Category: General

So, I am planning to mail my (expensive) CRNBC application off today, a scary act because I then need to sit an exam at some point which enables me to work in Canada. This is all very well and shiny, and I’ve even got the link to get the transcript required from my university (more painful expense)… but just as I feel like I’m getting things together to get out of here, I suddenly find the world being terribly unhelpful.

Kathryn had pointed out that house prices weren’t quite so shiny as when I last looked. I’d resigned myself to having made nothing much of a profit but having got my money back… only now very similar houses on the street are fetching a whopping 185k. Down somewhat from the heady 220k that they were when I bought it (ours wasn’t that much, obviously, being as it was a dump), and down from the 200k where I was happy to sell, and down from the 195k where I could reasonably cope with selling.

What happened to up? I heard up had been mentioned. I didn’t need sustained up; in fact, frankly I had an absense of figs to give* on the matter of a sustained up. I don’t really deeply care about the survival of capitalism, so long as the individual people survive.

Anyhow, it’s going to be another 6 months until we sell, at the earliest, so if you could all attempt to destroy the earth with rampant consumerism for 6 months, that’d be dandy**.

Anyhow, so that’s something I have to look forward to – checking over the paperwork – and I need to ask someone at work to be a reference for me too, I forgot about that.

So yes, that’s in the plan for the week – as was (and is) fitting the ‘new’ radio to Chester. Chester’s original Volvo radio/cassette (actually a Philips one) had several problems; first and foremost was a persistent failure to actually come on. Picky as I am, this is one of my favourite features in a radio, coming on. I’m almost as keen on it as ‘switching off’ and ‘being able to control the volume’. To be fair, I also like ‘being able to tune it’ too, but the first thing that I like to do is switch it on.

And that, the original radio was not…entirely…willing to do. Indeed, despite my protestations, my pleading and my generally poking at it, it frequently declined to come on at all. At least in any meaningful way. Certainly it’d glow a pleasing green colour, but as to actually displaying anything on it’s little digital display or, indeed, doing such things as might be considered playing music or making speech related noises it seemed unwilling.

It also likes to swallow tapes. I don’t know if someone neglected to feed it for the first 20 years of it’s life, but I put the tape-adaptor in (just wondered if that ‘bit’ of the radio worked) and, well, it was unkeen to give it back. Indeed at various points I thought it was not going to give it back. A somewhat uneven struggle ensued involving me, an eject button, my fingers, and some cursing. The tape-adaptor did, thankfully manage to escape the clutches of the radio-cassette, but at that point my mind was made up****, and a new radio was sought.

And thus I sourced the rather shinier Blaupunkt Florida 168. A CD Player in a car I own? Shocking.

Anyhow, so having forked out the exhorbitant amount of money that Halfrauds wanted for the radio-removing tools (£4.99! They’re £2 ish online) I discovered that the Volvo does not sport an ISO connector. No it does not. It sports a big ‘ol chunky block connector. Halfrauds did, however, inform me that I could get an ISO connector adaptor, from them, for a bargainous £12.00. I declined and wandered off holding the ISO connector and the Volvo connector and sat on the lounge floor with my soldering iron, solder, wire cutters and wire strippers and debated cutting and chopping and generally abusing the cables to produce one joyous cable.

Well, I did. Then I thought I’d look on e-bay. And for £2.98 plus £1.99p&p I could obtain a proper cable, which saves hacking up the somewhat special original Volvo one. So if someone, one day, wants to reinstate the original Volvo interior radio, for the sake of originality, they can.

And since the car is off to be serviced tomorrow, and I therefore am not in the hugest hurry to have the radio fitted, I decided I’d wait for the e-bay one. 5 quid being somewhat less than 13.

Which leaves a big hole in the dashboard for the minute. But never mind… I’m sure I’ll cope.

And in other good news, Dollhouse and Big Bang Theory are back on. Awesome.

* As in, ‘I don’t give a fig’, for those who are confused***.
** I don’t mean that, obviously. I want everyone living fulfilling, happy productive lives which protect the pretty little blue green planet on which we live (in the unfashionable western spiral arm of the galaxy).
*** Like me, given that I’ve been up 20 hours.
**** Well, more at the moment I realised that if anyone ever disconnected the battery I’d never be able to revive the radio, because it’s a security code one – and while you can pay to get them unsecuritycoded, on a grotty old radio-cassette which doesn’t like turning on it’s not really worth the hassle.

Another week of nights is, thankfully, over. While the week has been in many ways not that bad, you have to remember that a week of nights is – fundamentally – two weeks worth of work crammed into the space of one. It is, therefore, hard going.

And today is, as usual one of those days which passes in a blur of chaotic blurred thoughts.

Anyhow, so, my iphone is currently driving itself insane, it’s too flat to come on, but since it’s connected to the laptop to charge it’s endlessly cycling through powering on, vibrating, attempting to complete start up before going back to sleep because it’s flat. After a few cycles it manages to get charged enough that it’s okay, but it’s quite entertaining to watch.

Yes.

So, before I came home from my night shift (this has got to be worth bonus points) I paid my 3.50 and dunked myself in chlorinated water. 16 lengths later (yeah, not that many, I know, but hey I’d just finished an 11 hour shift) I toddled out of the pool feeling quite awake, and also wanting a variety of things at the same time.

I recall, back when Bristol North Baths closed that part of the argument was that it was run down and needed a heck of a lot of money spending to bring it up to current standards. Seriously, if that’s the case, I invite the whole lot of Bristol’s city council to come look at Arthur Hill pool. It makes Bristol North look positively pristine. The pools base appears to have been re-tiled at some point – the base being random-mosaic tiles, rather than the big chunky tiles that’d match the ones on the sides. Sections appear to have lost these mosaic and have been ? painted (it was a lane’d swim, so I wasn’t diving and swimming along the bottom). It looks tired, the tiles are chipped and cracked and battered, and in place of Bristol North’s hidden glass ceiling it appears to have a 1970s utilitarian chique tin roof. Mind you, it’s exactly the kind of pool I like, reasonably deep at one end and just for swimming. It’s also sensibly priced.

Anyhow, it’s prompted me to finally upload (onto Flickr) the many shots of Brizzle North.

And thinking of the ‘Retro’ theme, I was reminded of this:

Which I captured near Liberty’s in London; it’s a vending machine which appears to still be in service, and which appears to have not been updated since the early 1980s. I think that’s a hybrid of a Metro and an Ital, and the hair, oh the hair. It is amazing how far graphic design has come, really, isn’t it.

When I finally got back home after my swimmette, my body’s end-of-nights confusion kicked in, I wanted to clean my teeth, go to the loo, get moisturiser on my hands, drink lots of water and eat breakfast; the only issue being that I wanted to do all of these at once (at least none of them had overriding priority) and my brain was struggling to work out how to order things. Eventually we got an order and I’m about to start working on breakfast…

…then, plan is, off to get the old radio out of the Volvo, and pop in the new one (pray that the connector matches) and then a bit later collect the sewing machine for Kathryn :)

Ra? Ra indeed.

So, while I delight in exploring my voice, and the interesting tones and noises one can make with it (I can be quite like a child, really, but frankly it’s fun) – I don’t delight in my computers making any untoward noises.

I can’t say that it was an ‘atrocious’ noise that the EntMac made on being powered up, but several things struck me:

– It’s very noisy
– The hard disk shouldn’t make that noise
– Both DVD drives have died

Which leads me to an unfortunate place. One in which I need to replace the main hard disk of the machine. The one that’s the boot drive. This is ‘annoying’ for several reasons.

One: It’s obsolete technology. Buying IDE harddisks now is somewhat painful. It’s not expensive, but it seems a waste.
Two: I don’t want to reinstall – but I’ve had no luck putting newer versions of OSx86 on this aged machine and there ain’t no-way I’m going back to Windows.
Three: It costs money, and I don’t want to spend it, but I also don’t want to have to re-rip and re-obtain a vast music collection.

The problem is the world’s moved on, a lot, since I built the machine. It’s an AthlonXP machine, which I built around 2005/6 using bits I acquired, mostly in 2004 but the chip’s tech is from around 2001… It’s the best of the two machines I had at the time, one of which is at my mum’s. The issue is…well… I want something better. HighDef didn’t really exist when it was built and it simply can’t decode video quickly enough. Partly this is the graphics card, but partly it’s the machine itself. It wasn’t highest-of-high tech at the time. It was low-to-low-mid range then.

I am, therefore, twisting in my dilemma. Made worse by the fact that I know that anything I did build now is likely to be junk; I don’t have the cash to splash on the kind of machine which would be what I want (silent, or very, very quiet – whilst having enough power to decode high-definition video; while I care not about gaming (although I want portal)).

Which all in all leads me to say: Poot.

I think it all comes down to how much it costs for Jejy and Rebecca. Should the garage ring with a figure for the former then I’ll be able to work out how much I’m wanting to spend on the semi-frivolous technological dream. Being a poor ethical geek is a pain in the arse.

So Nikki and her evil little helper book Electric Dreams have poked my brain in a fundamentally very annoying way.

When I was a kid I pointed out to my dad the clearly verifiable ridiculousness of cars. Cars are frankly, dumb. I love them, at least classics; I love their looks, I love their convenience (at least in theory), I love the beauty of some of the engineering, but they are at a most basic level dumb.

If cars didn’t exist and someone said:

“Hey, let’s all move ourselves around in individual 28 foot square tin boxes”

You’d look at them, and to misquote Feynmann, you’d say:

“I think that’s a bit nutty.”

…ideally complete with the New York accent.

But we’re sold on them, and despite much ponderence on the problem as a child (seriously, this is the kind of thing I thought about for fun) I couldn’t really see a solution which kept the concept on which we’ve been sold while making it even 10 times more sensible.

Making cars much smaller is a good plan, and I’m a devout believer in the small vehicle, the 340 being an exception because I’m more intrigued by the engineering than the car. And the only way to get that piece of engineering at a price we can afford is the Volvo. Anyhow.

So, the car is kind of a given. Our society is built around it and we all seem to believe that we’re entitled to move around rapidly and whenever we damn want, so pretty much all solutions are going to feature the car in some way, shape or form. But petrol engines, with the exception of Wankel engines, really are just taking-the-biscuit kind of ridiculous. And this from someone who really rather likes them. I mean, I love the A-Series engine, it’s a masterpiece of engine design, and it sounds lovely, at least in it’s smaller incarnations. The larger ones (like the 1.3 gracing Rebecca’s engine bay) have a kind of rough industrial thrashy musicallity at speed which I rather enjoy. But it’s dumb.

You want to see how dumb it is?

Go and run a hundred meters. Okay? Tiring, eh – at least if you sprinted it.
Now, let’s do a petrol equivalent.
Go and run back and forth 2 meters 50 times (or 25 times depending on how you’re counting it).

Now how’re you feeling, eh?

You’ve run the same distance but you’ve wasted *loads* of energy by stopping and turning around every 2 meters, and that’s what your petrol engine’d car does. Every flipping cycle. It’s patently dumb.

I grant it’s an exceptionally clever idea. It converts a linear, ‘splodey motion into a circular one. Which can make the big tin box go forward. But it’s dumb all the same.

Which is why I want my EV. I can’t have my EV because I don’t have the money, but when Rebecca’s 1300cc fast-road-cam equipped Ital derived engine finally passes from this Earth I plan to make her into a shiny, shiny EV.

And this is Nikki’s fault*.

On the plus side, despite what the government say, none of my cars contribute substantially toward global warming. Yes, they burn petrol and, because of my commute, a fair amount, but they’re all moderately efficient and have far less impact than the one transatlantic holiday we’d like to take this year. And since we try and buy a minimal amount of crap from *insert name of country currently producing useless cheap tat for consumers* then we’re only putting out food-shipping-miles and much less tat-shipping miles, so that’s all good.

While my green credentials remain tarnished (by having a car at all) they’re about as green as they could be with the current job and our finances. I feel less bad.

But cars, they’re dumb.

* It’s not only Nikki’s fault, mind. My dad pointed out to me the idiocy of this system of propelling a vehicle long ago, but I lost that in being fascinated by the engineering. I should have realised, the solution isn’t beautiful and therefore it’s not the right one.

So, yesterday we went into London. The plan was simple – we would head in, locate Oxfam Originals near Oxford Circus (or indeed Circuuussss), find clothes for myself and Kathryn, find an ethical shoe store for me, and find bras for us all! (Bras for EVERYONE!).

Yeah, it didn’t quite work out like that.

We were, I’ll grant, a little slow off the mark. Getting into London about 1, and because I’d opted for ‘drive to Turnham Green and tube it from there’ (saving us 10 quid less a couple of pence in petrol) we landed up in Chiswick. Chiswick is very nice, and we visited a few shops (including a very nice antique shop) and also bought lunch (at Crepe Parisienne, a really excellent crepe store with quirky but excellent customer service (the guy with the french accent, presumed to be french, is very friendly)) before making our way to Oxford Circus.

I have some vague recollection of hearing that Oxfam Originals having closed or moved, now I come to think about it. But I can’t find any evidence of it, except that despite being listed in phonebooks and websites all over the internet, it ain’t there. Ganton street is devoid of Oxfam Originals stores. This is annoying. However, we found some vintage places off Carnaby street and checked them out; interesting but nothing suitable…

And some git stood on my foot and managed to kick me on his way past and didn’t even apologise.

Anyhow, moving on swiftly.

So, we decided to engage another tourist favourite, Camden Market. I’d (after much searching) found that the only Ethical shoe place in the whole entirety of London was Jinga Shoes. (Or something similar). Unit 4a, Camden Stables Market. We made our way there.

Small is an understatement. They carry two ranges of very nice runners, and that’s it. I really tried. I’d looked up ethical brands (No Sweat, Ikon) and tried to find suppliers (everyone seems to think that buying shoes online is a great plan. Given that I tried on 3 pairs in one shop before deciding what size I wanted that would take a week on the internet shoe plan.

Anyhow, I gave in and bought Converse. I hate buying brand stuff which is expensive for brand’s sake and not because it’s ethical. The No Sweat one-star clones are virtually no more expensive. Gah. But since I’m a 7 in the Converse and a (Children’s) 6 in the Lonsdales I had before (couldn’t even find them this time), and am going to have to go and get runners which also won’t be ethical (since I need to break them in for my run which you all want to sponsor me for, and thus need them soon) I’m feeling the guilt a little.

It is seriously not-on that London does not manage one ethical shoe store. Although I did have a realisation of the problems faced by ethical shops.

As Kathryn stood with a large selection of clothes and carefully considered her way down to 4 items, on the basis that she really should not buy things that she’s already got something similar/equivalent to (a very valid, non-wasteful viewpoint. One which we’re both believers in*) – I realised that these poor Ethical shops do suffer. Because most people of the same bent as us don’t like consumer society we tend to wear clothes until they’re well past their sell-by-date, and similarly don’t tend to buy a great deal that’s frivolous pointless crap… well, they have to work harder to stay afloat.

We were hoping to make it to Fresh and Wild but it was after 7 by the time we got to Kensington on our route back, so we skipped it and went straight for dinner. It’s something I want to get back and visit; I’ve been meaning to do it for a while but it’s inside the congestion charging zone, so it either means getting the tube in and getting stuff, and carrying it back; or getting the train/tube in (more painful) or going at the weekend (painful, and we’d have to pay for parking). So I suspect it’ll remain a ‘when we get a chance’. It’s nice to go to these places just to see the range and variety – and because we live in Slough which has the crappiest range of whole-foods places, it’s easier to go to a supermarket somewhere else than to do lots of small shops. But I *like* shopping at small stores :-/

Anyhow, after the pause for the aforementioned frivolity we headed home, pausing only to consume a very good meal at the Lara Restaurant (also in Turnham Green). It’s a ‘Mediterranean’ restaurant and the food was delicious and very reasonably priced (especially for London). Finally we piled back in the car and headed home.

It was a very odd day. Some bits were really delightful, and some bits were incredibly frustrating. Anyhow, it’s time for a pancake brunch, so I must depart dear reader ;)

* Although I did buy a totally frivolous item yesterday – one which I have no need for, just think it would look cool.

Well, one of the other things which is sometimes quite cool working in the emergency department is that the whole and entire world walks in the doors (sometimes simultaneously, it seems). I’ve met some really interesting and awesome people. One of the people I met recently left me muttering ‘Stupid xenephobic little country’ (other people were agreeing with him), and wanting to go out and correct some of his (and their) many misconceptions.

It’s one of those things which ultimately challenges your nursing abilities; I’ve looked after a bloke who’s arms were covered in tattoos for right wing / nazi organisations; I think he was probably having nightmares as he was looked after by first me, and then an openly gay male nurse.

And you have to remember that these people are just as entitled to a high standard of care as the open minded, and frankly much nicer people who I enjoy looking after. Still, a challenge is good. Eh?

So, one of the things I worry most about is treating kids. Not so much the just-pre-teens, but the 0-to-6 ish group. The group who the best I can do in explaining is fundamentally that I need to make something ‘better’. The cut head, the sore tummy, it all comes down to ‘making it better’.

Something they’d much rather mummy did, and definitely much rather didn’t involve (at least in the case of cuts) touching the injured area.

My training, such as it is, didn’t bother with the niceties of children in any practical sense. My experience on the course with children being pure fluke – I got assigned to a Health Visitor for my community nursing (which was actually an incredibly positive experience, largely thanks to the awesome health visitor I worked with who worked very hard to relate her skills and experience to general patients and not just to children; but also took the time to get me more comfortable around kids*). That and a tiny bit of experience in the Children’s A&E was pretty much what it amounted to (oh and a lot of theory).

So when I started in A&E I was fairly phobic of anything involving children.

These days I crouch down on the floor, chat away to them, and am much happier about it all. But still, my heart sinks when I read my own triage notes (along the lines of ‘partial amputation / deglove – distal end 3rd digit’** (or – she’s chopped of the end of her finger, nearly)) and (having switched to treatments to get a break from triage) turn over to find ‘Referred to Plastics, to return tomorrow 0800’ and under ‘Treatment’ the request to dress the wound.

Bugger, I think.

And I take the notes, and hide in the treatment room for a few minutes steeling myself for what I’m sure is going to be a traumatic experience for us all. After all, there she was wailing a few minutes ago (although she’s much more settled now…).

I chat to our play leader and I go in and reintroduce myself to the worried parents, and spend a few minutes chatting to the girl in question. After some time we get to agreeing to wash the wound a bit (which is fairly grotty), and then carefully prepare the ‘making it better’ groundwork.

And despite my fears, 99% of the time they are incredibly brave – dealing with nasty wounds far better than quite a few of the adults; and the end of the finger in this case is popped more or less in the right place, dressed, and off she went.

But as our play leader said to me – if you go in expecting the worst, when they’re good, it’s much easier :)

* Although she did, just for her amusement test whether I’d get pee’d on while changing a baby boy’s nappy. Thankfully I was aware of what might well happen and was far too quick for him :)
** If a wound is bad enough but not bleeding, I’ll not go digging because the doctor’ll need to do that. So long as I can see it more-or-less…

So, progress has been made, sort of. I finally got around to calculating the hours I’ve done each year since I qualified; and popped them on the form for the CRNBC. I also remembered to ring the university and ask them for my ‘transcript’ which is a bargain at ’75 pounds’. Geeze! The CRNBC form is over 200 $CDN too, which is a bit painful.

When I get my copy of my transcript (I’m slightly confused about this, so far as I know only CRNBC need a transcript – but they give you two copies and she seemed completely phased by the idea that I might want a copy sent to me. I think I need to have a bit more of a check about this before I fork out 75 quid and get it all sent to the wrong place; but they won’t tell me the information I need for my application for a job…

Ack.

It’s far too confusing for my simple brain!

Still, hopefully we’ll be getting it together a bit more and we can head to Canada in the not too distant future; which really means in the week off after the next set of nights I need to pull my finger out and actually do some work on the house. Including, but not exclusively, fixing the stairs, probably reattempting to seal the shower base against the wall (it’s started to leak a bit again – it doesn’t appear to move at all, the silicone just declines to stick). Replacing the tap in the kitchen that cracked and calling the carpenter in to do the cupboard.

I also need to ring an interior decorator to get the ceilings done, and such.

Some re-invigoration of the Kate is required – I’m fairly ‘done’ with trying to sort the house, it being mostly inhabitable is the problem. When it was a dump then it was easy to find motivation to work on it – now it’s more or less fine, with just some ‘niggly’ jobs it’s not so easy to find the energy to sort it.

In other news, my camera continues it’s rapid descent into what I suspect is terminal decline. Yet again it’s toasted a set of batteries – the last set it’s getting. The zoom lens no longer zooms the way it should and is hideously crunchy; a sad, sad death for a good camera. I’m thinking of dinking with film for a while until the Micro 4/3rds format gets cheaper.

My big problem with SLRs is that when I go up a mountain or out for a walk, my entire bag is filled with lenses, filters, etc. I know that modern SLRs are much lighter than my aged AE-1, but even still, they’re much more weighty than my dinky little Minolta’s been. And Kathryn would end up carrying lunch, because there’s never any space to put it in my bag, which is very unfair.

So, while I really rather fancy having a play with a ‘real’ camera again for a bit – and am thinking of getting myself a stack of just-expired film to toy with, my final aim is to end up with the near-SLR of the Micro 4/3rds format.

Keeping in track with the order in the title, I feel I should introduce Chester:

This is the ‘sensible’ car I’ve bought. It’s still a Variomatic, but has modern things (like, uh… a multi-speed fan, heated rear window, heated seats) while still having quirky and interesting engineering lurking underneath. As I said yesterday there’s a few little jobs to do, but overall he looks in pretty good shape and has been trundling me up and down the motorway since I got him Taxed.

It looks like someone’s reversed him into something a bit solid – the back of the car has a bit of a dent under the bumper, and there’s a little scrape on the passenger side door, and so far I’ve seen a couple of small scabs but otherwise he’s in very good shape on top. Given the 272 quid price I didn’t bother inspecting the underside – but while he was in having his wheels balanced I had a quick look underneath and it looked pretty good.

So, hopefully Kathryn can nab him either when Jejy returns. Or when I get the bike MOT’d.

I don’t think I mentioned on here, but I did something silly. I positioned the ignition module of the bike in what I thought was a fairly protected area – and then waited for the *one* bit I needed for the MOT. That arrived, and I fitted it, and went to check it worked and there were no ignition lights. Why? Because the battery had discharged to 3 volts.

Oh.

The brand new bike battery was giving 3 volts.

And the ignition module was full of water.

Bollocks.

So I’ve turned it so that it’ll drain out, I’ll position it ‘somewhere else’ if it’s working when I reconnect the battery this weekend – if the battery’s charged. I’m trying to work out what colour to repaint her. The neon pink paint is totally non-colourfast and the top of the tank is nearly grey. So before Kathryn does her logo for me on her ( :) ), I’m thinking she should go another colour. I’m tempted by purple. My first MZ was purple (when I resprayed her) and looked quite cool (in my eyes, which is all that matters). Not as cool as this:

But pretty darn cool. So maybe metallic purple; it’d go well with the pink frame – however long that lasts :-/

And finally, in my fleet downsizing today we say ‘Goodbye’ to a trusted ‘zed. Cherry (red ‘zed) is going off to join Nikki’s fleet. Her plan is to convert her into an EV – the lightness of the ‘zed should be good for this; and thus I spent a few hours digging in the shed to pull out the ‘spares’ that are of no use to me. The spare round headlamp, the old switchgear, the little bikini faring, the old style indicators…

I hope that Cherry red gets a new lease of life, she took a lot of abuse with me, and never did get properly repaired, so maybe this is a blessing for her :)

So, I’m doing the Commando Challenge – for those who’ve forgotten (if you want to sponsor me, please say, ‘cos the more sponsorship the more I’ll feel better about my attempted self amelioration) and am ‘working up to’ running the 7 miles. Only I need to do more than 7 miles – because Slough is flat, and the course has the same topography as the lake-district in small.

I looked at the topography of the run yesterday and nearly wept. But still, today’s run was 5½ miles and I’m not dead. My knees are tired, my shins ache and my teeshirt smells faintly revolting. But I’m still moving and able to trundle up and down the stairs. So that’s awesome.

I’ve got just under a month to get to about 12 or so miles (uh, so the loop I’ve done today twice, plus maybe along to Burnham station). Easy. Once I can do that running through a few bogs and up a huge f-off hill and crawling through a tunnel filled with muddy water, it’ll be a walk in the park.

Still, I got back and felt *good*, as opposed to the first few when I got back and felt *exhausted*. So that’s good. It’s nice to be getting fitter again. We also went swimming a while back – and that was lovely too.

Anyhow, so, Car news. The car has been christened, but I can’t remember the name at the moment. Not Charles, but a C name of solidity. It’ll come to me. Chester, that’s it. Anyhow, in a fit of generosity and having spent last night sorting through the garage service invoices, and having spent some examining the absence of them for the last 16,000 miles I had a chat with a ‘Volvo specialist’ and a ‘Volvo dealer’. The end result is he is off to Volvo at the end of September for an actual garage service, a visual inspection of him and if I can’t find a solution in the mean time, a new heater hose and valve. The valve doesn’t work, which is annoying but not desperately so, but the hose has become porous and is gently oozing water. This brings us to the list of faults on the £272 pound Volvo:

– The radio works intermittently, and only when it’s in the mood.
– The wheels needed balancing (and indeed have been balanced this morning)
– The rear wash wipe appears to currently be a ‘wipe only’.

and most importantly, and continuing my uninterrupted run of success; the clock doesn’t work. It works if you set it, until it gets bored. This is essentially the same as the one in the Minor. I’m quite pleased. Somehow it’d be wrong if it worked.

Anyhow. Soon it’ll be time for lunch, so I need to go make it :)

So, with a little break in the middle we’ve spent a week touring physically, and a week having our minds enlarged ;)

So, let’s begin at the beginning. Late in the evening a heavily laden DAF (one with a cornucopia of spares, tools and indeed our luggage) clattered out from a quiet suburban street in Slough. Not the DAF we wanted to take; no; because that was stuck at a garage. Instead it was Vixy, the veritable home of light use that was to carry us around Europe*. Our ‘plan’ consisted of a ferry across to Calais (cheapest), then driving from there to Brugge (in Belgium). After that things got a bit hazy, plan wise, and involved the Ardennes, and Germany, and Luxembourg. That kind of thing.

We made it to the ferry in fine style, early, in fact. Really early. Despite a very relaxed drive down. They put us on an earlier ferry early, which was nice. Unfortunately, we still got to France at an hour which was quite revoltingly antisocial. It was cheap though, the ferry. Having got there we slipped silently off the ferry (hah) and trundled towards Belgium. About 4 or 5am I finally admitted defeat and we pulled into a Belgian service station, reclined the seats and slept for a few hours.

Day 0 (The extra, sleep deprived day, granted by taking a night-ferry).

The morning arrived and Vixy did her now traditional ‘I don’t really want to move’ dance. We shuffled slowly (slower than walking pace) in and out of the space, the engine refusing to rev and then after a minute or so she became her usual perky self and we made it out onto the motorway, the beautiful Belgian scenery flowing past the window. Big wide fields, gorgeous trees, small pretty farm houses. This was an improvement because much of what we’d seen so far was industrial Northern France and Belgium. Fairly quickly though we found ourselves in Brugge. Not that we had a map, of course. We had directions to the hostel (driving directions) written…from the train station. Eventually we found the station and…. after some navigation and a particularly hairy Vixy moment** and some terror thanks to them driving on the right and us on the left, and the steering wheel being positively, firmly located on the wrong side of the car****, we found the hostel. After some more illegal manouvers we found ourselves in the car park that’s conveniently located near the hostel who were very confused by our early entrance and inability to speak Dutch.

Both Kathryn and I can kind-of phrase-book and school-girl-French-arise our way in French. I couldn’t maintain a conversation, but I can ask for a cup of coffee. That kind of thing. Dutch though is a whole new and exciting opportunity for waving and gesturing and slowly reading phrases from a phrase book *[5]. I think they thought we wanted to check in, we just wanted to know where to park…

Eventually we got it sorted, sort of, and headed off (somewhat sleep deprived) into the gorgeous city that is Brugge. Okay, so it’s totally a tourist trap, but it’s a really incredibly pretty one. Having managed to find breakfast – a challenge because most shops in Belgium, apparently, don’t open until 10, we commenced wandering. Kathryn had bought a guide book – and we spent a very pleasant day sight-seeing.

We did the total tourist thing and had a little tour in a little boat – which turned out to be excellent. The tour guy was amusing and spoke in both English and Dutch, which meant we had a good idea what was going on and we got to see some wonderful views of the buildings from the Canals.

It also gave us a better idea of the geography of the city, which meant that once we’d disembarked and started promenading about the place we had a better idea of where we were in relation to where we might want to be.

Being a small wiggly city we didn’t get to see anywhere near all of the things that would have been great to see, but we did get to a very nice gallery, run by a very nice bloke who despite noting that we were clearly far too poor to actually buy any of the fabulous sculptures on display took the time to talk to us, and then even gave us some brochures for the pieces we particularly liked *[6]. Incidentally, the gallery in question was Absolut Art and is run by a very-nice-man.

We also toured their market, which had a huge selection of brass items, and generally wandered around. We ended the day eating cheap Belgian pizza, being attacked by belgian wasps and then going back to our hostel which, slightly frustratingly, turned out not to have a kitchen. I’ve never been to a hostel without a visitor’s kitchen before and was somewhat startled to not have one in this one. Not even a drinking water tap. After poking at the map we headed to bed…

Day 1 – Gent

Day one, the official first proper day of holiday (although the bonus extra Day 0 which would have been a travelling day had we got up at sensible time and got a sensible ferry) turned out much better than expected. Anyhow. Day one was to be half visit half travel. The aim being to get to the Ardenne region, where we had an idea of a campsite in which to stay.

The next morning we piled stuff into the DAF and set off. Well, actually, we piled stuff in the car and I conducted my first ever telephone-booking of a campsite in French.

It started ‘Parlez vous Anglais?” and when the apologetic ‘non’ came back from the other end, I something akin to:

‘Bein sur, um, Une moment si vous plait’*[5]

happened. But, apart from a lot of utterances of ‘pardon’ and him getting bored and giving up once the preliminaries were over, the end result of us booking a space was achieved, and we were terribly happy. And I was very impressed with myself.

I can’t say she was keen though, Vixy. She seemed to have other ‘sitting still and not moving’ plans and when she was coaxed into going some of the noises eminating from the clutch region weren’t…well…quiet. We headed off into traffic though and made our way down to Gent (or Ghent). Conveniently, Gent is served by an excellent tram system and we parked out at Flanders Expo – saving the DAFs clutch for non-town related driving and hopped on the Tram. It would have been easier if we’d’ve not lapped the car-park and Ikea which is at the Gent Expo site and found ourselves back out on the main road (and then worked our way back in), but all the same, it was easier than driving in an unknown city.

Gent is much more of a real city, I suppose. Less touristy, apparently where all the “young” people go from Brugge – and perhaps more interesting for it. It’s also home to S.M.A.K. – an excellent modern art museum, in which we spent a good chunk of our brief time in Gent. Sadly, because we were travelling most of the day, we only had ’til just after lunch – a lunch bought in part from a shop that has apparently not changed since the 1950s. It’s near the market place and is curiously 1950s-y. The chap running it is sat in a box by the counter with a big glass screen. The protective value of this was somewhat diminshed by the door being open and him sticking his hand out to hand us the bag of stuff.

We did buy some very nice fruit ‘tea’ which consists, essentially, of dry fruit. And we also bought some Belgian fruit beer to go with lunch. It was only while we munched on lunch that we noticed the reason for the discount price on the beer; it was about 2 months out of date. Tasted fine though :)

Having wandered around the very-pretty-gent we finally hopped back on the tram and ended up back at the car. On we went to the Ardenne. I can’t say the journey to our campsite was one of the most fun I’ve ever had. It turns out the engine was somewhat further advanced than is ideal, which potentially explains the sensation that she might be overheating a bit, and also the somewhat unkeen to head up hills sensation we got. As we struggled over the hills, I did start to worry that my internal decision to not get the car repaired in Gent was the wrong one.

But she struggled to the campsite. Not actually in to the campsite, not initially, that somewhat embarrassing experience was saved for later. First we stopped outside the campsite and wandered in, checking that this was the relevant site and where we should park up. We returned to Vixy who decided she wasn’t going to, under any circumstances, go into the campsite. Or move off the gravelled slope on which she was stopped. After backing her up a few times and running her at the slope a very nice group of walkers who’d been watching our painful antics offered a push. A good push and she screeched and clattered her way into the campsite and thankfully up the hill to the random spot I chose to park in.

We popped up the tent (very easy it was too) and wandered cooked a fine meal courtesy of Carrefour. This was a delightful campsite, very quiet, the camping area was not huge but it did have a vast caravan area – which was beautifully kept by the residents. And we got to camp right next to the stream.

Kathryn, in that picture, doing the “Kate’s taking photos of me again” look, again. It was just gorgeous though, and while neither of us slept particularly well during our first night under canvas, and it proceeded to rain almost all of the following day, the campsite was a joy.

Days 2-4, La Roche en Ardenne

Our second day in La Roche en Ardenne (the first being wet and involving mostly us pottering around, a quick look in a gallery, and a lot of rushing between shops; oh and a medieval market during which we resisted purchasing a lot of things) was spent going for a wander. Kathryn had located the tourist information the previous day and we headed out on one of their circular walks. The countryside around La Roche en Ardenne is very pretty, and I have no photos of it*[7].

By Day 4 it became apparent that the AA were having as much luck with European garages as I have with Sloughean ones. We requested a hire car and were given a HUGE car. An MPV. 2 people and a 2 person tent in an MPV. It was silly, and I was somewhat confused by the fact that the MPV had a smaller boot than the DAF had anyhow.

Still, it started and stopped and was LHD which was exciting and different and it’s always good to practice things like driving a LHD manual car for the first time on someone elses car.

Sadly, fetching the car consumed most of Day 4, mostly because we spent much of it staring at a counter in a Belgian car rental place because the person who collected us and who had gathered from our broken and stilted French didn’t actually tell anyone why we were there, and we both assumed that he was doing something related to getting our rental car. It turned out he wasn’t, and eventually Kathryn prompted things and we got the car, and then went and fetched stuff out of Vixy.

Day 5 – Luxembourg (the country)

The next day, equipped with new wheels we trundled into Luxembourg. I’m just reading “I wouldn’t start from here” – a book which has a somewhat negative opinion of Luxembourg, but I think the place is rather nice. Everyone seemed polite and it was very pretty. By sheer fluke or Kathryn-memory we stopped for lunch in a little village called Esch-sur-Sûre. This, it turns out, is a very pretty place straddling a mountainous ridge.

It’s also a place which appears to have no shops. It has lots of restaurants, a fun little Medieval castle thing (in which people were re-enacting, which was fun, and had tupperware out on the table which I thought was slightly less authentic than it could have been). Having wandered up and down all the streets we could find, we concluded that perhaps lunch at a cafe might be the only possible solution to our foodly requirements and found a dinky little place with a very nice little balcony on which we ate a very pleasant lunch…

I still have no idea where the inhabitants of Esch-sur-Sûre eat.

We then continued our quest to reach the campsite. Unfortunately, we were somewhat spoilt by the La Roche en Ardenne site, and the first of our possibles was quickly removed from the list. Not before we got there, mind. We got there, and then I said I wasn’t keen and we could instead drive back to the previous one.

The previous one wasn’t as nice as the La Roche one either, but was pleasant and clean. While the AA caravan and camping guide described it as rural, I’d say it was more outskirts of town. It was the only time we put our tent-pegs in without any bending though, which was quite nice :)

Day 6 – Luxembourg, the City

After a little debate we scrapped plans to stay for an extra night and headed down to Luxembourg, our entire camp in the boot. Luxembourg, as in the city, is also very beautiful. Built on wildly uneven ground with deep valleys carved through the landscape, beautiful trees, and some utterly gorgeous buildings.

We did spent quite a lot of the day quite lost, failed to find several things we were looking for, but also found a pretty little chapel, an interesting museum, and a very nice park. The museum had one of the most interesting display spaces I’ve seen, being in this case the basement of the museum, one display of which is particularly memorable for being mouldy chocolate spread. A lot of it. Really a lot. We left that room quite quickly.

This time our campsite was much better. To be honest, still not as good as the La Roche en Ardenne one, but the people were nice, the site was clean, we got to be by a stream again (this may all explain why I was devoured by mosquitos while on holiday). It took some finding though, the first site we tried was clearly very popular as it was full, but the very nice campsite owner did then try and find us somewhere else that could take us. Which was very generous – given that we’d just rocked up.

Anyhow, yet again the Trangia was broken out and more gourmet meals prepared (I really enjoyed cooking on the Trangia acutually, the simplicty of it was very pleasant).

Day 7 – The Mosel

This new campsite enabled us, the next day, to head across into Germany and the Mosel valley. We pootled around and down to Cochem where, after a bit of debate and an unfortunate wasp related encounter*[8] we made our way up to the castle. The castle at Cochem is a bit of an oddity, rebuilt in the 19th century it’s sort of a hybrid with the external looking all castley, and the inside being less so. It has some utterly fantastic interiors though, the chap who rebuilt it having some incredible techniques applied, and also collecting some incredible furniture.

I’d been hoping to visit a vineyard and pick up some wine in the Mosel, because I am weak and I like wine. It didn’t look like this was going to happen though, because the as we headed back looking simultaneously for ‘somewhere nice to eat’ and ‘a vineyard that looks like they do tastings’ it seemed likely that we were somewhat late.

However, Kathryn spotted an open cellar with a sign outside; a quick doubleback and lo, there was a cellar filled with wine. We stuck our heads in and looked around – there was no one there – but then there came a shout from above. The bloke who owns(?) it had an excellent plan. He lies on the balcony over the entrance sunbathing and keeping an eye out for interlopers desiring fermented grape drinks, and when they arrive greets them then heads down.

We used broken German and pointing, and his limited English and ended up with two bottles of delicious red wine, which our now in our cellar :)

And then we found a nice quite spot for dinner. We had much entertainment attempting to decipher the menu (in German), my Schoolgirl German and the phrasebook failing us somewhat. Eventually though we both ended up with nice food, and then headed home to our comfy tent.

Day 8 – Home again, via Lille

Our final day was mostly driving and a brief stay in Lille. Lille had much that we wanted to visit and very little that we successfully visited. I forgot the map of Lille (which I think remained in the DAF), however we again met some very nice and very polite people (I really feel disheartened about British society after this. Everyone was nice and polite, or generally so; everywhere was cleaner; there was so much less CCTV; oh… I could go on) – including Lille’s underground staff who spent ages giving us directions to somewhere which it ultimately became apparent would take us far too long to visit. The food in their market was yummy though (the Lille market, not the underground’s market).

Anyhow, we settled at a very pleasant cafe for lunch where Kathryn had some phenominally lovely tea (Imperial Wedding Tea), and we ran into a very nice chap called Copernicus.

Then we headed home, and after some highly chaotic shuffling of cars arrived back in the UK… so that was our holiday in continental Europe. Then we went to Edinburgh… but that’s another post altogether.

* For a small value of ‘around Europe’.
** Pulling off a motorway on a blind bend / high concrete walled slip road we went to pull onto the road we wanted and she decided that instead she’d like a rest. A rest without the engine running, which was quite hot after all those motorway miles, thank you very much. She did restart but I was angsting a little.***
*** Quite a lot. And there was a new noise. Not very loud, but definately ‘there’.
**** Actually, driving on the right was fine, but it has broken my brain. Previously I associated LHD with driving on the Right and RHD with driving on the Left. Now either will do for either, which leads to me saying comforting things to Kathryn like ‘We drive on the left here, don’t we’?
*[5] Your conversation is important to us; please wait while we read slowly to you from a phrase book.
*[6] Dirk De Keyzer’s work at the Absolut gallery springs to mind, it was fabulous.
*[7] The little AA battery charger required the car bonnet to be open (because I’d not bothered to fit a cigarette lighter), which would be fine, but it was raining, and so the batteries were flat. Then the car went off to have ‘work done’ (which never materialised), and the charger went with it (without thinking).
*[8] It decided to crawl across my lip, thankfully not stinging me, but leading to me, in an icecream shop making frantic ‘Mmmueh! Mmmmueh!” noises at Kathryn and trying to attract her attention. My mum’s allergic to bee and wasp stings and I’ve only been stung once. It’s normally the second time when you find out if you’re allergic.