Mostly lemon based

Category: Photography

My photography stuff

  • Desiring sleep

    Now, we all know I like a good whine. but I’m bored of whining now. My hayfever’s been attrocious this year; bad enough that I’ve not slept. That’s pretty rare for me, to have hayfever bad enough that it wakes me or stops me sleeping. Traditionally night’s been the time when I could forget about my hayfever. But not this year; I’ve not had a solid night’s sleep for about a week. I wake at 4:30am-ish, sneezing, coughing, barely able to breathe. If I’m lucky (like last night) I can eventually get back to sleep – but it takes a long time. And then I’ll wake up at 5:30 or 6:30 to the same problem. I usually give up then, because by the time I get back to sleep it’ll be time for me to get up.

    I am, therefore, clattering unhappily towards complete exhaustion. I note, looking at my account, that the money for my prescription payment certificate’s been debited, so I shall make an appointment to see my GP this week. Hopefully I can get the nasal spray and the referal to Guy’s in London, where I can get some kind of allergy treatment. I can’t go on like this; I’m so tired I’ll end up doing something dumb at work.

    Yesterday I was so bad at half four in the morning that I gave in and got up.

    Anyhow, despite the tired I need to commence doing my ‘Induction Workbook’ for the agency for whom I’m commencing my employ. I need to get that in the post ASAP so I can start working for them – and get some shed-loads of cash delievered to my ailing bank account. It only arrived yesterday, and after spending the first 4 hours of my day proper (after the first three hours of sitting around sniffling) fixing the DAF – and then riding after the truck taking the DAF to the welder so I could have a chat with him – and popping in to Tesco – I was so knackered I had to sleep. I very rarely sleep during the day but I was utterly exhausted.

    But the *good* thing about my little journey was that I found some local abandonment…

    It appears to be an entire abandoned industrial estate – Although I could only see about 1/3rd of the way down. Were I not so broke as to be worried about buying fuel for the bike midweek then I’d have gone back with my camera. But I am, so it’ll have to wait. Knowing me, and my failure to get around to such things I’ll probably not get around to it until it’s gone :-/

    In other news – while looking at someone that Kathryn liked reading posts from on quiet_thrills (moshimoshi_13), I found her link to The Fugitives. I really like their stuff, and perhaps thankfully they don’t have an album – I’m torn, I’d love them to have an album so I could buy it, but I can’t buy it at the moment, and so it’s less things for me to desire). And then today on Boing boing there was Clara Belle, who also doesn’t have any released albums. So I’m still mainly just waiting to get the AM album. Unfortunately and deeply irritatingly Ubuntu’s audio just doesn’t seem to be working properly on here. What’s more bizzare is it works perfectly from within firefox, but VLC and the movie player that come with Ubuntu just produce either clicky-unpleasant noises over the music or don’t make any sound at all.

    All in all, the Ubuntu experience (well kubuntu) isn’t going as well as I might have hoped.

    All it does is reinforce my desire to pay off my debts and buy a mac laptop. Shiny.

    Anyway, I should get on and do some work, so that I can go to work later :-/

  • Huge house / holiday / car update

    Oh lord alive, I’ve not updated for a while, and there is much to say… There follows:

    So, let’s start at the beginning (since that’s generally a good place to start). At the beginning of the week (the one before the one before this one), as we commenced our ‘week of tormenting the house’ we discovered the availability of one, free, DAF44. Now, to those who are unfamiliar with the DAF, it’s a car with a constantly variable transmission driven by big belts. It’s really awfully clever, and now, apparently, Mercedes do something similar.

    At any rate, I’d fancied one for a while and it seemed like the perfect (simple) vehicle to get Kathryn so as she had an automatic to drive to work. It does, however, need some floor.

    It’s also not a runner. Ignoring this, at the beginning of the week we headed down to see it, and decided that for the cost of transporting it, it was worth it. So, at the end of the week Joggernaught (not Juggernaught) arrived outside our house, somewhat reluctantly, and covered in a 3 year accumulation of tree-gunk. Some scrubbing by Kathryn (and a little light helpfulness from me) and she was kind of off white. Not exactly going to win Concourse, but presentable. Which probably relieved the neighbours. J-g needs a service, some fresh petrol, and I spent a lot of time persuading the passenger side door to shut. It’s in need of a little adjustment still, but it does shut, which is altogether goodness.

    Annoyingly, the idea was to get the car and decide later if it was salvagable, but it’s kinda cute and it’s burrowed into mine (and I think Kathryn’s) heart somewhat. But there’s a financial limit on what we can do, so we’ll have to see what we can sort. Kathryn’s devoid of driver’s licence at the moment anyhow, and we’ve not even got the Autodata manual to get it serviced, so it’s just sitting for the time being. Shots of the DAF are here…

    The week, however, was mostly spent gutting and redecorating the office and the bedroom. This did not entirely go to plan. Essentially, the idea was that we’d empty the bedroom and the office, sand and paint the office walls (which were already stripped), strip, fill, sand, paint the bedroom walls, paint both floors, varnish ’em and move back in. Oh, and construct a desk and a wardrobe at the same time.

    Unfortunately, although it mostly went pretty well, we had two disasterous walls in the bedroom (which now await my attention to replaster), and some lazy sod had applied wallpaper over old wallpaper. This doesn’t come off unless you attempt to apply filler over it, at which point it leaps from the wall with reckless abandon. And the wall that used to have a fireplace in is also a complete state – one which requires us to attack it either with cloth or wallpaper, as it’s also a strip-and-replaster job otherwise.

    But we achieved an astonishing amount (with some assistance from my Mum and Parmito, who popped down for the day and opted to spend the day sugar-soaping the walls in the office); the bedroom is so-much-nicer…

    Before:

    Bedroom, before decorating

    After:

    After decoration, or at least part way through

    A bit of a change, I hope you’ll agree.

    To be fair, we’ve not spent the last year sleeping on the camp bed, but it does let you see how hideous the carpet was.

    So yes, the office now looks like an office, too. This is awesome…[House reno photo sets]

    Anyhow, because of the disasters we were a day late heading from there to Brizzy to see Nikki and Kate. But we piled in the car and headed down to see them having spent some time making the house liveable. Having got down there we headed down to Weston giving Pepper and Eddie a chance to run around like maniacs, and Kathryn, Nikki and I a chance to take photos of them running around like maniacs (and a few of each other). Despite the sun-shine the wind was cold, April this year feeling a lot like, say, November.

    Anyhow, ‘cos I’m lazy, the photoset from Weston is here.

    We then spent a few hours the next day (monday) mooching around Bristol. I love Bristol, it’s a great city, and were I staying in the UK it’s one of the places I’d be happy to live (and could actually afford to live). Oxford is beautiful, but way too expensive to stay; Brighton (the last place we visited) is another I’d happily live in… Anyhow, I wanted to show Kathryn what I mostly feel is ‘my city’, so we took a bit of a wander. Mostly around the St. Nicholas market area; we were going to head up into Clifton but unfortunately, no one warned us that Fopp has reopened. Sucked in as we were by the sound of cheap music and cheap books calling us, we ended up spending far too much time and money in there… and thus Clifton and the Camera Obscura and such shall have to wait for another day.

    So the photoset from Bristol is here… (see, really blindingly lazy, but you’re getting an update, what more do you want?!).

    Anyhow, we then headed up to the Lakes, this was for somewhat of a working holiday in that we had 7 hotels to visit to check out as wedding venues. In the end, what we thought might be a hard decision turned out to be astonishingly easy; in that one hotel really stood out as being just the most gorgeous views, the nicest staff, and just really the hands-down winner. After some trecking we did come up with a second, but it’s not really in the area of the lakes I love. It’s a beautiful place, and quite definately a fantastic venue. Had we not have seen the one we’ve fallen for then it’d’ve been first. But yes. So I rang the Registrar today; there’s not many times available, so when I get home from work today we’ll have to sort it, hopefully.

    Because my birthday fell while we were in the Lakes, we did take a day off from venue hunting, and wandered up to Easedale tarn. Kathryn got me a shiny shiny book (and it turns out a Suzanne Vega single, and something that’s not arrived yet…). It was wonderful to be up in the fresh air, on a mountain, in the quiet again. Just looking out over the vista was beautiful. Being as we’d not done lots of walking to build up to it, we just went up to the Tarn and back down – but that alone was a fair walk – and the weather though cold was clear and sunny most of the day. It rained for literally a couple of minutes (really lightly) just after we got back, and while we were preparing to head out for Dinner. Kathryn also took me to dinner at an italian restaurant in Grassmere which was just lovely. The food wasn’t anything to write home about (it was fine, not unpleasant or anything, but definately itallian as cooked by the english), but the company was excellent :)

    The next day was back on the road, touring more venues. Poor old Brick’s exhaust’s temporary repair started to give up; I suspect the road up to the hostel was to blame, but he soldiered on; slightly more throaty and distinctly more rattly than is ideal… and we headed, after touring venues, down to Manchester.

    The lakes photos are here.

    Kathryn’s friend Helen lives in Manchester, and she showed us the city a little (We toured Ontario basin in Salford before heading in to the city); we spent lots of time chatting to her and her housemates, and had a very good chinese takeaway. I had a thoroughly nice time – and it was really really nice to sleep in a proper bed. It was also fantastic to meet one of Kathryn’s friends. I’m not very good at being not-shy, but I tried… No photos from Manchester because, well, most of the things I wanted to photograph were inconveinently located in the kinds of areas where taking a camera out is an invitation for someone to take the camera…

    So, huge thanks to Helen for showing us some of Manchester and putting us up for the night :)

    Then onward again, this time to Brighton. 

    Brighton is one of my other favourite cities; although I’ve not spent much time there, that which I have has been good, and it has a thriving music and culture scene. Unfortunately, it’s also home to West Pier, something which I have watched disintegrate since my youth. I love West Pier, I think it’s the most damning inditement of our Listing laws that there is a Grade I listed building lying in the sea. One which could, and rightly should, have been saved.

    Anyway, ignoring the ranting, the plan was to chill out in the afternoon, get some food, head to the hostel to book in and go clubbing. All of which we did. We headed to the museum too, and encountered work of a very cool musician called Al Start; we also risked life and limb entering a variety of bookshops and other-small-thing shops, but the clubbing bit? Friday night at the Candy Bar was quite empty. Even come 11pm there was not much life there. We did have a game of pool, which was excellent, and then headed back to our Hostel. Finally we spent Saturday Morning touring the shops and going down to see Brighton and West Pier. We’ve already had the rant, so you could just have the photos…

    So, finally we get to the Car. Poor old Brick has racked up 1000 miles this week; he’s burnt virtually no oil, but he’s dumped around 3 – 5 litres of coolant. Flushing the radiator was inadequate, it seems. And while short journeys are conducted fairly reasonably, long ones are only okay as long as you are very, very gentle with the throttle. And no suddenly stopping for fuel or you’ll get that coolant explosion.

    However, we seemed to get away with just topping up the coolant regularly; but what we didn’t get away with was 1000 miles on top of the 12 or so thousand miles on the temporary exhaust repair. It snapped sometime up in the lakes, and unforunately the hostel near Brighton was actually up an unmade track, and that spelt the end of the front section which, it seems, also had a temporary repair at some point.

    Unfortunately, about 40 miles from home the exhaust gave up completely, shearing into 3 separate pieces; and the RAC bloke couldn’t bodge them back together. Thankfully, the very nice RAC bloke towed Brick home (despite me only having roadside assistance) – his argument being that it was freezing cold, and it’d take him as long as it would to wait with us. He was an absolute star, and will mean that the RAC get my recommendation and continued custom. They rock.

    Unfortunately+, I can’t seem to get hold of a new exhaust for Brick. Well, I can get a stainless steel one, but I deem that somewhat excessive. Especially when Rebecca’s looking at being finished fairly soon…  I’ve got to head to work now, so we’ll save the rant about cars and money for later, shall we?

  • And for a change, we went to Oxford :)

    So, having examined the pros and cons, we headed off to Oxford yesterday for a few more Oxfringe events; in the end we only made it to two; mistiming it and arriving after the other exhibition had shut…

    We did: Things on the wall (both venues). In both cases there were paintings I really liked (see, I am a sucky reviewer); beautiful images and images that made you pause and think. Several that I’d’ve happily hung on the wall, were I paid rather more than I am. I did buy a book, though, from @183, which cost me all of a pound. It’s a copy of Stasiland – a book I wanted to read when it came out (but which, oddly enough escaped going on the wants list). It looks, from the beginning of it, very interesting. We also stopped off in a comic / video store, where we didn’t buy anything (possibly to the distress of the owner). It turns out the Scott Pilgrim in the window is but one of a huge shelf-load of Scott Pilgrims. What is going on? I know it’s awesome, but it’s meant to be my bit of Canadian Awesome! Ah well, I s’pose I can share with the world. I did however pick up a free Oxford music magazine, so I’ll have a nose at that for free events….

    We tried to do: Illustrators and Book Artists  – this is in the O3 gallery, which we somewhat belated located inside the Castle development. Not that it really mattered, we’d been wandering around being touristy and enjoying the freezing cold, and thus arrived some time after it shut. Peering through the door, it looked interesting. Better planning is called for next time, on our part, obviously.

    We then meandered around the city taking photos. Well, I took photos until my camera had a strop about the batteries being flat. Given that they were immensely cheap rechargables, which have been hideously abused, and it was fecking freezing out there yesterday I’m not entirely suprised. I’ve taken some shots of Kathryn while she’s asleep on the sofa today (it’s lushously sunny, if also bloody cold) and the batteries are happily displaying ‘full’ so I suspect it really was just the cold that’s upset them. Anyhow, we then made it to various bookshops, and in the end landed up in Borders, to check if there was anything else we fancied doing. Having spied various ‘stage’ type things we um’d and ah’d and were as traditionally decisive as we were, in the end picking “Do something, Martin!” (Martin White) because it was late enough that we could go and get something to eat first.

    It turned out that our choice could have been much less limited by time, because the Mexican Grill at which we got Burritos was the quickest Burrito provider I’ve encountered, and we were fed and on our way with plenty of time to sit in the bar at the theatre/college… which was nice, because it was one of the few warm places we’d been.

    Do Something, Martin! turned out to be excellent, if very very odd. It’s essentially a one-man story with accompanyment on an accordian, and some rather odd little songs in there. Kathryn mentioned a slight Tom Lehrer-esqueness, which I can agree with. 

    Do Something, Martin! also turned out to be where 

    [info]bluedevi

    was that evening (Oxfringe hoodie in evidence), and after some prodding from Kathryn (I have this vague fear of looking like some kind of stalker when I meet people off Livejournal) I said Hi. It’s always nice to put a face to a journal – although we were somewhat hurried – she had more Oxfringe things to do, and we had to go freeze our arses off getting back to the car.

    Of course, Brick having had all of the previous day being played with, declared that he wasn’t going to have any rear lights. Brake lights were fine, indicators just dandy, but no rear lights, no number plate light, and just for real top-level-Vauxhall-Viva humour, no dashboard lights either. Of course, the only thing I actually knew we didn’t have was dash-lights, until we pulled into a petrol station where a recovery truck driver mentioned it.

    Having spent about 10 minutes prodding bits, but foolishly assuming it must be the fuse (made of unobtainium) that I’d blown and bodged (because they are, in fact, made of unobtainum, or in my car 30A fuse wire soldered across the fuse body) I gave up, and we ran the last stretch home with the left indicator on permanently. Not ideal, but it was fracking freezing, and waiting for a recovery truck seemed unappealing).

    Today, of course, I checked and it’s Fuse 4, not Fuse 3 (the one I’d been fiddling with) which does the back lights. Taking it out and putting it back in seems to have cured it, I suspect though I need to find that emery and clean all those fuse connectors :-/

    Today is of course, Kathryn’s birthday. Kathryn’s been dozing in the sun, seems happy with her prezzies and her Pancake breakfast, and so we shall probably have a nice chilled out day before commencing the world of work we’ve planned next week. 

  • Variously titled, but fundamentally the big, late update

    Welcome to the combined Kate’s Life 2007 update package. This package will update your Kate’s Life Information on the following issues:

    – Thanksgiving
    – XKCD is in my head again
    - Stuff of a housey nature
    – Random photographics
    – Other sundry informatorial updates may be included.     Click here to install this update

    So, yes, I’m behind again, aren’t I? So, we’ll do things in kinda an order. First up, XKCD is in my head; I’m now at a state where I have no properly working computers. The laptop’s power cable is fubar, so I need to find the spare supply for it (which is probably in the attic, fortunately, and not in the ‘spare room’ which is currently full. The G5 still needs a new power supply; I’m hoping to sort that out this week, if at some point before friday I have a working car. The PC downstairs still falls off the wifi, it is to be fair working in all other respects. And the hackintosh remains without network. There was no small degree of frustration after spending hours on it, I realise now that I need a USB WiFi dongle *anyway* (my brain kept saying, no you don’t; you won’t need one when you get the G5 working because you’ll just stick the homehub up there as a wired / wireless router – but it’d just be easier if everything can be wirelessed). So, yes. We’ll see what happens.

    Anyway, so, Thanksgiving. We celebrated thanksgiving with friends (thank you for coming Jordax!), producing a not-quite traditional (but real) chicken (there were only 3 of us though, and we still had *loads of food*), stuffed with home made stuffing consisting of (veggie) sausage, raisins, celery, onion, and herbs; sweet potato and pecan casserole (that was delicious, if mostly sugar :) ), US style biscuits (very yummy), green beans, carrots, brussel sprouts, mashed potato and cranberry sauce, all washed down with some rather nice red wine. This was followed by an excellent Lemon Icebox Pie made with real proper Graham Crackers imported from the States… (and this is the best description I can imagine of a Graham Cracker: “…if a Digestive were ever to get a Ryvita into trouble, possibly at a wild party behind the cheese board, then the resulting progeny may well end growing up to look a lot like Graham Crackers“). Anyhow, proper thanksgiving tradition being followed we attempted to watch clips of the Macy’s day parade, but they were a bit short and required more attention than we wanted to give them (next year, can someone please post the whole damn thing to YouTube or GoogleVideo? That’d help. Ta), so we switched and watched the Peanuts / Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special (1973) :)

    And then we settled down to play Squabble for a bit (Kathryn won :) ), chatted, drank and whiled the hours away before heading to bed. Sunday was spend doing absolutely nothing useful whatsoever (apart from some laundry and all the washing up in the entire universe).

    Anyway, I know it’s rather bleached from the flashgun, but here’s the thanksgiving dinner…

    And here’s a bit of old news; I drew a person…

    Raaaa!

    So, stuff of a housey nature (Which I should, really, be doing now) – the bathroom has water. Water! The taps work and everything. Well, the cold ones. Jobs left for us to do are (in order, ish):

    – Cut and prime wood for behind toilet cistern.
    – The rest of the grouting, most importantly finishing the shower and polishing the area behind the radiator.
    – Painting the woodwork behind the radiator.
    – Continue to strip radiator.
    – Seal sink drainer (because it’s leaking….le sigh).

    Day 2
    – Paint wood for behind toilet cistern.
    – Silicone sealing around the shower.
    – Continue to strip radiator.
    – Sand radiator and paint… hopefully.
    – Silicone seal around toilet

    Day 3
    – Switch over to chrome flush lever / chain / etc.
    – Mount toilet cistern, connect up, pray it flushes okay.
    – Connect radiator.

    Other non-urgent jobs are to finish the rest of the grouting elsewhere, put a second coat of paint on some areas that missed out on the walls then mount shelves on those walls, and to – once the plumbing’s all connected up (hot water, specifically), fill in the last segment of tiles (over the currently removable panel work) and to grout everywhere that’s left.

    It’s close, but this made me ridiculously happy:

    And finally, for various reasons I’ve been trying to get some artsy shots of the Viva (well, one specific reason) – so, here’s one or two:

    Uh, so there you go, closing with pictures. I’m going to end the update there, hopefully that’ll sort people’s complaints about lack of pictures ;)

  • Holiday, Part 2; Photos and House, part whatever.

    So, yeah. I promised I’d write something about this. Anyhow, after the lakedistrict we headed down to Bristol. I have several fantastic friends in Bristol who I’m very bad at getting down to see – and also I wanted Kathryn to meet more of my friends. So, a plan was hatched (thanks to LizBuf who pointed out that the harbour festival was occurring) and we headed on down to the land of Bristol on the Friday night before all piling into Kate’s Prius for a journey to the city centre.

    On the way in we caught up with a little abandonment; the whole of that bit of the harbour is redevelopment prone – especially now they’re well underway with the waterfront developments further up. So the previously grotty and interesting end of the town is starting to be gentrified; but there’s still some interesting bits of fallingdownness. Impressively I largely failed to get any shots of the actual harbour festival; but some interesting shots of friends and some interesting shots of abandoned boats, or bits of ’em. Anyhow, shots of the weekend are located here…

    Next up we have another photoset; this is shots taken from London; mostly around Bankside powerstation / The Tate Modern. I’ve always meant to go to Tate Modern, and actually I still need to go, because we only really had time to look around an exhibit about urban life (which was ace) and then while Kathryn was busy I spent most of my London afternoon taking pictures outside or lounging on the grass, then we headed to St Pauls, and then off to Gay’s the Word (where I bought two books, despite knowing I shouldn’t, but one of them is called ‘The Wombat Strategy’ and therefore needed to come home with me). On my way home that evening I was treated to a gorgeous synchonised flying display from the local bird population. It was just *stunning*. Sadly the batteries on my camera were somewhere beyond flat, and lurking around in the micron thick range; I managed with much shuffling of batteries to loose two shots; one of which was in focus. It was just a glorious, glorious sunset and the birds were flocking and flying and… I just stood and watched for ages. So that photoset is here…

    And finally, in the name of updating you all; the fruits of mine and Kathryn’s labour. This is the bathroom as of today.

  • Holiday, part 1.

    So, I had this faint intention of writing about the holiday in great depth, because it was a fantastic holiday filled with awesome.

    But I’m too tired to do that. So, rather than wait until I forget about it I’ll sketch it for you shiny people, and then give you a link to some pics…

    Day 1 was mostly spent travelling; the traffic was okay, I think; Brick performed flawlessly, apart from a weld on the exhaust failing as we off-roaded up to the hostel. Actually, it wasn’t as bad as the coniston one by any means, the track up is pretty rough though. We landed up at the hostel fairly late in the evening – and despite failing light took a little wander up towards Red Tarn / Helvellyn… the air was just so clean. It’s amazing, you forget what real, fresh air smells like.

    Day 2 and we headed for a nice light easy walk; easing ourselves in – Kathryn had new (unbroken in) boots, and I am well out of practice with walking, so we walked down the mountain to Glenridding; and after a brief detour to buy waterproofs for me (because I’m a dizzy mare and forgot them) we headed  out to the ferry to get the ‘steamer’ (diesel, these days) to Howtown. From there the plan was to walk back around Ullswater, one of the Wainright walks; sadly there were about 3,000,000 people also with this plan, so instead we decided to nip up Hallin fell. Hallin fell took exception to being ‘nipped’ up; and we got rained and hailed on, sheltering behind the obelisk at the top. Once done with the rain and hail, and my boots having disintegrated, we headed down and (squelched) around Ullswater and the weather went back to being rather lovely.

    Day 3 – and we headed to Keswick. Keswick is where most of my youth holidays were spent; so feels kinda home-y; we wandered around many bookshops, a few sweet shops, and also did some (of the vast number of) mountaineering shops (to replace my boots and get a knee support and a trecking pole (or stick, as I insist on calling it)). We also found a truly excellent cafe called the Lakeland Peddlar. My, that was some good food… And I also availed myself of Keswick’s exhaust repair facilities. Brick’s re-welded exhaust remained trouble free…but when we arrived to collect Brick there was a chap who, well, let’s say he was very excited to see an HC Viva still on the road. He all-but bounced, and asked to sit in the car (so I opened the door and let him have a sit inside)….
    Day 4 – Helvellyn. The weather looked hideous when we started out; but the report said that the clouds would lift and the rain would stop and the sun would shine. And y’know what; it was true. When we were walking up Helvellyn we stood about 200 meters from Red Tarn and didn’t know it was there; and had to guess at which path was the one we wanted. We didn’t bother doing Catstye Cam (which we were going to do) because, well, we couldn’t see it. Anyhow, 3118 feet up, and the weather cleared a couple of times for us; giving us some truly breathtaking views. And by the time we were crossing Striding Edge it’d become a glorious day. We opted to walk across Grisedale Brow (where I shot my quick bit of abandonment; this dam), and down into Glenridding – where we would grab a pub meal before making the treck back up to the Hostel.

    Day 4 – And we decided on a nice, relaxing day; visiting the museum in Ambleside; and wandering around many bookshops in Ambleside where we chanced upon a very informal, very friendly poetry night. It was excellent, and very friendly; and I deeply wish it existed in Slough. Anyhow, if you’re ever in Ambleside the poetic justice poetry night is well worth it.

    Day 5 – We headed to the Potfest – a place where we could both have spent vastly too much money. There was some beautiful ceramic art and pottery there; some of it very reasonably priced. Some of it while reasonably priced also very expensive, and some of it oh-my-god-expensive :)

    And then we headed to Bristol, but that’s a story for another post.

    Anyhow, here’s the pics…

  • Dolls in pram ≠ Brick

    So, today was a bit insane. At least, I thought it was insane.

    I’m not sure why, but the nurse in charge decided I should be 1st in in Resus. This was actually good, in a lot of ways; because I much more enjoy and am much better when I’m thrown in at the deep end.

    But it was scary++ because, well, not only do I have only a limited clue as to what I’m doing; but also I’ve got next to no Emergency skills. I can’t take blood (although hopefully I can do my assessment this week), I can’t give IV’s unsupervised, I can’t cannulate, and I can’t plaster….

    So it was a bit interesting. I got very good at saying “could you possibly…”

    And “no, but I’ll get someone who can”.

    Thankfully someone much more experienced came in for the Trauma call (a chap with extensive burns). And I stuck to my chest pains, and self-harmers. I did meet a genuine bona-fide gangster; at least according to himself… I must admit when he self discharged I really didn’t care that much…

    After my shift I drove home, although there was a brief pause because Brick randomly decided he didn’t like the rust syrup masquerading as coolant, and thus spat it out. I’ve only seen a car-spitting-out-coolant-old-style once before (Nikki’s Mog) and it’s quite impressive. There was steam pouring (and I do mean pouring) out from the bonnet, from the back of the bonnet (where the vents are) and when I opened it there was a whoosh of more steam. So I shall *change* the coolant before heading up North; although I shan’t flush it.

    It seemed fine after slopping some fresh coolant in so it was probably a stuck thermostat. But I shall be paranoid’ly observing it.

    I finally, incidentally, got my shot in for Snapshot Hunter; ‘ve stuck it below, and I’m quite pleased with it… I’ve got a whole bundle more from the weekend with Kathryn, but I shall maybe upload them tomorrow.

    And to take you into the evening, here’s some links: Funny. Scary.

  • There’s good news and uh, some bad.

    So, the good news is that I’ve started making, albeit small, inroads into the chaos in my endeavour to make the house bearable when Kathryn comes back. It’s hardly be welcoming if it still had a Kate-sized hole on the sofa where I’ve been sitting surrounded by bills. I’ve even cleaned the stairs – it was quite horrendous how much shite there was on them. Seriously, it was revolting. Granted it was mostly sawdust and plasterdust, but still.

    Obviously, in my posting frenzy you’ve had the ‘lookie, tiles’; but I have pictures (you’re all thrilled, I can tell)….

    See, tiles!

    I also have proof that there’s a shower door in my bathroom; or at least, a shower door in someone’s bathroom, but I maintain that this is mine and that I put it up. Believe me, no one else would want to claim that they put it up…

    Anyhow, because I took it, and also because it slightly freaked me out when I realised how badly worn it really was, here’s the Viva’s clutch cable (I imagine you’re all barely able to contain your excitement at this point)…

    Yes, it’s frayed. Really frayed. If that had snapped it could have lead to embarassing ‘crunch’ type noises; although I’ve been awfully careful the last week not to sit with my foot on the clutch, as I might be wont to do if I was expecting a light to change… I’m quite proud of that shot, actually, it’s a really nice bit of macro photography, if I do say so myself (and I do). And it stands out really rather well against the aluminium carpet strip. That, incidentally, is my pile of metal that’s waiting for me to make a run to the tip. That run is approaching with some enthusiasm now, as my entire front garden is full of woodworm eaten floorboards.

    So, continuing the good news; the hoover survived. The builders used my Aquavac/Goblin (with my permission), however they neglected to mention that they’d run it ’til the bag split and the entire filter inside gummed up. I’m hoping it’s not toast in motor terms, but it doesn’t smell of burned motor. The filter at least saved it from sucking an entire base full of crappy builder’s rubble through its motor. And in other good news, with substantial effort I managed to retrieve the box-of-filing from the pile of crap. Having cleaned the filing cabinet (it’s still somewhat oily inside), I then spent a “cheerful” hour transferring stuff from the box into the cabinet. The box contained everything that *was* in the cabinet from a looong time ago. I have become aware that I need a shredder, again. I can theoretically shred up to 2002, now; and I can dispose of lots of old utility bills. And looking at how much paperwork I’ve got, that would be really quite useful.

    Anyhow, I’ve not yet started making inroads into the evil that is the ‘to file pile’ (which is in two parts):

    It’s amazing how much paperwork I’ve accrued in 6 months. Obviously there’s buying a house, two jobs, moving, purchasing endless appliances and bits for the house…. Lexx is out, incidentally, because I did the tinyest bit of sorting while I was shifting boxes – and found Lexx 1.0,  which means I now have all the Lexx videos. I think I’m going to sell them because, quite frankly, I can’t be arsed with video anymore. I loved the first season of Lexx, but never really loved it as much after that first season; the original actress (Eva Habermann) was fantastic…and not that the second actress wasn’t good, she just wasn’t Zev.

    Anyhow, so, that’s the good news.

    There is however some bad news.

    The house has woodworm, live doing stuff woodworm. I’d kinda disregarded the woodworm upstairs on the basis of my monitoring station downstairs being, well, unaffected. See, I’d read (somewhere) in my research that the lifecycle was around 3 months – having repeated my check I now find ‘a year’ is more accurate. But anyhow, I’d assumed after 6 months of staring at my masking tape that there wasn’t any activity and I was now safe. Unfortunately, I’ve now found two dinky little round holes in it, so I shall be calling in a woodworm company forthwith to see about fumigating the house. This is, how shall we put it, rather upsetting. At least the joists upstairs were doubled, because I know some of them floorboards that came out were completely rotten, so one must presume some of the joists are infested badly too… Ach.

    And finally, on a rather smaller scale, things continue not to improve on the laptop front… it’s still doing pretty well, given that it’s 8 years old, but at some point I fear it is going to have to be replaced…

  • Help, the gardens are overun with weeds…

    So, in an attempt to reduce the chaos, prevent potential moping, and generally keep myself occupied I prep’d the bike for it’s MOT. Which went slightly less well than I’d hoped. The front brake light switch has, as usual, stopped working. I should’ve thought of this and ordered one in advance. I’m going to hope he’ll let me promise to replace it. I’ve sprayed it with lots of contact cleaner come lubricant and wiggled it lots, I’m hoping that it might work on the day.

    Also, having checked, mirrors are not part of the MOT test requirements. They are part of construction and use, but really mine were useless anyhow. So I’ve taken ’em both off, because one of them needs helicoiling in place, and I don’t have a helicoiling device. I do want them back on, simply because it’s nice to know what’s behind you, but I’m not desparately concerned. I am a bit peeved by the brake light switch though. I only did that for last year’s MOT. It’s only a couple of quid, but still. Aaanyhow, having pulled the iris(es?) out of the bike I then proceeded to do various dances with cars and bikes; which entailed me nearly running the minor into the Viva – having forgotten that the minor’s handbrake is fairly marginal. That would have made a great insurance claim…. Still, I managed to shuffle ’em round so that the bike should be able to be extracted and ridden on Monday.

    All of this leads up to the gardens. See, I’ve really been a bit unsure as to what to do with the garden(s). My mum, I’d decided, would be set loose on the back one, but she wants some rough idea of what I want. I have very rough ideas, but I’m not sure that they’ll work, as such. Anyhow, so I’ve strimmed the weedygrassland in the front garden down to a more manageable length…

    Now, this has to serve several purposes, ideally. Looking pretty is but one component of the plans for the front garden. I’m thinking that I might need some sort of curvy mud retaining wall, and a raised section; and then slop concrete in the other section. This would allow me to have a mini-bike-driveway on the right, at the front, and retain some garden, and maybe make it tidier…

    My intial thoughts are something like this:

    They grey’s the current drive way, the green with the orangey border is my rough outline of the walled / raised bed. I’m not thinking hugely raised, like 2, maybe three layers of brick? Something like that. The curves didn’t quite come out the way I wanted and the scale’s a bit off I think. Still, that’s my general idea :-)

    The back garden’s more of a problem:

    See, I have kind of resigned myself to the fact that the shed is going to have to face the way it is; and to the fact that I’ll probably have to build my own shed up from parts (incidentally, if anyone knows anywhere round Slough where I can pick up scrap wood, I’ve tried Freecycle and unlike Bristol freecycle it’s a bit like calling to a void, all I ever get back is my own echo) and am kind of envisaging stripping down the shed I’ve got, loosing it’s wood-wormey wood, but salvaging the sheet steel and using that to make up the back and the side that you can’t see; then using wood to make up the side you can see and the front. And then planking (maybe ex-pallet?) for the roof? (And then roof felt!).

    The idea was, you see, to make myself some kind of workshop space in which I could strip down the spare engine, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m really going to ever have time to make that an achieveable objective.  Anyhow, so the general idea was to move the shed back, so that it occupies that dubious little gap at the back, almost flush with the garages behind, and also uses up that corner of the garden which is currently given over to a 1970s front door, a tree and a pile of rubbish. *But*, that photo fails to show what it was meant to which is that the concrete is about 15cm* higher behind the shed than in front which I suspect, being lazy, means I’d have to raise the floor of the shed, and maybe put a dinky little step outside it. I don’t think I can easily remove that concrete, what with it being up against a big garage wall… which doesn’t belong to me (annoyingly).

    Aaaanyhow, so I also need to get rid of that concrete centre path. Now, see, various of my friends offered to help with my house before I moved in – so I may be taking them up on this offer, in a summer-dig-kate’s-garden and remove-the-fracking-ugly-path extravaganza – possibly to include a ‘lay the new path and lay out the flowerbeds, oh, and maybe a bit of decking’d be nice party… Heh.

    At least, that would be *nice*; but I’d settle for some help removing the path :-)

    I may also be bringing friends in for a cupboard mounting party, depending on how the kitchen goes. Still no quote from my builder, although they’ve now finished off the plastering (better’n gimp boy in the lounge, not as good as the really good plasterer though). So maybe soon work can commence on the bathroom. Which’d be nice. Then work can commence on removing the old bathroom and finishing off the kitchen. Which’d be nice. :-)

    • Since the EU have sadly decided to allow Britain to keep being insanely dumb about measurements, I’m instigating a new policy of endeavouring (much more strongly) to use metric measures.

  • I didn’t know where my life would take me next.

    I forgot to post on Snapshot hunter this week; it was meant to be this image – but I often forget which day I need to post things by. The most annoying thing is the two times I’ve forgotten I’ve had really good shots. Although I wasn’t 100% decided I’d only uploaded this one for ‘wet’. Anyhow.

    In other news, here’s some more new music. Indie pop, for those who’re not wanting to use up clicks.

    Tomorrow is my interview, and thus I should go to bed soon. I’m feeling a little teensy bit tense. Really quite tense. Incredibly tense. No, that’s excessive. I’m quite tense though. I think I’ve got my four H’s and four T’s. I’ve thought of answers to the questions like ‘why do you want to work in A&E’ and ‘what would make you a good A&E nurse’; I’ve got a couple of questions to ask, I know what I’m going to wear. I found my brief/attaché/whatever case and prep’d the folder with a few ‘samples’ of my portfolio. I think that’s it.

    It’s still scary though. Wish me luck; I *want* this job.