Category: General

Linky to picture.

Yeah, on a more serious note I hate packing. With avengence. Part of the problem is I’m down to bitty bits, and I have been for a while. They are both hard to pack and hard to get the enthusiasm to pack. I just find myself wanting to say ‘oh for fuck’s sake’ a lot. It’s also the whole trying to work out what I’ll need, when I’ll need it, and so on.

Do I need this stuff in the next few weeks? Will I need this stuff in a month? Do I need this stuff when I go to Canada? If I get the house and move in will I need this straight away?

What clothes do I need? What shoes? Do I need my good coat? Do I need my bike gear out? ARGH! It’s making my mind melt. The back room is all clear. The kitchen needs packing still, the lounge is nearly clear. I did a run to the tip (Cheers Nikki) today – but forgot to take the old PC case (which I hoped would disappear by the old ‘please take me’ sticker and standing it outside, but it didn’t. I think it’ll land in the bin…).
I just would like the new job to start (it’s insane though, that it starts in 4 days time!), and the new house to be sorted (and things to go smoothly, they’ve not exactly *started* smoothly, the solicitors didn’t get my contact details, fortunately they decided to proceed and hope I’d ring them, or get the letter they sent and *then* ring them – but i just rang them today… and so that’s sorted).

I want people to ring me and say “it all looks good, we should have you moved in on Tuesday”. That’d be nice :-)

Feh.

Tomorrow my internet goes away. The nasty man will come and take away my internet connection… *whimper*. And actually, I shall have no phone either, apart from the mobile. God, it’s weird. My whole life – most of my connections at any rate – exist because of my online life. It’s weird to completely lose that. I’ve still got my little 33k6 modem for the laptop at least, but that’s the entirety of my connectivity for the next month. I actually find that scarier than moving.

I am *so* addicted to the net. And now I have to go cold turkey…

I’ve actually had a really positive day. I posted off my prescription so that it should be ready for collection before I head off, I’ve sorted out my tools – my toolbox is so neat I nearly took a photo to share with you all – yes, I really was that amazed. I’ve thrown out, or at least piled stuff to go to the tip tomorrow, I’ve sorted out which tools I’m going to take with me (and considered that I’m going for 3 weeks, and shouldn’t *really* need any tools, but if I take them and don’t need them I’ll feel slightly silly. If I don’t take them and do need them I’ll feel like 10 different sorts of idiot).

And it’s with very mild sadness that I write that Claire passed away today. Claire was never really a faithful bike, at least, not to me. Although standing proud at 120,000 miles, no mean feat for a small engine’d MZ; she resented those last 20,000 with a force that nearly caused the death of us both several times. Claire will always be remembered with a certain fondness, her desire to slide down the road on her side however, will not be sadly missed, and her disintegrating frame shall remain forever in my heart as something to avoid allowing to happen again. Her funeral is tomorrow.

Yes… I started the day with Claire looking like this:

And managed to transfer the forks (no mean feat) and the electrics over to Charlie. Charlie now looks like a bike, not least because with the addition of 2 wheels (making her no longer a very heavy unicycle) and an engine, I could slap the petrol tank on (although that turned out to be a complete dog of a job). She looks a lot more finished than she really is – although the electrics are transferred I had to disconnect much in the name of untangling and so on; and although I’ve thrown them on to Charlie, many of the joints need replacing, and the whole thing needs working out, because the two bikes were very different electrics wise, and I’ve only got the front half of Charlie’s electrics. If anyone fancies supplying me with a diagram which correctly combines post-1994 MZ wiring and pre-1994 wiring, then I’d be greatful. Hell, you can come for a ride on Charlie…

The day was also made brighter by having lunch with Liz up at my favourite lunch place in Brizzy, The Revival cafe, where we munched and chatted before heading to ShakeAway to consume phenominally unhealthy drinks – which were delicious :-)

I also, because I’m lousy at not spending money got a guitar chord reference from a booksale that’s closing down, some photo paper (again from the same booksale, ‘cos it was super-cheap for photo paper), I’ve e-mailed Rana-X one last time about the photos we agreed on, hopefully this e-mail will get through; and I also, because I’m a very bad person bought LDN on vinyl, and the new Evanesence single, also on Vinyl.

I am bad.

But I have Pirate Charlie, in PINK! RAAR!

Those of you who’ve moved houses a few times and had more than one or two relationships may be able to empathise more with this than those who haven’t, or maybe it’s just me. But there comes a time, in packing a house, in packing a life away, when suddenly you find yourself packing away things that bring back floods of memories. These tend to be ‘ornaments’ for me, although books, CDs, clothes can all do it; it tends to be the little gifts I’ve got or been given over the years.

Letters too. I think that’s why friday was quite hard – I was packing away my letters and photos; and there was a card from my dad… his untidy handwriting creeping it’s way across the card, and making me laugh and cry at the same time. His and my sense of humour were so close, that that one card, written from the top of a mountain, just carried me back. Even thinking about it now, it takes me to moments of time.

And today I packed up my (very dusty) windowsill. These are the ornaments that will remain packed until I have a place of my own, in a box with photos and paintings, they will lie. And they bring back those memories of people and places. I think that it’s the hardest thing about moving – making me work through the ends of relationships, the passing of friendships, the postcards lovingly written and pinned or propped in place.

Virtually all I own is packed away. My life has disappeared into little boxes. And I find it hard to remember that I exist, sometimes, when there’s so little evidence of it. I think I’m just in a very odd mood tonight. The combination of such gregarious people and the sudden loneliness of an empty house, a house where nearly all entertainments have disappeared has left me feeling decidedly alone.

So I spent most of the day helping Nikki and Kate with their BeVOB thing (Bristol Electric Vehicle Owners…err. Um, yeah. Not sure *exactly* what it stands for right at this moment) – mostly I was filming, but periodically people asked questions, and as the day wore on I even started to know what the answers were.

It was a quietly entertaining day, even if somewhat tiring.

I now have about an hour of video to edit down. Hopefully I’ve got some useful stuff – but it’s difficult to tell, because I’ve realised I don’t have a firewire cable. One thing that really impressed me though, is how Colerne’s kind of positive about this stuff. When I lived there Wiltshire council were saying that they weren’t going to provide recycling facilities because Colerne was too small. So it seems the residents have taken it upon themselves to provide what the council won’t. And they’ve gone lots further. So yes, very impressed.

As Kate pointed out, it was interesting how skewed the sex bias was though, lots of women asking about electric bikes and scooters, much more so than men. Intriguing as to why…

Anyway, on arriving back at John’s I found the source of the headache which appeared in the car on the way back. The exhuast that was replaced in May, the life-time guaranteed, stainless steel, you’ll only need one, ever exhaust… has broken, again, by the front silencer. Impressed I am not. I’ll ring them tomorrow and ask them to change it again. Yet again I’ll have to pay, to get some piece of crap changed, but this time I’ll stick in that extra hole in the floor to support it before I go.

I’ve got rather a lot planned for tomorrow, so I best get on this evening, although I think I need a bit of a break first. And maybe a nice slice of cheese.

Rachel, I embedded Tetris in your kitchen.

So, the Dell had begun to get very sick. The screen would alternately flicker and go bright white, the casing had cracked and it was clear that it wouldn’t last the trip to Canada; so given the impending move to places new I decided it was time to fix it.

I may have voided the warranty…

So here’s the laptop in bits – it was actually more in bits than this so I could drill holes in the lid casing. This is actually as I started to put it all back together…

So, here it is working, what you can’t tell from this is that I completely reassembled it (bar one screw which I couldn’t work out where it went) turned it on and the screen didn’t work. I then swore quite a bit, and ended up taking it completely to pieces. It turned out that a piece of tape I’d put in to protect the screen cable from the screws I’ve put in was insulating the screen against a contact it needed. Grrr.

Anyway, attempt two and it’s working.

And here’s the high-quality, warranty voiding finish:

In other news, despite multiple attempts I’ve not managed to transfer the money from savings to current so it can go to loans and credit cards, my PIN appears to have changed (seriously, I’m 100% certainer than certain that I know what it should be); nor have I managed to contact the Matron of where I’m starting in a week and a half to find out when I should arrive.

On the plus side accomodation is now arranged.

On the minus side, the second letter from the hospital says I’m at *the other* base site. This is ‘worrying’. I didn’t notice until, well, after we’d arranged accomodation (and I’d attempted to buy a house). I’ve now realised that the second letter is right, the first insanely wrong (wrong salary, wrong base site, wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong). Which is slighly bad…

Never mind eh. NHS.

In other, other news, I will be without internet for at least a month. So, in a few days time (well, about 9) expect me to go a bit quiet like.

So, I got my degree results. 2:2. Not really happy about it, but nor terribly upset. Slightly frustrated’s all, I’m not quite sure how I drifted from a 1st to a 2:2, but I can’t say as I ever felt like I understood what they wanted from essays, so…

Anyway, this is just wrong. So wrong. Seriously. It’s wrong.

No, that’s not why I’m here though, I’m sat here ‘cos it’s 8 days ’til I move. I’ve got much packing shifting and sorting to do, my laptop is scattered in pieces in the lounge ‘cos I need to make it a new back-piece (the plastic’s given up the ghost on the back of the case) – it’s going to look a bit butchered, because the local B&Q sell aluminium at *INSANE* prices. A chunk big enough to do the repair I wanted to do is about 15 quid!

So, yeah, it’ll be  a strip of slightly rusty steel instead. Mmm, stylish.

Anyway, it’s weird. I don’t know how Trey did it, chucking so much stuff; I mean, I’ve got rid of *lots* as far as I’m concerned, but there’s still loots. There’s still lots to get rid of too, and I’ll be starting that later today.  After I’ve fixed my laptop.

If anyone has suggestions for free dvd playing software for the mac that’s region free and uses the quicktime playback system then please, tell me. VLC’s Quartz / Quicktime stuff doesn’t work, Niceplayer’s DVD playback stuff seems to rely on the Apple DVD player which just reports “no valid device found for playback” – and whilst I could rip every DVD I own to the disks (probably, nearly, at least); I don’t think it’d do my DVD drive an awful lot of good, nor do I think it’s really a practical solution.

I also can’t find my 100Mbit super-crap hub, which makes getting the music onto this machine somewhat harder. But I’d definately prefer to take my macinhac with me than my windows box. Which is silly really, ‘cos the PC can play DVDs and so on. Perhaps I should let common sense win and take the XP box. Someone, save me from this fate. Give me video playback on the Mac (ignoring of course the fact I’ve not got sound working properly yet either).

Anyway. I was going to write about how weird it is to be leaving bristol, how after living here it really feels like home, and my friends are all here, but I’ve wasted the last hour in battles vs the non-DVD playing HackinMac, so, err, I’m going to bugger off now.

So, talk about different days. Yesterday was a disaster, almost completely and entirely.

I went out this morning to fix my car and found that that wasn’t going to happen. The starter has, indeed, given it’s last turn – at least until it’s been stripped and rebuilt. After whining and deliberating, I opted to take Cherry. Now, this was against my promises to my friends, and to myself. I wasn’t intending to ride wearing my worn out and tired bike gear. At least, not on the motorway. My bike’s still being run in and long motorway runs aren’t really ideal (apparently far less ideal than I thought, it only achieved an astonishingly poor 35mpg, given that it can do up to around 60… It may need tuning a little). To say that I was nervous about this trip doesn’t really cover it. I’ve not been any great distance on the bike for months, and the last trip wasn’t an unqualified success (the engine pouring oil everywhere and deciding that 50mph was it’s maximum). I was more swimming in a wet suit in the sea of paranoia, while having paranoia rain down on me in a torrential downpour.

So yeah, I spent the entire journey caressing the clutch lever – and wishing it’d stop raining. But in the end we cruised down there at a steady 80km/h, wandering up periodically to the heady heights of 95km/h, but for the most part it was a steady trundle. Of course, I did notice that my engine was sharing it’s 2 stroke with the world. I may not love the 2-stroke I’ve bought, but that doesn’t mean I want to gently drip it across the motorway; I suspect it’s coming out from the exhaust port, and also, that it’s related to my bike running wildly outside it’s powerband, and me having a tendancy to twist the throttle open further and further. (It didn’t do it on the way back).

Having got to my mums, I arranged a couple of house viewings and we switched to the Skoda and headed on into Slough. We bought my mum a GPS and then headed in to look at the house. It said in the description ‘requires complete renovation’, but we’d rung (well, I’d rung) and they’d said it’s bascially decorative, and no heating. But structurally sound.

Often when you go into a house with no heating it’s cold and damp. This one wasn’t. There was no sign of damp anywhere, and if anyone’s sneakilly covered it up, they’ve done a damn good job, ‘cos the wallpaper looks period. By period, I’m refering specifically to the famous and much admired ‘tasteless 70’s decor’ period. Anyway, yes, I ended up putting an offer on the house, which is a 1930s terrace, double glazed, and basically unmodified since about 1970. It has terrifying features like a heater in the light above the bath, and original 1930s wiring to the lights… …and probably to the sockets…

Still. It could be really nice.

Actually, it didn’t occur to me to check that it had modern, or indeed any sockets. Never mind.

So. Yeah, then we headed to Chertsey so I could hand in my shiny shiny CRB form. That done, I found out when I start my job. Things are… tight.

Infact, I thought at this point I’d dive from my sea of paranoia into the sea of chaos. See, it works, or doesn’t work like this:

• It takes 3 weeks, absolute minimum in the UK to buy a house, or so I’m told. If the nice happy man takes my nice shiny money, the earliest I could possibly have my nice and lovely house is the 12 October.
• I have had no confirmation that I’ve got this house beyond the 8th October. I suspect, therefore, that they’ve chosen to ignore my desire to keep the house. This, however, could be a good thing because…
• I start my job on the 2nd October. Given that I won’t be able to live anywhere near there until… at the earliest, the 12th, I’ve had to take a room on the hospital site. This is 320 quid or so, which is fine, except that I don’t really *have* 320 quid – especially not on top of the cost of a months rent, potentially.

In many ways, the best solution would be for the house lease to finish on the 23rd, and the house purchase to go through. That would be nice. But very expensive.

The cheapest solution (and therefore in some ways the best) is for me to move out of here by the 8th, and dump my stuff in my sisters garage for two weeks, then back out and into the new house. Or even, leave most of it there until after I get back from Canada.

At any rate, tomorrow is a very busy day. Very busy.

In other news, the starter motor arrived for my moglet today, so that’s sat downstairs… Hopefully we can return to two vehicles being on the road. Although I also need to do a very, very quick strip of the other ‘zed, too. So I can get that frame scrapped and ou-da-here.

So I set off this morning, it was a lovely day and the car was purring up the motorway. I approached Slough and pulled off the motorway; finding a side road I pulled over to grab my directions, and having found they weren’t obviously in the top of the bag, two quick thoughts flitted through my head:

– Have you *really* forgotten the directions *and* the phone number of this house?
– What if my car doesn’t restart if I turn it off.

I’ve no idea what prompted the latter one, as she’s been good as gold. But, of course, both were true. Neither would Rebecca start, nor would the directions appear; no matter how hard I tried to convince the directions not to be on my sofa in the lounge.

After about 10 minutes of trying and covering myself in oil I decided to ditch it all and walk to the damn house. I could remember the street name, and Slough is not a big place. One A-Z later and a 4 mile walk ahead of me. 4 miles and a nice chat with a random person and I arrived outside chez hole. Now, things it didn’t say in the description (didn’t? Doesn’t): Needs modernisation. Would suit DIY enthusiast. Is a hole. All are true. But having got over the shock (and quite frankly, it was a shock), I managed to see potential past the hideous decor and avocado bathroom. Okay. A maybe then. Nice big garage.

So, I wandered back, and asked the estate agent to confirm that the house was not part of a chain. As I wandered back, and eventually located a retailer selling Spanners, such that I might attack the car with more vigour on my return, I was rung by one of the lenders from yesterday. They’d knocked 18,000 pounds off the amount they were willing to lend me. WTF?!

No, seriously. WTF. Don’t be doing that.

So, now down to one lender. Assuming they actually do agree to lend me the money.

The estate agent then decided to share that it was part of a chain, and they’d not bought a house to move into yet. So that house is essentially a big fat hoze’d no.

After buying a spanner, I made it back to the car, my good mood now evaporated completely; and spent a cheerful 20 minutes alternately attempting to fault find (with one spanner and a screw driver) and pushing the car to try to bump start it… by myself. Oh, and trying to start it on the handle. After another joyous period without success, I finally gave in and called the AA. He fiddled with the connectors and – the car started. We retried. It started. We retried several times, it continued to start. I hopped in Rebecca and headed home.

Only… after walking between 7 and 8 miles I was ‘quite tired’ and starting to feel a bit dozy, so I decided I would call in at my mums and have a coffee after all (it being just off the motorway). So I did. The car wouldn’t start. I spent another half hour, this time with 3 spanners and rather more vigour attacking the problem. Nothing. Nada. I give in and re-call the AA. After a cup of coffee and some arguing with my mum, I decide to go outside and see if they’ve arrived. It’s not easy to find my mums house, or it is, but people tend to miss it. On the spur of the moment I hopped in the car and… it started.

So I’ve come home. I’m now very tired, quite achy and I have to fix my car tomorrow morning so I can go and look at a house I’m a whole bundle of unenthused about tomorrow. Bah.

Feh, I nearly forgot. Arrrrr!