Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Huge house / holiday / car update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Before:

    Bedroom, before decorating

    After:

    After decoration, or at least part way through

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The lakes photos are here.

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

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

    Then onward again, this time to Brighton. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Update from the plaster mines

    All is not going to plan. Further work necessary. Full update when timing allows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Do Something, Martin! also turned out to be where 

    [info]bluedevi

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

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

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

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

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

  • Picture post

    So, today’s been a day of doing car jobs. I had been intending, for a while now, to sort out Brick’s so called coolant. Having nearly had him overheat heading in to Oxford, and again heading into Reading I reckoned that nearly was close enough and it was time to bite the bullet and pull my finger out and get a round-tuit, as it were.

    Oh, just before we do that, we saw a hedgehog last night, it was lurking ‘twixt the front door and the window. Awesomely cute, it was :)
     

    So, I lifted the bonnet, having nipped first to Halfrauds to get some fresh coolant, and I drained out the most revolting brown gunk in all brown gunkydom.  

    gunk in a bucket

    That was *blue* when it went in. Not only that, coolant generally has similar consistency to water, this was a bit like soup. And that’s not even what came out with the radiator flush. So; a flush with plain water, and then a load of radiator flush went in. I also noticed that somewhat disconcertingly one of the bolts that hold the alternator on had wandered off somewhere. So I fished around in my toolbox and found something just-about-long-enough, and threw that in, tightening the thing back up. That was actually somewhat alarming, but never mind.

    Anyhow, while the car idled (to get it warm and allow the stuff to work) I tackled the non-functional indicator; the nearside one slowed down a while ago, and then stopped flashing completely. Having opened the cover, I thought the cause of this was instantly apparent…

    indicator lens

    I was completely wrong though; the inch of water sat in the indicator wasn’t actually the cause of the problem; the bulb had just gone. And the connectors were covered in shite, too, which I imagine can’t help. The offside one was just the same. I’m thinking of switching to LED bulbs now, actually, and having located the indicator relay am quite tempted. Especially after seeing the price of the normal bulbs in Halfrauds

    Anyhow, having at least located the fault I headed back to working on the cooling system, and in a fit of insanity whipped the radiator out. The radiator, rather distressingly seems to have been attacked by Radiator Moths, which probably also goes a long way to explaining the barely adequate cooling the car’s had since I got it.

    I need to make a decision on Brick’s future soon, because I suspect that if I want to keep him then I’m going to need to sort that radiator out. I straightened out some of the bent over fins, but really they’re disintegrating rather easily now…

     

    Finally I put together the 8-track hack. I’ve got a little bored of travelling and listening to my MP3 player; it means I can’t have music on and chat to Kathryn, I have to have uncomfortable little earbuds in all the time, and I can’t here the noises the car makes to maintain my paranoia appropriately.

    So, yesterday I started stripping down the 8 track; gone is the motor, gone is the tape head and most of the selector mechanism. Today I guestimated where I think the line-level part of the circuit starts (I think. I’ve connected it the other side of the preamp, I think) and connected that to a pair of phono connectors (because the in-car-entertainment project had to cost nothing at all, ideally).

    Having butchered a broken 8-track tape to mount the phono connectors on (the least tidy external bit of the job), I put it all back together and threw it into the car. It looks very 70’s in there, and apart from the slightly distressingly not as good as I’d like job I’ve done of the phono connectors (really I wanted to do something much more complex, but I’ll save that for when I’ve got a bit of money), it’s all in and done. Unfortunately I blew the aux fuse on the car while I was fitting it, due to a moment of sheer unadulterated stupidity (having found the ‘auxillary’ line on the connector block, connected it up, and then gone to check the voltage at the other end, I neglected to turn the ignition back off before attempting to connect the tape player.

    Even more unfortunately, it’s a 35A short glass fuse, of a type which Halfords apparently Does Not Sell. They do up to 7.5A in that size, so I grabbed some of them, as far as I know it’s the only item on the Aux circuit, so hopefully it’ll be okay. I need to pick up a new spare anyhow, because it turns out the 35A spare fuse is blown too… 

    Anyway, it being dark and cold outside I’ll test it all tomorrow… on the trip to Oxford :)

    [All the photos from today are in the Viva Set]

  • Oxfringe, and what’s wrong with Slough

    So, last night we finally made it to Oxford (and to Oxfringe), having lived near Newbury, and my sister preferring to claim to live near Oxford than near Reading (though she’s definately nearer the latter than the former, but the former’s easier to get to, and more worth the trip) I’ve spent a fair (though not huge) amount of time haunting the city. I distinctly recall lurking on what appears to be an AMT Coffee’s forecourt, waiting to meet friends, in the shade of the trees there. Oh, and going to the pub with Peter (to play pool) and suddenly realising that without intending to we’d landed up in a gay pub. Not exactly a problem for me, but I did feel a bit sorry for ‘im :)

    Anyhow, so, although it my head it’s stored as City:Beautiful:Touristy, I’d kind of forgotten just how pretty it really is. Living in Slough has kind of blunted the beauty of the world around me, because it is, to quote Kathryn “a dump”. Although Betjeman’s words (“Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough / It isn’t fit for humans now“)were written of a town in the second world war, it feels like they still apply now. I’m told by Wikipedia that there are a number of listed buildings in Slough, but the sprawling mass of uninspired box like houses hide them from you (I’ve noticed if you wander round you’ll find nice, interesting and quirky buildings hiding, showing a history not always so bland). The big thing that Slough suffers from is the same malady that struck my town of origin, it’s too close to London to develop anything of it’s own.

    Going to Oxford (or indeed even to Reading, hardly a scintilating star of cultural greatness) quickly highlight’s Slough’s shortcomings. It appears to be a land of culture devoid, intellectually a vacuum. Ironically, Slough writer’s group doesn’t even meet in Slough :)

    Interestingly, there’s a plan to spent millions redeveloping the hideously depressing grey monolith of a town-centre (which, if you were to film Life on Mars here, would have been incredibly easy, because great chunks of it still live in 1972 (I actually mean to go down and take a picture of me in 70’s garb with Brick, because it would actually be very hard to tell which decade it was really taken in)), which leads me to wonder – they do seem to want to build a new, whacking great library (somehow appropriate given that Amazon UK is based in Slough, a town which is also devoid of decent bookshops), and maybe there’ll be some opportunity for quirky little shops, and theatre spaces to be incorporated. But I suspect that it’ll be a standard monument to capitalism.

    Anyhow, so enough about Slough. We left the town yesterday and headed up to Oxford, I somehow thought Oxford was somewhat closer than it actually is. It’s really about an hour away, not a bit over half an hour as my brain lied to me that it was. Having hunted down a parking space not dreadfully far from the city centre we wandered in; Kathryn succombing quickly to the shinyness of the place (and shops which’d not be out of place in her home city/town). oxford has interesting, strange little shops. I was, I must admit, in Awe (with a capital A) at finding a comic shop displaying Scott Pilgrim in the window.

    But, we were on a mission. My navigation of Oxford is not necessarily terribly good, especially having not been there for a few years (apart from direct to the JR when my dad was dying) so I had the directions on a post-it note and we weren’t going to veer off to explore. That and we weren’t as early as I’d hoped. We arrived at the venue (Far from the Madding Crowd) for Ha ha from the madding crowd, a night of performance poetry and comedy.

    Although Kathryn formally introduced me to performance poetry through the medium of the iTunes podcast, that was kind of putting a name to a face. Lurking in the battered collection of tapes (now MP3s, for the most part) was Henry Normal’s Encyclopaedia Poetica, which probably counts in some vein as performance poetry. However, when she put a name to a face she also reawakened a love of poetry inspired by my parents readings of fragments, my dad’s love of Betjeman, of… that bit of me that Kathryn reckons should have landed up in theatre.

    Anyhow, so I was loosely aware of performance poetry, but I’d never actually seen any performed live. I’ve been to plenty of stand up comedy in my life though (and a few comedic plays too), so anyhow, when I saw this oxfringe event, my heart went “whoop!”, thinking instantly of Kathryn and also of what a nice evening out it’d be for free. Noticing that it didn’t start until 9pm was somewhat of a pain (‘cos we’re normally hitting the sack around 10 these days with Kathryn rising so early for work). But we chatted and decided to go. And I’m really glad we did.

    I’m an awful reviewer, because I just am. The compere / presenter (Laura King) suffered somewhat from a lack of stage presence, which was a shame because some of her stuff was excellent. I don’t know if people were just there to see the people they were there to see (and therefore not interested in Laura), but I guess ‘cos I was there to see all people I’d never heard of before, well… Anyway, that aside I really enjoyed the whole thing (well, we headed off at half 10), I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t get to see Nishani Nijjar, the only female apart from the Laura King; she was due on stage and seemed to have disappeared, and so if she did appear it was after we’d left. I was a little concered at the beginning of Richard Soames routine – the stretch about alcoholics anonymous didn’t really make me laugh much; but he seemed to find his feet after a minute or two and turned out to be very funny.

    But my favourite of the night was definately the performance poet Danny Chivers. I’ve always had a thing for political comedy, and political performance poetry; well, it’s awesome. Especially when it expresses rants I have bubbling inside me much better than I ever could. Go, click on the world of evil that is that MySpace link above and hear what you missed :)

    Anyhow, we landed up back home at midnight, somewhat later than intended, having paused on the way back to go to G&D’s Ice Cream Cafe (specifically George and Delila’s) to grab me a coffee (for to help with staying awake on the drive back) and a cookie each. As a side point, the coffee was *excellent*, one of the very best Mocha’s I’ve had in a long, long time. Possibly since leaving Brizzle.

    I’m quite tempted (if Kathryn fancies and doesn’t mind helping with the Petrol) to head back to Things on the Wall on Saturday – giving Kathryn the dangerous chance to see Oxford in the day time…

    Anyhow, since it’s taken me over an hour to craft this entry (and I’ve spent the morning browsing) I really ought to get my act together and do something. I’ve finished the putting in of grout in the bathroom, it’s now ‘just’ polishing to do (and paint on a couple of things, like the door), and silicone sealing around the floor-skirting board / tile joins, and re-silicone sealing the shower again (because, for some evil bloody reason the silicone sealant just does *not* want to stick to the damn shower base).

  • Being bad

    I’m normally very good wandering around abandoned places, I don’t pinch no matter what I spot; although, to be fair, I’ve never spotted that much that I really wanted to take. And even when I did spot things, well, I like leaving things for others to find. That’s kind of part of it, but I took 3 things today from my random local abandonment photoshoot.

    Why?

    Well, see, I know that it won’t be abandoned that long, or it’s unlikely to be. And the owner wants to pull down the property and build more houses on the site. Given that the property’s been ‘cleared’ the few items left are likely to be crushed under the bulldozer; and given their poor condition unlikely to be saved even by the most caring of clearance people.

    Anyhow, bearing in mind I’ve lived here over a year you’d’ve thought I’d’ve managed to get all of 2 houses away to the abandoned one, but no. I finally got around there today, and despite the owner’s clearance of the property there’s much that’s of interest, and I’m terribly jealous – not only of their space, but of their workshops. Not that it’s safely salvable; it’s all pretty much woodworm feed.

    One thing that truly did surprise me, and I really want to see if there’s anything inside it is… there’s an Anderson shelter. Unfortunately, it seems that they chose to put a pile of compost in front of the door; which is desperately frustrating. I also found an old pyrene fire extinguisher. I know these aren’t pressurised and are therefore, presumably, moderately safe to keep around, so long as they stay sealed. I’ve had a quick look, but no luck so far, finding someone who can empty them (they contain Carbon TetraChloride, I think).

    Anyhow, pics are here.

  • Progression and tiredness

    So, there’s been some progress this morning. I’ve headed out and got rid of the 19″ behemouth of a monitor which I tried to freecycle away but wouldn’t disappear. It’s a shame, ‘cos it more-or-less worked, and probably with a bit of effort could have been got to work perfectly.

    But it’s been offered twice and finally I got sick of it and took it to the tip. I then headed to the post office where I found out that they’d redelivered the package I’d gone to collect, hence why I couldn’t work out what it was. When I got home I searched through the bin, found the packaging and there it is, clear as day, the correct reference number. Why they put ‘come and collect’ on the card when they’ll reattempt delivery I’m not entirely sure. But hey. It was a pretty day and quite pleasant. Then I headed to Maplin, depressing remains of the shop that it is, and bought myself a set of Star drive / Torx drivers; then to B&Q to get a palm sander; then to the chemist (Ack! Prescription charges have gone up again!), and got my tablets (yay for anti-allergy pills!).

    And then my good mood was shattered because I got home and found the unemptied bin deposited in front of my drive. I’ve realised that the council object to taking actual rubbish away (DIY waste is apparently not appropriate for the tip, although I may endeavour to sling some there), nor for your bin, nor for anywhere else. Given that we produce so little of any other sort of waste I’m actually feeling quite resentful about the concept of paying tax for waste disposal.

    I had hoped to be here to pounce and see if I could convince them to empty the bin this once; but obviously I’ve missed my chance. I really need more rubble bags if I’m going to get rid of the last remnants of the building waste in the bin, but I forgot that I needed them when I was at B&Q. Forgot to get dust masks as well, which is annoying. But then, to be honest, my brain is struggling with being awake… 

  • First day off nights

    If there’s one failing both Kathryn and I have it’s Laundry. Neither of us is terribly good at getting laundry done before there’s a mound in the washing basket the size of 3 loads. And we’re also neither brilliant at doing laundry before it’s needed. This normally isn’t a problem; one of us will get around to it.

    Today though, I thought, I’ll change the sheets – we’ve both been saying it needs doing since the middle of the week; but while I’m on nights I can’t be arsed. I stripped off the old sheets, and fished round in the cupboard… And uh, we’ve not laundered any of the bed linen for so long that we’ve, uh, got none at all.

    So that’s the first job of today… (done :) ).

    Jobs I have planned for today are contact play.com about my mum’s ethernet adaptor which hasn’t been shipped 2 weeks after ordering (sorted: Cancelled the order and bought a different one from the USA since it appears that Apple are being slightly slow bringing it to the UK), installing OS X on the Shiny Mac, collecting a package from the post office and generally staying awake (I woke up at 4am, bloody sod it). I might do some grouting, and I might go get a palm sander and some little baby torx drivers to sort the Mac out.

    I’m still trying to work out what to do with the laptop. I wanted to install Gentoo on it, but the only X86 CD they do now is the minimal install CD, which is fuck-all use (to be blunt). I’m not in the mood to sit and play command line games, especially since my experience of WPA-PSK wireless under ubuntu’s live CD was a whole bundle of not-working at all.

    And spending a few days sorting it is not my idea of fun. But I’m sick of reinstalling windows on it.

    It needs reinstalling though, wireless is increasingly flakey, it’s slow and playing up loads in every respect. The mac awaits my attentions (and the Torx drivers), once that’s sorted I might retire this one… At least, until it can be the ‘kitchen music player and recipe finder’ or somesuch.

    No battery and a screen that’s disintegrating don’t make for a very long lived laptop… :-/

    I also need to take the carb apart on Brick, I think it’s sucked a bit of dirt in there (it did a fuel starvation thing on the way to work one night, didn’t do it at any point after, but before we go trecking round the country I’d like to check it’s not going to do it again).

    Oh, and some tidying and cleaning’d probably not go amiss.

    Right, time to go find my watch :)

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  • Original Content

    Yes, today’s one of those rare days when I’m writing original content. I’ve been reading a fair bit lately (well, one book, but reading it quite a lot) and we’ve also been watching Men In Trees / The L Word / Father Ted and the odd episode of Pushing Daisys. I’ve been watching House and Yes Minister as well, which just shows how little work you can get done if you really try.

    I’ve been feeling though, the lack of creativity in my life. I don’t *mean* to watch TV when I come home, but quite often I’m just exhausted and sit down thinking ‘oh, I’ll just watch one show while I have some tea’ and the the exhaustedness which was following me home gets through the door and catches up with me. And that’s kind of it, I’m stuffed. There’s still plenty left to do around here, but we’re holding off on the kitchen until I’m less in debt. Plan is to tackle the two bedrooms which are (hopefully) just a touch of plaster and some paint. Somewhat less trauma than removing an entire concrete floor and having it relaid, a doorway bricked up, a new doorway opened and so on.

    But in the name of doing something nice for a change (instead of, for example, sitting around the house reading stuff on the internet, watching TV or reading – all of which are pleasant enough but one does need a break, and it’s nice to get out with my beloved) we headed in to London.

    The plan, such as it was, was to tackle some of the time-out treasure hunts, spend some time lurking in bookshops and get something to eat… 

    Kathryn had yet to see Foyles, and wanted to do so, and so after a nice little lunch in the Foyles Cafe we started our afternoon with a tour of Foyles. Yeah. See, we’re both slow in bookshops when they’re tiny. Foyles used to be the largest bookstore in the world; it’s probably still the largest in the UK. We entered the store around 2pm and left around 5, carrying only 2 books… The list of books we could have bought was huge; I could happily spend thousands of pounds there.

    Which would of course, be foolish. When would I have time to read that many books? But hey.

    It being slightly later than perhaps intended, we headed off to do the Literary treasure hunt. It wasn’t really a hunt, as such, in that they basically tell you exactly where what you’re looking for is, and what it is. And apart from a few slightly clunky bits of navigation, it worked well. It was, however, nice to see a bit of London that, well, I’ve not really seen since my childhood, despite being really very cold…

    We also ran into a couple of people doing the hunt themselves, although they were doing all 5 and we – in the end – only did one (it was bloody freezing).

    Having satisfied ourselves that CC&K would be open for desert we headed to Palm Court for dinner; supping on fine cocktails (well, one each) and eating fine food. Being rich would actually be quite handy.

    Finally, we finshed the day in CC&K, and headed home to bed.

    …then on Saturday we got a phone call in the morning – the wedding dress place we wanted to visit was open that morning – my mother was coming with the hope that we’d get to go visit it, and so we quickly made an appointment and headed in. It’s a weird experience being fitted for a dress. I’ve never been fitted for anything in my life, not by anyone else, and so being prodded and poked and squashed into a dress was quite a novel experience. But, the women there were great – they didn’t make us feel bad for not having much in the way of a budget; they let us try on loads of dresses, and my mum’s and their advice combined to get us two good possible combinations.

    Obviously we’re going to try some others too; but that first experience was important – it’s quite unnerving to be in your undies in front of lots of people you don’t know who’re pulling you into dresses… And in the end it was quite fun; and Kathryn looked truly stunning. Even I didn’t look too shabby :)

    We then had a chilled out day at home – sorting out music and french lessons for my mum and Parmita. Today’s been a chilly day; the snow falling steadily all mornind, but distressingly not settling even a little…. I’m hoping for more… but a peaceful day of paperwork and snuggling lies ahead.