Category: General

So, I said I thought I was coming down with something. I did try and see my GP but there weren’t any emergency appointments left; so while at work I asked one of the doctors to have a quick peer down my throat.

About 30 seconds later I was booking myself in, so that my antibiotics could be prescribed, and he told me I should take a few days off. I finished off my shift tho’

I feel not rubbish, but not well. And have consistently had a temperature through the day. I think I’ve got one now, too. So at least tomorrow off, and I’ll see how I’m feeling midday tomorrow for the next day :-/

So all week (after my 77hour week before; just in case I’d not mentioned that) I’ve had a bit of a sore throat. It’s mainly gone away so long as I’ve drunk plenty in the morning, but it’s been there quite definitely for the last couple of days, needing plenty of fluids through the day to chivy it away. It was quite specific when it was there; on the right side of my throat and nowhere else.

Today I’ve been feeling generally knackered; more so than the slightly late bed-time yesterday and the busyiness of the week that we’ve had should prompt. Finally, since the pain’s spread to my right ear too (and it’s an annoying niggly pain) I peered down my throat using the bathroom mirror. One of my tonsils is quite big and red.

Which seems unfair.

Still, we did get a new toilet seat (which Kathryn’s fitted, and which is much, much nicer than the manky one we saved from the old bathroom); a new bathroom bin (which is more bathroom appropriate than the old office bin); cleared out the wardrobe for the arrival of the carpenter; obtained 2 new deckchairs (one of which appears to be somewhat frustratingly missing a bit, so I’ll have to pop over to B&Q tomorrow); I ordered the tool for the car; moved the records downstairs (so the carpenter can carpent, or whatever it is they do); moved the 13″ Rims from the van (to be returned tomorrow); attempted to get Kwik Fit to fit tyres to the new wheels (they don’t have any stock); Tried to decide if they’ll actually hold pressure so I can drive to Kwik Fit; and laid on the bed for a while going ‘blurgh’.

Oh, and listened to the ‘new’ A.M. CD – which arrived – along with the present for Kathryn (Alix Olson).

Oh, and hired a car for next week.

And we cleaned the bathroom, the bedroom and some of the kitchen…

All in all it’s been positively busy around here :)

Trying to make decisions is hard, especially when people go around making them harder. I arranged for a courier company to move the bike…2 weeks ago. I’ve not heard hide-nor-hair from them since. Which lead me to contemplate hiring a van and fetching it myself. Honestly? The cost is pretty much the same, but it’s way more hastle. So, my other plan, cunning as it was was to use the van to go and fetch the bits for the DAF which I oh-so-desperately need, from Colchester, which is where they be lurkin’.

Unfortunately, the guy who’s got them informed me that he can’t do it this week. This relates to a conversation about parts that started back in April! He can, possibly, do it on Saturday.

I’m seriously, therefore, debating habing the van for four days. Inconvenient it might be, but at this point I’m a bit desperate. With the van I can theoretically have the car up and running by Monday, and potentially the bike too.

Without it, I’m unlikely to have either.

…and I checked with the courier company; they’re not up for picking up the bike this week, so I’m going to go fetch in the van I’ve hired, which oddly was cheaper to hire for 4 days than just for the weekend. So Saturday is a go for getting car bits.

Sunday is a go for putting the car together, I hope.

Progress on the car’s been good anyhow. New rings ordered (today), ring expander/compressor ordered (yesterday), engine out, clutch shoes sent off, need to get that new drum fitted and I’ve even got some stuff to tidy up the engine bay. I used some vicious planet destroying engine cleaner yesterday and it was incredible. The engine went from being like this:

To being like this:

There’s still much to be cleaned, but I forked out for two more of the viciously expensive cleaners today. Also forked out for some VHT paint to tart up the old-new inlet manifold to replace the one that’s all cracks. It’s blue, because that’s all that Jagdev had in. It’s cool though, because the plug leads and the new silicone vacuum hose is all blue. She’s going to be all bling/pimp’d ;)

I’ve also got some spray paint so I’m going to give the bonnet a quick coat of paint too.

But right now I’ve got to go and hunt for the stuff for teaching kids about plaster ‘n stuff. I’ve not got a sling otherwise which is a bit of an annoyance. The rest of the stuff I’ve got :)

So, this week I’m very busy. Shower, 2 cars and a motorbike to fix. To reduce the amount of work I got the engineer who worked on the Viva to look at one of the DAFs. To say he looked scared is an understatement. He looked like I’d just shown him the devil, incarnate, in car form. Only 2 cylinders? Horizontally opposed? What new evil is this?!

He wandered off saying he’d think about it, and then a few days ago decided that he’d not be willing to stretch his engineering skills by tackling a horizontally opposed twin. He did suggest a company that will, thankfully. Unfortunately, this doesn’t get me any closer to having the car actually running.

I’m going to ring my pet garage and beg, plead, grovel with them to do a clutch change on Vixy – a job which only involves sending the clutch shoes to bloody glasgow.

Anyhow.

I also have, as I said, the shower to tackle. Since having the unblocking guy around it’d leaked, much worse than before, indeed we’d actually stopped using it.

I spent the week beating myself up in my sleep, waking feeling down on myself, and poking myself mentally in the eye for my poor quality plumbing. Irony of ironies, and unfortunately after I’d ripped up two tiles and chipped a third (so that’ll have to come up too); there’s nothing wrong with my plumbing.

There was, however, a loose seal on the pressure reducing valve for the shower.

Drip drip drip went the valve (to paraphrase Judy Garland, apparently). Having turned the water off, removed the offending valve, tightened up the seal on it and put it back, the drip, drip, drip, appears to have stopped.

I hope I’ve got enough tiles to put it all back… I’m going to spray it with bleachy mould killer and leave it a few days to dry out all the same.

Anyhow, drip check, then phonecalls.

Please stop beating me with sticks, it’s getting very tiring and slightly disheartening.

In the last 2 weeks:
– Shower blocked in such a way as to be unblockable with a snake.
– MZ – died.
– Jejy – died.
– Vixy – died (well, she’s still moving but I don’t want to damage her clutch drum).
– Shower unblocked by Dynorod people, now leaking badly.

Next week I have scheduled:
– Take up three tiles in the bathroom (pray I’ve still got spare tiles), cut through and remove floor to get to the joint that I think is leaking, detach, clean, reattach.
– Strip engine out of Vixy, change clutch and exhaust, reassemble (assuming blokie sends me clutch shoes and they can re-con them in time). Ideally renew brake pipes.
– Strip engine out of Jejy and take to be reconned, change clutch drum and shoes, change exhaust.
– Put together and MOT pirate charlie
…
…
I could do with there being several of me next week.

Why is it the night before nights, as I stay up, I always end up feeling sad and lonely. Is it Kathryn sleeping away (hopefully) peacefully above me while I ponder the imponderables of my life? Is it that pool of sadness my counselor talked about back when I was in counseling? Is it that I often end up thinking about my dad?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that remembering that we got ID’d buying cider (in with our normal shop) cheers me up. I believe I went ‘woo!’ and threw my arms up in the air. ‘You look under 21’… Woo! I say.

Grey hairs and all :)

Anyway, we watched Star Trek tonight which, apart from the short skirts on women thing (why with the short skirts on the women? Why?), was very good. Very very good. My faith in the Star Trek people is somewhat restored.

I hate application forms. That is all.

And with it rain. Lots and lots of rain. Lots and lots and lots.

I’ve been intending to work on the cars this weekend, had heard (vaguely) that the forecast wasn’t great, but had hoped that it’d be dry enough for me to do some work. It is raining and raining and raining, and the forecast is for more of the same.

Much more.

Fortunately, the long term forecast for after the week of nights looks positive. I may have to spend an entire week working on the cars to get them roadworthy again. Vixy may be running so badly because of the exhaust problems, apparently. With no easy way to repair the rusting shell of an exhaust, she’ll have to wait until the replacement arrives. The two front sections continue to wait on the very nice bloke who’s got them having a chance to get a shipping quote for them, the wheels for Jejy and something else (I forget what). The weather also means that Vixy’s door is going to sit in the shed, unpainted, for a while longer.

And means that Jejy’s going to continue to leak for a week longer. I was hoping to do a quick run round both front and rear windows with mastic, but that’s now off the cards until the weather’s dried out the seals again. It looks like that week is going to be absolutely packed with vehicular entertainment.

Stressing me out though is that this week I need to drive and Jejy isn’t going anywhere, and Vixy is not the keenest to start at the moment. I hope that I can get this all sorted. I’m trying to be positive about it; which is a bit of a challenge, considering I’ve gone from 3 running vehicles (and one off the road just because of parts) to one running vehicle, which to be honest isn’t running very well.

Still.

Oh, and to round off the list of near-disasters; it appears I forgot to pay April’s council tax. I got a letter at the beginning of may saying ‘oi, you’ve not paid it’, but ignored that thinking it referred to the council tax I’d just paid. They obviously don’t bother with sending you a second letter.

So now we have to pay the tax for the entire year (bother) immediately, either that or I can stand up in court and go “uh, I’m an idiot and didn’t actually read the letter properly”. I hate paying the council in some ways, mostly because while the recycling scheme locally is much better than it was it’s not really ‘good’ as such. They only take plastic that’s ‘bottle shaped’; they only take tetrapak cartons if you carry them yourself to Tesco. All our waste now, pretty much, consists of stuff with recycling symbols on and text proclaiming ‘most councils collect this’; ours not coming under most. And Slough’s policy of destroying anything remotely interesting or historic and replacing it with the most unexciting and bland architecture makes the place as utterly soulless as you can imagine.

I was chatting, at work, with someone else who lives in Slough and we agreed that the best thing that could happen is for all of the denizens of Slough (literally, all of them) to move out. Move anywhere. Away. And then to let the place be reclaimed by nature (potentially after a brief fit of bulldozing). Perhaps there should be some kind of resettlement scheme where people from Slough are located in bohemian and indie neigbourhoods; thus enabling them to reestablish contact with culture and beauty and all the things Slough’s missing.

Anyhow, I need to look and see if the weather’s improved enough for me to look at Jejy and see if I can work out why she’s suddenly running like crap.