Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • ah, summer.

    So, with the arrival of summer-like-weather (yes, I know it’s spring, but it’s also bloody hot), comes the tradition of whining about hayfever. I’ve not got *that* much to whine about (yet); apart from the frequently runny nose and sniffling, oh and the sneezing. And the eyes that while not desparately itchy are, well, itchy.

    I wanted to get on the Sublingual Immunotherapy (or quite honestly the Subcutaneous Immunotherapy) trials but no, my GP failed to actually do anything. The alledged referal to a local immune system specialist? Well, either they’ve got the world’s longest waiting list or he didn’t actually bother.

    So another year of itching and eyedrops approaches. At least this year I’m saving on contact lenses I can’t wear because of my failure to get around to having an eye test!

    In other, less whiny, news. I spent yesterday sorting out Brick ready for sale. He’s up on ebay now, so hopefully, the sunny weather will bring out the classic car desiring peeps, who will bid vastly over his expected value to bring me some money.

    It took most of the day though; washing, drying (‘cos it was so hot that otherwise the water dried in big streaks), cleaning the interior, spraying the interior with hideous “Outside Fresh” turtlewax interior shine stuff – which distressingly failed to fulfil it’s containers claims (“returns [vinyl/plastic interior parts] to pristine condition”). But did make them look shinier.

    So, today I’m going to do a bit of cleaning (I’ve swept the bedroom and put my clothes away), and read my ‘streaming guide’ for it turns out I’m getting a new skill at work. Not Triage, but Streaming. I’m listening to Peel Night (having been reading John Peel’s Margrave of the Marshes I’ve been having a resurgence of desire to listen to Mr Peel himself. I’d like to get my hands on copies of the Home Truths show too; but that seems a little unlikely), shall have my tea, clean the kitchen and then set to on my assigned reading.

  • DSM-V objectionality

    So, Kathryn spotted a link to this petition which is objecting to the DSM-V comittee’s members consisting of a individuals who pathologise gender identity disorder. I know quite a few TS people and while I’ve met some thorough nutcases, I also know some truly wonderful people who happen to also be TS. GID is something that the individuals appointed to the committee believe can be ‘cured’ with reparitive therapy; something they’ve tried on queer folk for quite some time with no real success.

    Mostly, it seems to produce very screwed up people.

    These members of the comittee have links to Narth (who advoctate reparitive therapy for homosexual and other queer individuals), the human biodiversity institute (a eugenics group who advocate for more research into the “racial IQ gap”), and to be honest scare the pants off me.

    If they start to pathologise GID more…and gain credibility for their theories through inclusion in the DSM-V (rather than, say, finding any actual research to support their theories which didn’t rely on wildly skewing the subjects towards those who fit their theories) it leads towards worrying steps backward in the DSM, and a danger to everyone queer. .

  • Have you ever seen the film Brazil…

    Only.

    Our COA was sent back as ‘your payment details were wrong / card declined / some other card related payment problem’ . The problem is they don’t send back the payment page.

    My credit card has a whacking great limit on it (not for the sake of pride I say this, but because banks are foolish and upped my credit limit every time I neared the limit on the card for a long time). So despite my urge to ring them and hurl abuse at them for being idiots, I rang and politely asked if I could find out what happened because otherwise we’re just sending back exactly the same information again.

    Their response is brilliantly useless. 

    “We don’t send back payment details for security reasons” – okay, that makes a vague degree of sense. Although you’ve just told me they’re either wrong or the card’s being declined. If I’d stolen the card, surely I’d know the number off the stolen card already. And wouldn’t using a fraudlent card be spectacularly dumb when contacting the Home Office? Anyhow.

    “We can’t tell you what went wrong.” – Uh, ookay. So I can’t find out what the problem was, so I can’t actually rectify it. All we can do is do it *again* and see if the same thing happens.

    There is, apparently, no way to compare the number on my card to the number that they read off the form. No way to find out whether they match. No way to find out if it was declined or if the card number was wrong (and as a side point what’s the point in us giving them a contact phone number if they don’t fucking *ring* it).

    So, we now have to fill in the same fracking form (no, we can’t send back the old one with a new payment page) and send it back to them. For 300 quid you’d expect some degree of service. But no. And at 50 quid a page, it’s not cheap (several of those pages consist of ticks).

    I’m sure Canada’s beaurocracy is just as dumb as ours, but I’m fucking glad I’m planning to leave this country.

  • Gardens, headaches and things of significance.

    So, my head hurts.

    I’ve no idea why, although possibly the 30 odd hours with an hour or so of sleep in the middle during which we gardened, shopped, I did a complete night shift at work, and so on, that might explain why every time I move my head it feels like I throw a large brick against the side of my head.

    I did try going outside for a walk, and I’ve been drinking plenty of water, but it’s all not helped. Which is saddening.

    Anyhow, I mentioned that we did gardening, we also went to the garden centre (to get plants to do gardening with) – this has resulted in our garden going from a huge pile of rubble (which sadly I have no photos of) to this:

    We’ve got what we’re hoping will develop into a nice flower bed, and a also a nice veggie patch. The flowers already smell nice in the sun too; using a trick from Bristol, the path’ll be covered over with gravel (to hide the concrete), and we have plans for a small bog-garden, a raised bed (where the coal shed used to be, or possibly outhouse), and a bit of lawn. Decking is still part of the plan too.

    Other than that; I’ve been around to the back-garden-adjoininger responsible for the slow collapse of the shed (the back wall’s giving up due to them undermining the foundations) and given them a letter saying I want a new shed. On the way back I was witness to a lot of high-speed driving by police and general bemusment of peoples because – I am unreliably informed – a youth was ‘waving a gun around’. I didn’t see any youths with guns, thankfully. But I did see a lot of people milling. Now, I’m sorry, but my plan on hearing ‘youth running around with gun’ wasn’t to stand there like some sort of startled dugong, but was instead to head to the house (not, I grant you with any particular urgency, but more because it was where I was going and I reckon being inside was better than being outside in such a situation). One imagines that lots of milling around people must annoy the police.

    Of course, people do like to stare at things. On my last night, on my way to work there was an upside-down car and a lot of flashing lights on the opposite carriageway of the motorway; this, one imagines, was an accident. What this might require from someone travelling in the opposite direction is a quick glance (ideally nothing at all, but I’m human and my interest is piqued, especially ‘cos I like to know what might be at work waiting for me). What it doesn’t require is letting your foot off the throttle, dropping speed from 80->65, then actually braking to slow down more and get a better look, when you’re in the centre lane of the opposing carriageway. Doing this when I’m behind you leads to me hitting the horn, flashing the lights and also hurling abuse in your general direction. It’s dangerous and annoying… 

    In other news (I might post about work in a bit, given that I’ve done 3 loads of laundry and we’ve not got any newspapers kicking around), Brick’s for sale. He’ll do ’til the end of the week with just posters in the car, and then come thursday I intend to run him round to the jetwash, take lots of photos of the clean’d brick and pop him on e-bay. The DAF Welder is coming on Thursday, so hopefully the DAF’ll be returning to the road shortly. Of course, he may turn up and give me a quote that’s entirely insane, in which case I’ll be calling the other welder.

    It’s weird, I find it so hard to take time off. Today is basically my only full day off in a run of 9 shifts, and it was only yesterday morning I came off nights. But to take the whole day off seems excessive somehow. I guess doing laundry and writing a letter’s hardly challenging, but hey. I’m going to stop there because this post’s taken hours to write and been completely rambly. In other news, my headache’s gone :)

  • Tax

    An open letter to the PM

    I must admit that while I take a fair interest in politics, to a degree through self interest, but also through a desire for a unified and evidence based approach to the environment, I hadn’t really been watching the political (and more importantly) the tax situation that carefully.

    And therefore this is, to some degree, an issue I should have been aware of – and indeed preparing for. But then it wasn’t so hugely advertised, and politician’s depressing practice of spinning news rather than providing information may have contributed to my failure to notice. But the abolishion of the 10p tax rate has left us (my partner and I) facing a dramatic shortfall in our finances.

    Both of us; sadly; are foolish to work in the public sector. I am a nurse, and my partner is a teaching assistant. While your delightful government ministers are paid a miserly £61,000 (which must make it awfully difficult to cope), our *combined* salary weighs in at a substantial 35,000 (that’s with me working nights and weekends).

    Only, thanks to your tax changes, we suddenly find that almost £80 a month has suddenly vaporised. And while you harp on about the over 60’s on low wages, you seem to have forgotten those under 60. Those who don’t get winter fuel allowances, and in the case of my partner, those without recourse to public funds. In other words, you’ve taken a huge chunk of our not substantial funds, and we can’t get them back.

    The only thing for us to do is to:
    (a) stop working for the public sector (my plan).
    (b) work more hours (we’re both trying to do that).
    (c) stop eating healthy ethical food and switch to supporting child slavery and human rights abuses (we’re trying to avoid doing that).
    (d) leave.

    Thanks so much, and remember it’s not just people over 60 who vote.

    As a side point; I used to care about working in the NHS, now I only stay there because the NHS is the only place I can do the job I want…. until we leave this country taking the skills of a trained specialist nurse, and an incredibly talented TA with us.

    Yours, annoyed as hell.

    Kate.

  • Incoherant ranting

    So, whilst I’m frequently prone to bounts of incoherent ranting, they don’t often end up on here… but I have just seen the election results. And seriously? BNP on the London Assembly, Boris Johnson elected mayor. I don’t even have the words. BNP representing one of the most multicutltural places in the UK?

    I guess it’s all just fuel for my desire to leave the UK, but it also fills me with a sadness that the BNP’s intolerance has been allowed to flourish. I find it abhorent that people are spreading such hatred. I suppose in comparison the election of the conservative puppet Boris is just a depressing drop in the ocean. But it just brings a depressingly right-wing impression to London.

    And I liked Red Ken, he was nuts and he scrapped the Routemasters in a hideous act of environmental stupidity*; but hey.

    * Busses which effectively last forever, have the possibility to be modified for wheelchair access and can have modern low/er emission engines fitted. What’s not to like? Apart from the fact they’ve been scrapped.

  • y’what?!

    So, as I wait for my Viva’s exhaust to arrive I’ve been riding the ‘zed to and from work. Thankfully, given the extent of the rain yesterday, they let me come home early (to be fair we’d just had a faxed-through flash-flood warning) and the bair-hugger did a grand job of getting my boots dry enough for me to be able to ride (despite wearing my walking gear and my bike gear my arse still got wet though).

    I’d hoped the exhaust would arrive today; not least because of the weather…

    Anyhow, so I’ve been lurking around the internet today and I found this. Am I alone in being appauled that Mazda is crushing nearly 5000 new cars because there might be something wrong with them. Sure, if they looked and found that brakefluid’d leaked out all over the car, or that the engine bay was filled with oiley-watery-sludge then fine, okay, strip them for spares. But they’re destroying the *wheels*. Wheels? Do wheels mysteriously get damaged by tilting them at 60 degrees?

    Interiors? Are they unsalvageable?

    *le sigh*.

    I also went on the hunt for the previously mentioned TCO report on older cars – which I’ve heard of – from the SMMT of all places, which still said that owning older cars was better than buying new ones. Unfortunately, I can’t find my reference to it (which I think was in Practical Classics) and can only find the ‘green car’ booklet which alledges 10% of pollution coming from manufacture and 5% from recycling (although this from my quick scan suggests around 20% from manufacture). I’d like to find a good and at least less biased reference on whether I’m right about driving an older car. It makes sense to me that keeping it on the road longer is better than recycling it and driving a new one. Of course, not driving at all is better still; but until I live somewhere were nurses are actually paid a reasonable sum of money then I’m not going to be able to live near where I work, and thus driving is a necessity (unless public transport suddenly manages to cater for people who need to get to and from work at late and early times of the day).

    Anyhow, now that rant’s over and done with. I’ve called a welder and am going to have to arrange for him to come around on monday to look at the DAF. I’ve also written the ad for the Viva – but I’ll go and fork out a few quid for a jetwash before I photograph it – and shan’t do that until the DAF is decided upon. I also need to make a run to my mum’s to collect the ramps and the jacks and suchlike.

    Anyhow, I should go shower….

  • Zines

     So, today we had a discount London day, heading to the London Zine Symposium. Kathryn and I have discussed (her suggestion, and an awesome one at that) the creation of a zine for a while; and while we were in Brighton I spotted the card advertising it, and so we headed in today…

    …and it was cool. There were many zines to be had, and even at the discount zine price of £0.50 – £1 which most zines occupy we managed to spend a fair few quid. Not helped by my picking up a self-published book (I nearly got the Rick Dakan / Geek Mafia book too, but had run out of change) and some of the other more spendy things.

    We also had some very nice cake (well, I had cake, Kathryn had muffin); we were very good and took our food with us tho’.

    Anyhow, it has reawakened a desire to do a zine, although with my mind working the way it does it’d probably best be called ‘off topic’ ;) but one of the things I also fancied, and discussed with Kathryn is whether we could get hold of a banda machine to reproduce it. I’ve always fancied playing with one and did try to convince my parents to let me grab one when the school chucked them (in the end we rescued an ancient photocopier, but ended up stripping it for entertaining bits, like the eye-damagingly-bright light because it was totally knackered) but never ended up with one.

    However, finding a spirit duplicator (or gestetner as I call them (I have a feeling roneo-vickers made them too)) has turned out to be harder than I thought. Whilst I knew it was obsolete technology of the most obsolete kind I imagined it’d still lurk on e-bay. But no. Searches for spirit duplicator / ditto (the US name) / banda and roneo-vickers have revealed a marked absence of anything. I tried Slough’s freecycle without so much of a whisper… I fear that this may be a plan that fails.

    Of course, I think we’d also have to find a dot-matrix printer to produce the original on, too. But I love the idea… So, I know this is hardly a well read journal, but some of my friends work in education, or are at uni, so could ask around. If any of you can find a 24pin dot matrix and a banda (ideally with some of the purple magic paper (I had a whole pack once!) and some copying spirit) then you would rock my little world :)

    And that, my dears, is all.

  • More Impressed

    So, yesterday was spent doing some ‘preventative’ maintainance on the bike. If you can really call it preventative after riding it a week having left it sitting for 2 and a half months and having not done any maintainance for a while before that…

    I adjusted the brakes, which took longer than might be expected due to the unfortunate fact that they were only just off, and only just moving to on; and when I adjusted them so they were only-just-off but could move to fully on they jammed. In fact, I don’t recall ever greasing them…

    …So I spent some time unsiezing the brakes. They’re still ‘sticky’ but it’s a lot better than it was. It was slightly embarassing to go for my test circuit of our roundabout, put my foot on the brake and then not be able to start moving again.

    I also spent some time doing the DAF. The rust is over quite a large area, but it’s also ‘a big flat panel’. Well, actually it’s got an L shape to it at the end, but I reckon it shouldn’t be too expensive. I need to ring round some welders… I don’t suppose anyone knows the actual rules on ‘to and from a place of repair’ for non-MOT’d cars. Can you take it ‘to and from’ one for a quote? (I’m assuming not, though I can drive it *to* a place of repair when I’ve chosen someone).

    meh.

    Anyhow, the DAF runs – and starts easily – and is quite cute really. It also moves, it’s a bit odd to drive after the Viva and the Minor, but it trundled the 2 feet down the drive and back up the drive without too much trauma.

    Kathryn spent the day sorting out the back garden. We’ve modified and simplified plans for the back garden; mostly to cut costs. I don’t think there are any shots of the back garden at the height of ‘stuff piled everywhereyness’; but she (and I helped a little bit with the bigger chunks of shite) moved all the rubbish into a heap where the dog-hut (which she took down) was. In the process of this, we noticed that when the people-building-a-house behind our house did their de-tree-and-fence work, they have undermined the foundations for the shed. There’s now a fracking-huge crackin the back wall, so I’m going to go and demand monies from them for the shed.

    Aaanyway, so she cleared the ground, and having been defeated on the DAF brake service (because, well, I don’t actually appear to have ramps, jacks or axlestands here, something which I find a little surprising) helped dig it over. Then we went to b&q and spent 26 quid on compost/plants/seeds and a rake.

    We were going to plant them this morning before heading to the zine symposium…but the grey sky are likely to make us leave it… that and it’s a bit late….

  • Conflict of interest

    So, in my hospital above the glove boxes are located above the bins. The reason this is important will become apparent…. Against infection control procedure, I do, occasionally land up with a pair of gloves in my pocket. Being a latex-allergic soul, and the fact that the nitrile gloves are not in each bay, this isn’t entirely surprising. I won’t use them for anything remotely invasive, obviously. But might well use those be-pocketed gloves for scooping up poo, or one of the other delightful tasks that occasionally comes my way.

    If I don’t then, sometimes, even more rarely, those gloves come home with me and they go into the box-of-gloves I have at home; being as I do my own car and bike maintainance and with the decoration we’ve been doing around the house *and* the fact I’ve been on holiday for 3 weeks the little box (which was once B&Q Vinyl gloves) had worked it’s way down to being empty…

    Then a thought occured. When I pull gloves out of the box, sometimes extra gloves will fall out (because they’re very cheap packs of gloves and the gloves appear to have been wedged in by some sort of glove-wedging-obsessed-ape, rather than a nice machine that puts them in in an orderly fashion, leading to them sometimes being incredibly tangled). These falling gloves land – somewhat unfortunately – either on the floor or on the clincal waste bins, and are thus, well, somewhat inappropriate for using for anything ‘clean’. My usual response to this is to hurl the “no longer clean” gloves in the bin. But today it occured that, well, they’re probably still fit for working on the car…

    …so now my clumsyness is, well, a conflict. Am I subconciously being more clumsy to make more of them drop… :)

    Incidentally, the reason I don’t just buy some is that every time I’ve checked they’ve been around 14 quid for a box (plus postage, of course), which seems excessive to me.

    In other news, I think Brick shall be sold in the nearness of the future. An exhaust has been sourced, and it sounds like Rebecca’s nearing completion. Where the money for Rebecca comes from I am unsure.