take a room on the hospital site. This is 320 quid or so, which is fine, except that I don’t really *have* 320 quid – especially not on top of the cost of a months rent, potentially.

In many ways, the best solution would be for the house lease to finish on the 23rd, and the house purchase to go through. That would be nice. But very expensive.

The cheapest solution (and therefore in some ways the best) is for me to move out of here by the 8th, and dump my stuff in my sisters garage for two weeks, then back out and into the new house. Or even, leave most of it there until after I get back from Canada.

At any rate, tomorrow is a very busy day. Very busy.

In other news, the starter motor arrived for my moglet today, so that’s sat downstairs… Hopefully we can return to two vehicles being on the road. Although I also need to do a very, very quick strip of the other ‘zed, too. So I can get that frame scrapped and ou-da-here.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.