2011 in review (belated)

So, as with most things at the moment, last year’s review is a bit behind schedule. I had a bit of a stressful morning for reasons which I expect I’ll go into at some point, but not right now, and am endeavouring to unwind by looking at last year – which given the insane stressyness I recall from last year is, perhaps, unlikely to be the most positive thing! However, after this I’m going to put what is, I hope, the final coat of paint on the ceiling upstairs – which should mean that I can start painting the corridor downstairs. That will bring the finishing of the house closer…

…all of which tells you how long it is since I started this. It’s been in draft for a while, and I quickly finished off the year to get it up online. I actually had a lovely morning with this little fellow,

who I’m looking after for my friends.

Anyhow, so 2011.

January started with us being homeless. In the sense of not having a place to live. In the sense of our landlord from whom we’d been renting turning out to be as mad as a box of frogs, and believing that he had the right to wander into/out of the room we were renting at will. He also believed we were spending lots on electricity – apparently his bill went from 40 before we moved into something like 160. This I cannot explain. Our usage in this house, for the whole house, is in the region of £60 / month (for a fully green energy tariff). I suspect given the crappy state of things in that house that he had an earth fault that came to light when we were using the shower, or some other device that was normally off.

Meh.

Anyhow, we sat in the Arnos Manor Hotel (who were lovely to us as we moved into a suite with rather a lot of stuff). And then moved into our new house – with the awesomely kind owners letting us stay rent free until the purchase went through.

It was awesome of them to let us do that, and we started planning our renovations which – back then were going to include an extension (scrapped), external insulation on the house (scrapped), PV panels (scrapped), low CO₂ breezeblock (we did ask for this, I’ve no idea if that’s what they used, I suspect not), possibly a partially two story garage (second storey scrapped) with a green roof (scrapped, but replaced with reclaimed tiles). We had a blissfully optimistic view of the budget, and the expectation that we’d be finished in around 5 months. Ha! :)

Anyhow, our kitchen consisted of a trangia, and fairly shortly afterwards a gas-camping stove.

I was, back in January, trying to green up our transport – with my mum’s G-Wiz remaining a sickly beast despite our best efforts. In the end we flogged it, I have no idea if it ended up back on the road. It went to a electric bicycle dealer who wanted to move into small NEVs. I think the controller in it was probably shot, but being as it was sort of between a prototype and production car, it was a effort to replace it is probably not worth the result.

Between them, builders and cars, and decisions about them seem to have made up the majority of the beginning of the year. So whilst I struggled to settle into a different department and fought with builders quotes and my MSc, that has pretty much occupied my time. However, some things feel like high points – the success of growing stuff in the garden. Last february brought about many small plants growing on windowsills around the house. I must admit I did think that this year we’d have the greenhouse built (it’s not) to grow things in.

As March rolled around, building work had still not commenced… which was painful as we were struggling with no heating and no kitchen. Finally, on the last day of March, the builders…turned up for a few hours. I can’t dis them too much, because frankly they worked hard every other day and were accomodating and helpful in many, many ways. But at that first work day I came away from it going ‘wtf’. As with most builders I’ve met they turned up, had a quick look at the job, fiddled, and buggered off to ‘order stuff’. You kind of think they ought to do that before. I wouldn’t turn up at a cardiac arrest and go “Ah, yes, you see your heart’s stopped. You’ll be wanting some adrenaline and I’ll be needing some defib pads. I’ll just pop off and get them” and then not come back ’til the next day.

But it seems standard practice for builders. :-/

Anyhow, they, as I said, worked really hard after that, and were here early in the morning and, so far as I can tell put in a pretty solid day’s work each time.

The other thing that irked (and continues to irk me) is the theft of our sofa by Manning Logistics Ltd. And it was theft. Say it any way you like, but in my mind Andrew Manning and his wife, Vivienne are thieves. They collected our sofa, knowing that their company was nearing bankruptcy, and then gave us no opportunity to collect it. It has now disappeared, and I do hope they get everything they deserve.

…in June I bought a new motorbike.
…in January I charged the battery.
…in February I’m hoping to get it running.

In August our garage was broken into, and for the first time in my life we installed an alarm where we live. It’s quite, quite sad that we have to have an alarm on our house. But ours was the only one on our side of the street without an alarm. We need, irritatingly, to get another alarm box to put on the back of the house, and we could do with an alarm repeater so that we can have sensors on the doors, but that’s not a job I’ve done yet.

But also in August we started to get actual finished rooms. Which ironically, is where we’re at now. We’ve still got exactly 2 finished rooms. The main bedroom and the lounge are finished*. The kitchen wasn’t finished in August, but it’s not finished now. It’s not far from finished**. The skirting is all in, and all in place, it just needs some filler on the joints, sealing around the edges, sanding and painting. There’s some chunks out of the wall from where they fitted the counters that need painting, and there’s some gaps which I intend to fill with wood-covered-with tile. Oh, and there’s some bits where the picture rail’s been ‘replaced’ which need filling too.

Whilst it was a bit tight, the kitchen was thankfully finished in time for our traditional Thanksgiving Meal. One of the main things to give thanks for is that it’s not our turn this year :)

It was *lovely* to see everyone, but Kathryn being at work until late meant I did most of the cooking, and that meant that by the time people actually arrived I was a teeensy bit stressed. But the actual meal went really well, people seemed to enjoy it, and the food was bloody good, so y’know – that’s the point, really, isn’t it, of Thanksgiving. Plenty to give thanks for, I think, with my awesome friends and family.

Over the last year Chester’s started to show a combination of age, misuse, disuse and, well, age. We’ve had a spectacularly failed suspension strut (despite a company being extremely mean*** at MOT time), and last week (I know, that’s 2012) the radiator decided to sprout a hole. Well, more accurately the slight weep which I’d not been able to place turned into a fountain.

He’s now sporting a new radiator****, but I’m reminded that one of the challenges of running a 25 year old car is that parts can be a bit scarce. You forget when you run a Morris Minor that actually, for alt.autos.classic, or somesuch group of cars, finding parts can be a bit of a pig. It wasn’t really a challenge, not by any means, there are several suppliers of radiators who claim to stock Volvo 340 radiators (unlike the spring cup / shock absorber, that would have been a complete fracking nightmare, if it weren’t for a very lovely person on the Volvo 300 boards). Anyhow.

That kinda takes us through to 2012. Not the most exciting post, but it’s traditional :)

* This is for a nearly but not quite definition of finished. There’s about 7 inches of sealant that needs to be popped around the bottom of the skirting right by the entrance to the room. Other than that, and hanging pictures, the lounge is finished.

** Err, well, there is the small matter of a leaking sink and a sink with no overflow, but we’ll ignore them and go back to the ‘nearly’ finished list.

*** By which I mean picking (actually, physically, and against the MOT rules) holes in the bodywork so they could fail him. It was the longest MOT test I’ve ever had, and honestly, the least useful.

**** Would have been insanely easy to fit if the pattern part was the right size. I ended up hacking chunks out of the rubber mounts to make the radiator, which I suspect is actually intended for a 1.7 instead of 1.4, fit. Still, it’s in there and feels secure.