Mostly lemon based

Category: House

  • Productive but long day now behind us…

    So, today we checked in with the ring people – they’ve sent us a new design, between it and the previous one I think we’re 100% there. They just need to combine the mountains from the previous design; the roots and trunk of the previous design and the spread and foliage of the tree in the current design and they’ll be there.

    We have driven to Southam to get the minor looked at – they need to take the radiator out and whip the timing cover off, ‘cos it is that it’s leaking from but they think it’s holed; this is terribly frustrating as essentially we wasted 4 hours driving up there and back, but hey. Live and learn. It’s going to be a while ’til that leak gets fixed tho’. The minor’s performance is pretty spiffy though; top speed’s not hugely high (it’s very high geared), but there’s loads of torque available to get you there. A new gearbox and diff and we’ll be sorted. You can feel the slop in the diff when you let off the accelerator (throttle/gas pedal) and the gearbox just sounds awful in 2nd and 3rd. Ah well.

    Anyhow, after a long drive we made it to Ikea (Wembley) which was, as you’d expect for Saturday (and Saturday after pay-day) absolutely bloody packed. We made it out alive though – carring the bathroom stool, bench, a towel rack (we didn’t expect to get that), the futon-sofa-bed and mattress (better one that we were intending to get, ‘cos the cheap one was out of stock; if anyone fancies getting us a sheet to cover it with, tho’, that’d be nice ;) ), a rug, napkins, a drying rack for the kitchen (I’m sick of the rusty plastic/metal one I’ve had forever), a pack of glasses…and I think that’s it. The list could have been much longer.

    I also got stopped for my shoes – first time this has happened with a couple (both) wanting to know where to get them from. I reckon Vibram should offer us free cards to dole out to people, with a number on, such that you can get a discount if enough people buy using your cards… I’m still very much enamoured with them, and impressed with the fact that I’ve spent the day driving and my shins, which normally would ache after such a long drive are absolutely peachy. They were also good for hopping around the pallets left out in Ikea where they were low on stock, and saving me waiting for the very slow people to move through the store.

    It all squidged into the car fairly easily and the journey home was amazingly not too horrendous. Unfortunately, arrival home was disappointing in that the builders who’s promise for the day’s work was:

    – Plaster the walls and ceiling
    – Finish and level the floor
    – Fit the new door
    – Brick up the old door

    (Essentially everything that’s left to do)… Yeah, of them, they’ve managed to brick up the old door. The outside of it is a very nice job; the salvaged bricks look really good and once it’s painted it’ll probably be barely distingishable. The inside’s blockwork, and is fine, neat enough. But for the second day in a row the door isn’t in despite promises that it would be. Possibly the mortar’s still to wet, it’s been very cold. But I need some kind of update, and am very unimpressed with the way they left the back of the house.

    I’m theoretically waiting on a call back from the builders, but it’s after hours on a weekend, so I imagine that I won’t hear anything until…well… Monday? When I’m at work?

    *sighs in a frustrated way*

    I’ve also got a headache from being in the sun without enough water…which isn’t making the world any shinier right now, which is a shame, because I was quite looking forward to coming home to a nice door (well, an okay PVCU door) and a nice ceiling (I didn’t think they’d get *all* of it done, but more than that…). Not least it’d’ve been nice because there’s lots left to do in the rest of the house (including assembling a bunch of shelves which we can’t currently put up ‘cos we can’t get to the wall :-/

    Poot.

    *le sigh*

    Anyhow, I’m going to go and try and stare at the ATNC book and ignore the headache (and yes, I’ve taken painkillers :-p )

  • Theory and Practice

    About 6 or 7 weeks ago I sold the Viva; it had become somewhat of a millstone, sucking money in and making me miserable. It also had sprayed me with hot coolant, and looked likely to fail it’s next MOT without fairly substantial works to at least one sill, if not both.

    On the plus side, the Minor looked to be nearly ready and so it made sense to sell a car with an MOT, rather than sell it without. It’s now about 7 weeks on, and the minor hopefully should be ready this weekend. We’re apparently waiting on the engine, which itself is waiting on the crankshaft, which needs to be reground. I’m praying that it’s done and back and being assembled as we speak. I promised the Minor to my mum for her wedding, plans involving white ribbon and all that. I know she’s hardly the world’s shiniest minor, but she’s part of the family.

    Part of the reason for selling the Viva was, I’ll grant, that I thought I’d have the DAF up and running too. This was, of course, dependent on the original owner coming up with the V5. Which she hasn’t done. Which means that the DAF – while roadworthy (although needing brakes adjusting) is stuck on the drive – the ridiculousness of the DVLA’s policy (that an MOTd and insured car needs a V5 to get a tax disk) does frustrate me. If I’d stolen the car, d’y’think I’d *really* turn up at a DVLA office asking to *buy* a tax disk? Really?

    I can’t actually think of a criminal process which would involve buying a tax disk for an illegally obtained car, and therefore find the idea that I can’t have one dumb.

    At any rate, we’ve now been without a car of any road-legal sort for 7 weeks, and I’m beginning to tire of it. This wasn’t meant to be a long old whine, but frankly, it cost me 65 quid to make the journey to *agency nurse shift* and it should’ve cost me around 35 quid. To be fair I could’ve ridden the bike, but also to be fair, the bike’s top speed can drop as low as 45 on a really bad day, and 2-3 hours of riding at that speed would make me want to weep.

    Anyway, so, skipping the whining, we had a productive week- in so far as I made lots of money  (more than I make in a week at work) doing 2 agency shifts (does anyone see how ridiculous that is?) and we replaced the old metal shed with a new (attrociously poor quality, but looks the part) wooden shed. We spent almost 12 hours solidly working on the shed (apart from a very quick break for lunch), the old one being surprisingly hard to take down. Rotten though it was there was a lot of rusty old steel holding it together. The block-work back wall was as bad as I feared though and I just pushed it over. Kathryn and I broke it up a bit once it’d been pushed over – so as to clear it away somewhat more easily. Unfortunately, the guy who said he’d come take away the steel hasn’t turned up; and our back yard looks like a scrap yard. We need to get a skip in, and my plan to put the car on the neighbour’s drive (the one of the abandoned house) has been foiled by him turning up and putting his car there. The swine.

    I don’t see any action on the house though, so I guess he’s just dumped his car there and gone off on holiday (it’s a handy spot to park if you’re flying, I guess).

    Anyway, so I’m back at my usual work after a week of nights, and the week ‘off’ with the 2 agency shifts – and I’ve screwed my body up by doing one night in that bunch. I’m tired and grumpy feeling – and I meant to ring the doctor this morning to sort out an appointment (I’m due my regular blood test to see if my liver’s got worse, I need my allergy meds and I want a referral to Guy’s allergy clinic). Unfortunately, I sat being apathetic until I finally rang and they’d no appointments left. Some days I really suck :-/

    I’ll have to do it one day next week now, which is a shame because Kathryn might be at home and I’d much rather have spent time with Kathryn. The problem is, I’m achy and tired, and the sofa is terribly comfy.

    Other tasks which were up for this morning included wandering to B&Q and seeing if they still do the dire, cheap, wobbly metal shelving which I could screw to the back wall of the thin-staple and nail shed so as we could actually have our kitchen back. I reckon that with a couple of sets of shelves there’d actually be enough space in there to put *all* the decorating and DIY stuff. Possibly even the relevant bits of the Charlie when I bring her back from my mum’s.

    I’m, it must be said, getting desperate for a bike which does more than 50 mph. It’s mind blowingly tedious, the motorway at 50mph. And it’s not even like I’m getting awesome fuel efficiency from Cherry at this cruising speed, some of the petrol’s going into the gearbox, and lord knows where the rest of the 60mpg is going (it’s still running around 45mpg).

    I *am* in a whiny mood.

    I think I’ll go shower, and then put some more filler on Jejy, and watch We love XKCD a few more times. As a side point, one thing which I have noted for it’s awesomeness, apart from my luck at meeting Kathryn who is awesome beyond words, is that cooking one’s food from scratch does result in meals that are delicious. For years I’ve espoused this theory, and being one who can knock up a reasonable tomato sauce in the same time it takes to warm a pre-bought one (mine’s better :-P) had lived on basically: wraps, pasta, curry and pizza – those being the recipes I had in my head – for years. But being with Kathryn, and being bored of those minimal choices, we’ve started cooking our way through a couple of cook books – including the world’s most gorgeous chicken pie (coming again this weekend, because while it’s phenominally unhealthy (pot of cream, block of butter) it’s just so damn good that occasionally we have to eat it), calzone (we overcooked it slightly and it was still bloody delicious), curried parsnip soup (my dad’d be proud, bit too lemony but also great), and a miriad of other great dishes – and y’know what, my diet is much better and (apart from being knackered) I feel healthier. And it’s just damn spiffy.

    Yes, we loose an hour every night to cooking, but quite frankly it’s worth it. Unfortunately, however creatively I did the sums I couldn’t make buying cereal more expensive that making our own granola. Our own granola was excellent. Truly, we had hit on the celestial being’s own recipe for granola. But now we’re back to Tesco Crunchy and Kathryn (not being a huge fan of it) is back on Fruit and Fibre. It’s somewhat of a comedown.
    The other disappointing thing is not having time or space to invite others to come share with us. I miss having people come around to stay, and come for dinner. Hopefully, once I’ve got my debts a little more under control, and perhaps got money back from Charlie for the bodged restoration of Rebecca, and the house is more finished we can get back to a more luxurious lifestyle. Anyhow, I should move off this sofa, because I’ve been sat here all morning.

    …oh, I’m still tickled that we don’t look over 18 :)

  • Polar opposites.

    So, yesterday I spent a few hours on the DAF and found out why she leaks (the windscreen wiper spindle seals are purely ornamental at the front, the window-seal-spreader strip is not fully in at the rear, and the mastic around the screen has failed), painted the sill and reattached the finisher strip and, bizzarely, replaced the windscreen wiper blades (how else d’y’think I noticed the spindle seals)!

    This done, we decided to take advantage of the summer sales.

    We’ve been contemplating a new set of garden furniture for a while and the summer sales are on at a wide variety of home improvement places. Having examined the options we opted for a set of director’s chairs and a table made of “hardwood” stained with teak-oil. This choice made, we went to B&Q to check the prices… and found them to be 15 quid more than the comparible homebase one. Now, B&Q is about 8 feet from our house. Homebase, a mile.

    We walked to homebase, discussed it, and in the end opted to buy the homebase set. The idea being to sled-it back along the grass (since we aren’t worried about the box it’s in). Yeah. We got most of the way but the last stretch is all pavement, and not sled-able. We struggled for a bit until a very nice polish chap offered us a lift.

    We considered the options. A: Take up the random bloke’s offer and hop in his car for the last 1/4 of a mile. B: Drag/lift/curse the furniture back to the house the last 1/4 of a mile. Exhausted as we were, option A was definately the best idea and we were given a lift back to the house by a really very nice polish gentleman. This is the opposite of our last experience with a local pole, who was, it must be said, both drunk and irritating. To be fair, at 3 in the morning being drunk on our doorstep and waking us up may have given him an unfair disadvantage in this race; but honestly? It does a country good when you meet someone truly nice who does something for no gain at all.

    We got back to the house, assembled the furniture and I was surprised to have the individual who I’ve been railing against for damaging our shed appear at our back gate. A surprisingly civilised conversation took place and he’s paid for a new shed. Granted a very cheap and probably not great quality shed. The kind of shed which’ll only last a few years, unless well looked after, but it’s a new shed. We’ll repair the base and rip out the old shed… more rubble to haul away. But hey.

    The new shed, also on sale, will be arriving in the next week. If anyone fancies giving us a hand removing the old one… repairing the concrete and putting the new one up… no? no one? Poot.

    Anyhow, having got the garden set it’s now raining *lots* and the DAF is slowly filling with water – because now it’s got no holes to go out of…and I’ve got to go to work in an hour and a half, and so am debating alternately weeping (for how wet I’ll be) and cursing (the e-bayer who one-week-on from purchase has failed to send me any notice of posting, and who’s not yet replied to my ‘where is it’ e-mail – and thus has kept me from my hub-puller).

    What we have done, however, is watch Juno – which I heartily recommend. It’s an excellent and quirky film – aided by the music of Kimya Dawson (who I think is awesome but continue to believe is mad as a teapot; her lyrics are just excellent but so strange). It’s really well shot, and I had little tears in the corners of my eyes as the end approached.

    And now we must go and make Potato Latkis, for it is time for an early dinner, as I’m working from 1830…

  • Been meaning to post

    There’ve been a bunch of days where I thought I should post. There’s been stuff at work, and stuff about the wedding, and then there was a conversation I overheard, and then stuff about the DAF, and stuff about the Minor. It’s all been happening, and thanks to hayfever and exhaustion I’ve just not got around to it.

    I barely feel like getting around to it now. I woke up at 0652, which thankfully is somewhat better than the 0430s of late, but I’m feeling fairly awful. I appear to have got through almost an entire toilet roll, and the remainder of the box of ‘nice’ tissues and still can’t breathe. I’m tired now and my brain feels faintly like treacle.

    I shouldn’t complain though, we had a glorious day yesterday – and ignoring all possible hayfever related risks we headed out on a 4 mile wander down to Windsor. Apart from a brief stretch past the water-works (or sewage works, as they really are) the walk’s really beautiful; meandering down around the Jubilee river and then (rather more nicely) around the Thames. Eton Wick is also terribly pretty and filled with the kinds of houses I actually rather like (although it does appear to have been attacked by the 1970s, somewhat).

    We sat at the bathing place of Athens, we lay in long-grass eating cheese sandwiches and muching on Tomatoes, lay in the early evening sun and then wandered around Windsor. I picked up a couple of rock and roll gramophone records – which are extraordinarily loud (I can only actually listen to them by putting my portable gramophone in the next room, since it’s not as posh as Nikki’s and doesn’t have a volume control (or, as you might call it, a door)). I also got a Ketelbey gramophone (In a Persian Market / In a Monastry Garden) – Ketelbey was one of my dad’s favourite composers – and while I have his 45 of In a Persian Market / In a Monastry Garden I fancied hearing an earlier version; and there it was.

    At some point when I have more money I’m tempted to go back – because they had a couple more of the rock gramophones – which I’ve a bit of a fancy for – but it’s probably best that it’s too far for me to ‘pop’ back and get them. They also had pianola rolls, I’ve always fancied a pianola, but thankfully don’t have one (I can’t even get my own piano into our house!)…although there are several on e-bay for £0.99…

    We had one less positive incident, we got some cake from a cafe as a treat (we didn’t look too carefully at the menu and it said ‘organic cakes from £2.50’) – we’d already felt that their prices were a little high – but when Kathryn went to pay… £7! For two very average slices of cake. Sure they were nice, but not £7 nice.

    It put a bit of a dent in our otherwise excellent day. We rounded it off by wandering through Waitrose, buying a rather bizzare dinner (but very nice) and then lazing on the sofa at home drinking cider and snuggling. Photos from the set are here…

    Today I have kitchen based intentions, and have spent the morning trying to persude VMWare on the Hackintosh to see the USB (it won’t) so that I can update the music on my MP3 player. If anyone’s got software to make an iDJ 360 do it’s database update on a Mac or Linux, then that’d be very handy. The best I’ve found is this topic on the Ubuntu forum which is a few weeks old and hasn’t changed for a while…

    Tidying and cleaning also needs to happen today.

    Next week we have *lots* of DAF related activities scheduled. Painting the new metalwork, although despite my request he’s thrown underseal on some bits (I went to go and look, and the new sills are very shiny, solid and sill-ey); there’s floor in some of the boot and the driver’s side floor actually looks like floor now. To be restoration grade it’d need filler and smoothing and various things, but to be ‘useable’ and ‘solid’ it needs painting, and some waxoyl in through the clips for the trim and that’s it. The Brakes need to be unsiezed – they’ve resisted despite moving the car around a fair bit – I ordered a hub puller from ebay after ringing every auto-factor in slough. One had a bearing puller (“universal”) but had no idea what size it was, it was an order only item, and cost the same as the one on e-bay which I knew what size it was…

    So, the plan for next week is paint sills (and other new metalwork), unsieze brakes, check over (again), MOT, Tax (difficult, we’re still lacking a V5) and drive around happily. The mog should be done in about 2 more weeks, apparently. So then we’ll be back up to full strength….

  • The good:
    The MZ is done and MOT’d (yay! a year of road-worthy-ness, ish)
    The DAF is booked for transport to the welder.
    I plastered the curve and the wall under the window (or alternatively, as I originally wrote, the window under the wall) yesterday.
    I have done much laundry and our laundry basket is no longer full.

    The bad:
    The ‘zed is still not doing any more than 6k rpm. She needs a full engine rebuild to work out *why* she’s not revving right.
    The DAF is, at the moment 4 miles from the restoration place. It will cost 10 pounds a mile to get her there.
    The flat bit of the wall under the window needs a lot of work to make it smooth. Conversely the curve looks ace.
    It’s intermittently trying to rain on the clothes.

    It’ll do…
    Well, the ‘zed, really. It’s not worth the hundreds of pounds it’d cost to fix it, but the new brake MC and a mirror, (a mirror on the right hand side!) they make it much safer to ride. Well, the mirror does. The old MC was fine, but I was rather worried about the crack which had made the metalwork for the lever not really, well, attached very well in once place. It was all hodged back together with washers and the hand protector, but I wasn’t really very happy with it. Now I can brake with confidence. Poor old Cherry Red Zed, she’ll probably end up being a spares bike for Charlie. I may even pinch the new MC and such for Charlie… And keep the original MZ one as a back-up. I do need to get Charlie back here though, so I can reassemble her and get her MOT’d.

    The DAF’ll have to do. I am peeved that it’s 10 quid a mile, or there abouts, for the journey to the welder. I have had these terrible thoughts of ‘well, technically it’s legal to drive to and from a place of repair’. Once the brakes are serviced ‘n all, the only person I’d be putting at risk, theoretically, is me. But if the police were to, say, stop me as a car with no MOT or Tax and ask questions it’d be hard to defend and difficult for them not to notice the huge-gaping-lack-of-sill on one side. I shall, instead, content myself with attempting to find time to do the brake-service in between now and then so that I can drive her directly from there to the MOT; thus saving at least the 40 quid for the return journey.

    The wall? Well, the curve I’m really proud of. It’s not perfect and has a couple of small ridges on it that’ll need a little sanding to make right; but really? It’s pretty darn good for someone who’s plastering qualifications are ‘I’ve patched up a few walls now and then’. Me and the float though, we couldn’t get on when covering the scratch coat on the flat wall. To be fair to me I think the problem was I was trying to do a proper skim; not a full on coat of plaster. On the curve it’d more-or-less all come away so the curve was a proper thick layer of plaster that I could skim until it was right. On the wall, it was a skim on top of a very thin scratch coat on top of multiple patches and such – which I was just attempting to smooth out. And without making it so high as to make the skirting entirely disappear that’s pretty hard to do. It’ll look alright after a light (moderate in some places) sand, but it’s slighly disappointing – I really felt like I’d started to get the hang of plastering with the stuff in the kitchen. I’ve still got the big section by the light-switch / door to do. That still needs more stripping back though :-/

    Anyhow, I’m off to nodnol in a bit, go and collect the ‘zed. ‘m just letting the phone charge and having a cup of tea first :)

  • So, today

    So then – did we leap into action today – given the rain outside and the related inability to service the bike or work on the daf – did we instead leap into action and finish the bathroom?

    Did we paint the wall in the study?

    No, we did not. I had a headache this morning, and we only actually got going some time after 1. Possibly 2. But we’ve had really nice day; scrambled eggs and bagels for breakfast; a nice long shower; yesterday’s curry for lunch; I’ve sorted out the bike getting the bits needed to make it not only MOT worthy, but in a better condition than it’s been for ages – and organised a day to get it down to Burwin to see if they can figure out why it’ll only do 50mph. And maybe get that efficiency up a bit, because it’s down around 25-30mpg which is way-low for an MZ.

    Kathryn used that opportunity of me ringing to head to the post office, and then we settled down reading websites and doing little of import for a while before embarking on a mammoth larder clearout. Rubbish and tools out; mould off the wall (but it really needs a coat of mould resistant paint), and then cleaned and tidied and labelled and reorganised. It’s actually a usable space now (although I can’t wait to clean it, rip out the old shelves and reorganise that).

    Finally we cooked an awesome dinner.

    Kathryn made gorgeous shortbread biscuits yesterday, which I may have to eat some more of, when I’m less full. The good thing about not being on holiday all the time is I suspect I’d weigh about 3 times more than I do if I was.

    And now, potentially, trivial pursuit.

    As an aside, the burn on my hand is peeling…

  • 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 :)

  • 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….

  • 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?

  • 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).