So, I did my shift today, and despite it being a completely exhausting day (oh look, short of staff again) I headed into London for a variety of odds and sods.
I managed to pick up a Jeanette Winterson book – (Kathryn – have you read The PowerBook?) – I ended up buying this mostly because the nice bloke at Gay’s the Word kept the store open for me so I could look around (I had been planning to get Jeanette Winterson at the library, but there I was feeling guilty). Despite it being after closing time. This was largely because it took me ages to find a space – and in the end involved me ignoring a permit-zone sign (It’s Good Friday ffs!) (and spending the day paranoid about a parking ticket).
Anyway, so then in the conversations with James on IM it became apparent that CCK – who I was intending to visit, they’re closed because it’s a bank holiday. But I made it in my hunt to get prezzie-components, which is goodness.
Finally me and Brick headed to Ikea – with me thinking – how bad can the north circular be? Apart from a brief hiatus – I think that the carb isn’t set up right – the idle is too low and I suspect it’s running just a teensy bit lean (basically, it needs the choke out to not stall, and to restart, when really hot). Thanks to the bank holiday the traffic wasn’t too bad, and impressively I pulled into Ikea with an entire 10 minutes to spare. For the first time in my life, Ikea was sprinted through – grabbing only the picture frame I’ve been after (well, actually, a rather more expensive one because it turns out they don’t do RAM in the size I wanted).
The journey back was unremarkable, apart from Brick demonstrating that he has a witty humourous sense of timing. The light switch, which has been a bit ‘crunchy’ well, it decided that it would need a lot of wiggling to work at all. So headlamps were – well – a bit iffy tonight. Of course, they did *actually* work while the police were around, but the junction prior to encountering the police they decided to flicker out requiring a wiggle of the switch. I’m waiting on a new switch….
The only bad thing about today was that I didn’t drink nearly enough, or indeed eat anything much. The cold that appeared is on it’s way out – quite quickly really – but the cough which follows seems a little more persistent. I’ve got home and the not-drinking’s left be a bit of a headache. Still, I got the furniture for my mum, prezzies that I wanted and a book that I really had no excuse for buying :-)
