Category: General

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.

Yesterday was an amazingly productive day. Out for a run in the morning – 7 miles – as is the ‘requirement’ – before sitting down to watch Spiderman 2(.1) – which was as entertainingly excellent as I recalled. This was in preparation for the newly obtained spiderman 3 disk (DVDs have really fallen in price, this is a brand new, sealed disk and cost a couple of quid including shipping from amazon*).

Spiderman 3, incidentally, was watched this morning and wasn’t as good as 2, but was still good. And I did enjoy it muchly.

Anyhow, after my Spiderman viewing I bathed and poked at the shower – ending with a replacement of the failed silicone seal around one end, and slathering where I think the water’s escaping from at the edge of the frame with sealant – a thin bead inside and a waving my silicone’d finger around in the dark where I can’t see on the outside. Tomorrow I shall allow showering to occur, and we’ll see if it’s worked.

Then I attacked the DAF. There was a faint smell of petrol which I’d noticed, the MOT bloke had remarked on and then it’d disappeared – and I’d put down to the occasional weep from the carb/manifold seal when the choke’s out. I was wrong. Driving back from JLH I found the smell was quite strong at times, and decided to have a *good* look around the engine bay. I’m glad I did – I’d’ve shared a picture of what I found – the hoses between the pump and filter, and the filter and carb were original – I’d intended to replace them but bought the wrong size hose last time – yeah. The braiding on the outside looked fine. The fact they were both soaked in petrol, that didn’t look so good. They’d both chosen to perish completely – and were riddled with little cracks allowing petrol to seep out. I’ve replaced them with the silicone vacuum/fuel hose I bought which I continue to debate fitting. I’m not sure if it’s too flexible (despite being rated as vacuum hose) – it seems very flexible compared to the existing hose – but then that rubber is old…

Meh.

Anyhow, I then whipped the radio out… well, actually, I went hunting for filler with the intention of finishing off the front panel and bonnet (well, wire-brushing, filling, priming, and hopefully getting a coat of top-coat on) with the rest of the day. It became apparent that wasn’t going to happen – the filler has chosen it’s moment to disappear, so I in’t touching the rust-killer paint that’s on there.

So I whipped out the dead Radiomobil 80. It came with the DAF and worked for a few days after we got it, then died completely. I debated attempting a repair of some sort, but frankly, it’s a MW/LW radio of limited use, and it wasn’t really great when it did work. So I decided that I would subject it to surgery.

My ‘kinter’ branded cheap-and-nasty auto amplifier was stripped down and a variety of components removed…

and returned to function (we hope) on fly-leads. The hideous colour changing LED replaced the bulb behind the tuner, the tuner knob was pressed into service controlling the volume. I was going to make it control treble/bass, but I decided I didn’t really want to buy any components for this project.

With much care and attention the front panel of the Radiomobil was cut up, the casing re-drilled with new mountings and a handy take-away food box chopped up to provide insulation (microwave safe insulation too!).

The circuit board was mounted on the base of the radio (I think the original designers could be heard weeping), and the high-quality audiophile mono-conversion performed (because the original was mono and I’m not fitting more speakers, I don’t *have* any more!).

With some effort I mounted a 3.5mm jack on a piece of plastic which is mounted slightly less well than I’d like in the front panel – lots of impact adhesive… and the whole thing’s back together. The question is, now, obviously – does it go ‘bang’ or does it work. I’m obviously hoping for the latter. But it’s a long time since I’ve done anything like this – at the end of the day it’s just replacing components with components on fly-leads, but hey.

You can see the beautiful, careful mounting of components in this overhead shot:

Of course, the only problem is that Kathryn’s got my CD-Player in her car *and* I don’t actually have an appropriate lead. Nor, it turns out, do I have 3.5mm jacks in the house.

Poot.

* I note that the studios still haven’t worked out the bleeding obvious, that if I’ve bought the disk I don’t need to be subjected to an anti-piracy message. In all honesty, it makes me more inclined to dabble in the field of piracy, because pirate disks (I have a couple of very dodgy disks) don’t seem to feel the need to subject me to this. *WAVES TO ATTRACT THE STUPID PEOPLE* If I’ve *bought* it, I’m not *pirating it* you Dumbass. Geeze. Still, I had coffee to make, so it was fine.

So, on my little journey so to see my classic under restoration I saw this rather lovely 1900s house, next to a canal, and unfortunately next to an active business. It’s definitely been abandoned a good while, because I have vague recollections of seeing it about 3 years ago when I first went up there, and it was pretty much in the state it’s in now.

Sorry for the quality of the shots, my posh digital has died, fairly much completely, so I’ve only got my point-and-shoot digital, which is not exactly new, nor exactly in great shape. At any rate here’s some more…

So, I’ve been contemplating a lot of things, 10 miles of running / walking around yesterday with little company but my head, and yet I can’t actually remember what it was I was going to write about. Perhaps some updates on things will make me remember.

Rebecca’s progressing, although she needs yet more welding, the entire front suspension is shot (it’s incredible because she handled okay, despite known wear, the collection of barely functioning dampers, worn kingpins and trunnions managing to keep her on the road better than many other minors I’ve driven. It may just be that she’s incredibly straight having been fairly unmolested until her first ‘restoration’ and thus is actually the right shape, more or less), and it turns out the diff I bought second hand from a guy on the owner’s club is beyond reconditioning.

The DAF may be ready to be collected today or tomorrow – which’ll be nice. I’ll hopefully be able to collect her and get a shiny new MOT on the way home. That would lead to 75% of vehicles in our household being MOT’d. That would be quite nice. I’d forgotten the joy I get from driving classics, having been driving moderns for such a long time. The volvo is very pleasant to drive, and is sort of border-line classic, but there’s something visceral about driving an older classic. Something about being a part of the world, closely linked and experiencing it. It’s as near to riding a motorbike as you can get without riding one.

I’m becoming weaker though, heated seats and quiet appeal to me more than they used to :)

I actually enjoyed the drive back from the garage, despite the fear edging on my consciousness that I would at some point be stopped by the police. For while it says that you may drive an untaxed/mot’d vehicle to or from an MOT and from an MOT directly to a place of repair, my route (since I got lost) may not have been considered ‘direct’, and anyone looking at the two page failure sheet might have declared the vehicle dangerous to drive.

It wasn’t, obviously, all but 3 of the faults had been rectified, and 3 of them were faults which impacted only the structural strength of the vehicle in an accident. I was quite surprised by the size of one of the holes, actually, which must have been there last year, but was well hidden. One gets the impression that he wanted to fail the vehicle, and spent time looking carefully for things to fail it on, because of where the failure points were. Still, valid they are (well, borderline, in terms of distance from mountings, but they needed to be done), and thus I await the call from the welder.

As I discussed with him, it’s silly really, I should just live with riding the motorbike in the rain for a few weeks, but at least this way, when Rebecca does come back, I can sell the DAF as a going concern. While I’ll doubtless barely recoupe the cost of the last set of repairs, I will have a car for a few weeks, and that’s cheaper than hiring.

Ah, yes. Whiny ranting. That’s what I wanted to get to.

So, I know that part of the problem for me is that I want to leave this country. That does not make one prone to seeing the best in the place that you’re in. I want to be in Canada, and so I look around and see things that support my decision to leave. And one of those things is what appears to be growing support for the scary conservatives.

Now, I do not for a moment think that the Conservative party are guaranteed a win in the UK, but the fact that it’s a possible discussion point makes me depressed. They’re clearly insane, having apparently suggested that older people going into care will now only need to make an £8500 contribution to their lifelong care. Um, since they’re currently having to sell their houses (to make, say, a £175,000 contribution) I’m slightly interested to hear where the rest of that money’s going to come from. Especially when combined with promise of tax-cuts (for the rich), although a big chunk is presumably going to come from taking those who actually need benefits off benefits, so that those who are cunning and sly and do defraud the system can continue to do so*.

I fear for what remains of the NHS, since Labour have continued to screw about with it. Although I do think that the NHS should run an ad-campaign which is actually proud of what we’ve achieved. So many of us in the NHS are disheartened that we forget we have damn good outcomes for a cut-price health service, and while a lot needs work (I do quite often wander around work thinking “Doing the impossible with the insufficient” is our slogan) it’s a damn fine service in many ways, and we should stand up and slap the Daily Mailites for slagging it off. Hopefully I won’t be here to watch as the NHS finally gets privatised, because that would be heartbreaking for me. And watching the Conservatives screw it over, again, well that I don’t look forward to either.

And the final nail in the coffin for Britain, many Conservatives want to take us back out of Europe. Hey, people, this country has abandoned making anything… all we’ve got is a service economy… do you think that anyone’s going to want a service economy from us if we’re not part of Europe? At the moment we’re part of the largest single market in the world, do they think all our problems will mysteriously get better if we’re not part of Europe? Most of our problems, are, I suspect, due to the fact we piss about on the outskirts of being involved.

A large proportion of Conservatives surveyed, apparently, want us to have ‘free trade’ agreements (individually) with the countries of Europe and us to pull out of the Union. Do they really, truly believe that’s a good idea or are they still living in the 50s, when we actually had some real say in the way the world runs.

We, as a country, need to get over ourselves. We are no longer the great Empire builders, we are just another (small) European country which is dependent on those around us to survive. What we should be doing is getting properly involved in Europe, ditching our pointless border protection (I can travel around the rest of Europe without a passport or even seeing a border**, how come I need one to get in and out of the UK). If we did that and concentrated on dealing with getting rid of the tiny minority of immigrants who really have come in inappropriately, and also stopped being so bloody xenophobic, this could still be quite a nice country – filled with people who actually want to work (that’s the reason most immigrants come here, not for our arcane and complex benefits system). Instead we spend a lot of time looking inwards and complaining about immigration and saying how wonderful it would be if it was just us here.

Still, if the Conservatives do pull the UK out of Europe hopefully I’ll be in Canada and can stand watching and laughing. With luck, Scotland and Wales will fight more for their independence so they can rejoin, and then hilarity will commence.

Anyhow, I’m going to stop whining about the UK, have a bath, and possibly commence working on the shower. I was going to go to B&Q but it appears to be raining. A lot. Again.

* Since those who defraud the system are the ones best equipped to make it through the maze of hurdles required to obtain benefits, particularly as the system gets more complex.
** The only one we encountered was on the way into France, and it wasn’t staffed, it was an abandoned border crossing.

So, I’ve been quite good today, the only thing I haven’t done is take the battery off my bike and charge it, something I’ll do in a minute (I say again). Something is sucking power from the bike’s battery, not a lot, but enough when she’s standing, so I’ll have to go hunt that down (ha! like that’ll happen!).

I have however had a 7 mile run, taken back the hire car, take the now running correctly DAF from the MOT place to the Welder, walked 3 miles back (in the rain), stopping to get Kathryn’s book (argh! Bastard 3fo2, and lack of will power*!), a pair of ‘jogging bottoms’ which I will proceed to ruin (I tried oxfam, and they had none; or at least none I’d not feel completely ridiculous wearing**).

I didn’t go to JLH on the motorbike, partly thanks to a flat battery, and partly due to continuous horrid rain. There is, however, the faint possibilty that the number of MOT’d / Taxed vehicles may cross the 50% boundry for the first time in an age.

* Hence Danny the Champion of the World after moments of remembering curling up with family having opened the library edition that Kathryn had, and Stephen Fry in America, because I like Stephen Fry. Swines, the lot of them.
** Plum purple velvet? Black but with some great array of stars on my arse? No thanks.

So, I went to B&Q, this I hoped would cure my ‘still feeling full’ sensation from breakfast. I seem to have been getting that a lot of late, probably because my body doesn’t like me eating then lazing around like some roman senator on the sofa. Anyhow.

So, I debated light(s) (for the larder) for a while before deciding that since I’m not thinking recessed lights, Kathryn ought to be there to decide with me, and I’ll just move the cable (since it runs on top of the ceiling in there) wherever it needs to go. I debated ‘cheating’ and covering up the hole I’m about to make with an entire new sheet of plasterboard. This would mean that some of the ceiling would have a layer of lath & plaster, and some that plus plasterboard. A naughty bodge, and I debated for a bit before deciding to attempt to repair the laths afterward… Although I may well change my mind.

And then I looked at tiles for a bit, it seems they’ve stopped selling the ‘Toronto’ tiles that I laid in the bathroom, not a problem (I hope) because I’ve got spares to lay in that corner (where I took the tiles up), I’ll just have to be careful, because the tile count isn’t high. Annoyingly though, the adhesive and grout I used comes in *MASSIVE* tubs, and not little ones, and since the whole floor is done using it, I’ve had to get a *MASSIVE* tub of adhesive + grout to redo it.

Gah.

*And* It’s not suitable for use on concrete floors (le *sigh*), which is what I need to tile downstairs. So, new plan, I suspect, is to get some fairly similar grey tiles for the front, and some more of that to do the larder. Of course, once we start the ‘festival of tiling’ I might as well do the kitchen wall tiles too. Woot.

Anyhow, since I seem to have gone from ‘overfull’ to ‘starving hungry’ I’m going to drink a little water and head out on an attempt at a run.