Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Sometimes things talk to me

    Sometimes the house talks to me; it tells me tales of it’s youth in an austere post-war Britain; it talks to me about the excitement of the 70s. Today it told me about it’s childhood; new and shiny, exciting, people moving into a new house, and it showed me something more of what it used to look like.

    It told me about the luxurious experience of carpet all the way across the stairs with thick, high quality underlay. And about years of thin strips of carpet down the centre, with grey painted skirting and stairs.

    And I wondered about those first owners, flush with the joy of having a brand new house all of their own. I wonder whether, when they moved in they were worried about the situation in Germany. Whether they were wondering about being bombed. I think about these walls, and the things that have happened within them, and I’m honoured to be here.

    But it didn’t just talk to me about the past; I saw the future, where people look at the work I’ve done and say “how could she do this?”, and I respect more the choices that people made in past times.

    [More house progress shots here]

  • At the end of the road

    I’ve never lived at the end of the street; well; my parents house is, but it’s an odd end of the street – it’s a junction, with houses all around. Well, stables and houses.

    The only time I’ve ever been in a house that’s at the end of the street was staying with Kara – looking out of her window and seeing that view of mountains every morning was inspiring and beautiful. So it’s weird to be sat at the end of the street, as I am now, the big blue sky opening away from you; I’d never realised what a difference it made, but it’s so relaxing to have the houses sort of in the periphery.

    Of course, when I’ve got cushions on the sofa, my view will change, and instead of the beautiful sky being the bottom and top of my view, the houses at the far end of the street will be there, but for the moment I’m reminded of Alaska and big skies.

  • 100% Dumbass

    For the *third* time since I got this job I’ve got my shifts wrong; always with the turning up for an early when I’m not actually on. Today I went for turning up for an early after sleeping really badly – and I’m not on duty today at all.

    For frack’s sake.

    Why?! I did that, like, once is my last place. Now I have to drive for half an hour down the M25 and the M4 I seem to be obsessed with fucking up. Bah. I am very tired.

  • Seriously; you *are* taking the piss now aren’t you?

    LT advert

  • ‘scuse the outage

    Zest host moved my server, but one of my databases was corrupt – it was hanging together before, but unhappy post move. (Or more accurately failed to copy, ‘cos it was b0rked).

    And for the first time in my life, I’m impressed; Zesthost’s new owners techie people have fixed it in no time at all; and lo, we’re back, and on a shiny new (faster) server. Zoom.

  • Entering the arena of the unwell

    And no, I’m not referring to work. Although it could just as well be a name applied to that. No, in this case it’s a sore throat and a general feeling of impending illness. Although apart from the sore throat I don’t *feel* unwell, I’m waiting now, for whatever lurgee is going to pounce.

    It’s hard for me not to work, but I know I did start to feel very rough last night while I was trying to finish off getting the ‘hard’ bit of the floor done; so it’s probably best for me to not try and squeeze in a few hours of work this morning – although come 10 I’ll probably wander to B&Q and M&S (the former for some solder, the latter for some salad and some throat / cough sweets).

    For the moment I’m consuming lemsip/beechams and wishing my lounge was more finished, so I could sit in it. Sit anywhere (apart, obviously, from the upright dining chairs on which I’m sat).

  • So, the Kate is the Tired.

    Housewarming is on the 19th; which on the one hand seems a long way away – until you realise I’m still attempting to plumb in the radiator (would be easier if the crappy (but very expensive) blowtorch actually worked upsidedown – I remember my dad’s old one would sputter a bit, but carried on going. This one just sputters and expires; it doesn’t matter how long you let it warm up for. In this case it’s meant that one of the joints I made I’ve overcooked it, because I took lots of attempts to get it hot – and now I’m going to have to go and buy some solder and re-seal the Yorkshire joint with solder. *Sigh*.

    Still, at least I still seem to be able to plumb, although I did destroy two joints and a good couple of feet of pipe in the process of practicing. And then; THEN; I discovered that the joist I’d selected to run the hot water pipes against for the radiator? It’s got a gas pipe on it. Fuck. Cue the most hideous doublebend-nastyness in the history of my heating system. I’m really quite scared doing this, because it’s all going to be under the floor; so I won’t really easily be able to fix it. I keep staring at the joints and going ‘are they good enough’. Ironically I think the hideous double bend cludge is probably one of the best joints.

    But none of this truly explains the sheer extent of the tired. No, the reason is I went out clubbing last night. I went to Heaven (irritating music playing website; just so as you know) – with Karsten, a lass from work. Heaven is GLBT* friendly on friday nights which is kinda what I need. Ideally I need an entirely lesbian nightclub; that would be good; because, quite frankly, I got hit on a lot last night… by blokes. Straight blokes who thought I was cute. ARGH! Then one informed me that they thought that Karsten was my girlfriend. ARGH!

    Then Karsten informed me that I looked intimidating; how can I be intimidating?! I singularly and spectacularly failed to meet anyone cute; I did for the first time in my life summon the courage (most of it, to be fair, dutch) to talk to one lass; who was spectacularly uninterested; although she didn’t really register as lesbian, and I found out from one of her friends that she was there as part of a work gang with their gay colleague, so I’m not sure…

    I also re-realised that my hearing is *terrible*. It’s actually ‘okay’ for most normal things, but I can’t distinguish voices at all when there’s a lot of background noise; and I seemed to spend much of the evening going ‘what?’ to Karsten and the various blokes who suddenly decided to descend on me *sighs*.

    Still, I danced the night away and drunk a mere 6ish units. Cost a bloody fortune though; Taxi, train, underground, club, drinks, nightbus, new train ticket (why don’t they do a ‘clubbing’ ticket that runs ’til, say 8 am – because singles cost so fracking much. Mind you; no one actually checked my ticket) and another Taxi. Oh, and half a day of sleeping.
    I also discovered that they shut the toilets in Paddington station overnight; hence me cursing everything about British Rail as I desperately wandered around the station dying for a wee… Heh.

    I had an excellent time though, and shall be repeating the experience.

    Oh, I also started laying the floor today. Mostly because I can’t finish the plumbing until some of it is laid… :-/

    So tired…

  • Sometimes I’m a little hard on myself

    I thought ‘poot, didn’t get much done today’

    List is:
    – Painted 2 walls
    – Measured and mounted on wall radiator
    – Struggled with, hopefully understood and have correctly positioned the mounts for the gas fire
    – Found TV Remote (harder than it sounds, given that I’ve not unpacked)
    – Moved the TV onto a couple of boxes of books… and then tuned it into my local TV signals…

    This on top of cooking dinner, visiting the pharmacy, and of course doing a full shift at work. I think, maybe, I did get enough done…

  • And so endeth 2006

    It seems everyone’s doing a ‘2006’ summary post; I’m debating jumping on that bandwagon. It’s something I’ve done every year (well, not a 2006 summary; but a ‘my year in a few words’ (or at least, less words) thing) since I started journaling; way back…when the web was new and shiny. Well, actually, the web wasn’t; nor was my website; it was more a case of using up the space of one of my vanity domains :-)

    So; at any rate, my New Year’s visit to my mum’s little holiday chalet was fantastic, kinda, although it got off to kind of a shakey start; fundamentally due to my lack of bothering to copy down all the directions; and my failure to realise that the place was much further down the road than I’d assumed. So, after half an hour of cruising up and down the streets, ringing my sister, swearing copiously (to be fair, it’d been a bitch of a drive – hugely wet and windy – and I was tired (tired enough to have slept for an entire hour on the front seats of my car in a service station)) I had almost hit the point of saying ‘stuff it’ and heading home. Fortunately at that point I decided to just drive down the road I was on until I ran out of houses; and then I carried on… and then eventually found the place.

    Chalet is a rather generous term. My mum describes it, on occasion, as her holiday cottage. A more accurate term would be ‘big shed’. It’s very basic, but warm, dry, and pleasant enough. But the view from the window is gorgeous. Uninterrupted fields leading down to the sea. My mum spent a lot of time talking about my dad; and we walked down to see some of the places he’d spent time at while they’d holiday’d there. My dad was very sick by the time that they started going to Devon; and I think for the first time I started to feel – as opposed to merely be aware of – the depth of my mum’s pain.

    It was very odd, very sad, but at the same time such a beautiful place. And I actually enjoyed the time I spent there.

    So, anyway, we did some walking, lots of sitting, lots of talking. And yes; I had an excellent new year. Today, I think I’ve managed to do most of the things that I want to do through the rest of the year; I’ve worked on my house, I’ve spent time with my mum, and I spent time (albeit not much) with my friends. I listened to new music; I listened to the radio; I read stuff on the web…

    So, really, it’s been a good day :-)

    I hope this is a good omen for me.

    2006 was a tough year; but in many ways I’ve had a good one; I finished my degree – I didn’t do as well as I hoped, or indeed expected, but I did get a decent pass – and frankly, the 3 years of my degree course have been the hardest and most challenging years of my life so far. I got a new job, I moved house (again (sorry James)), I experienced new things, I had my bike on the road, I’ve started to get back into music, I met some great new friends and I finally got to see Canada. Now I know what I want longer term from my life; I’ve got a direction… And I’m quite looking forward to 2k7.

  • I am totally in love…

    …with this album: Underground / A.M.

    At least, I’m totally in love with the minute long clips; they’re actually staying in my playlist. In fact, I’ve listened to it several times today. Expect a purchase in the near future.