Mostly lemon based

Category: Enfield

  • Progress (at least in some areas)

    So, I’ve had a to-do list on the computer for a while; I’d like to imagine that I was getting through it at great speed, but I’m not. Indeed it’s been the same list for most of the week. Or at least modifed versions. See, sadly as I’ve crossed off items from the to-do list I’ve found new things to put on it; at least, until today, when I found out just how dead the laptop battery really is. I accidentally unplugged my laptop and about 15 minutes later it was dead. Dead as in died without even flashing up the low battery warning. Feh.

    Anyhow, I’ve been plodding through it. Not with a great deal of success, to be brutally honest. But there we go.

    I had stuff to write about when I started writing this yesterday; but I’ve largely forgotten it. Since Kathryn asked about the ‘Things I want page‘ so I’ve updated that. I’m sure I had more of a reason for posting. The past week’s been really quite crappy; I mean, I’ve enjoyed it in some senses of the word but it has been incredibly hard work – and to be honest a lot of patients haven’t got the care that they deserved. Some have got rather more than they deserved too; to be honest. I think my judgement’s been off as I’ve been tired.

    For some reason our poor little department has been flooded with patients, and pretty much every day has been full and really, really hard work. I have a faint feeling there was one nice shift. But I can’t really recall it. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy my job, I just sometimes feel that it’s a bit like bailing out a rowboat using a sieve.

    Anyhow, so this week has been a bit frustrating. Brick’s starting problems have returned. I’m going to have a clean of the relevant connector and maybe try measuring the voltage while waving the cable around and see if it suddenly drops to 0 or somesuch. But even applying the jumpleads doesn’t always seem to make it work, which was my trick last time around.

    I finally rang Virgin to find out about the phone, and it’s a no. The street is cabled, just not as far as our house; I did actually put ourselves on the ‘come look and call me if you’ll cable it’, but I doubt it’s worth the hastle for them. There’s only 6 or so houses (possibly as many as 10) that are on the street that aren’t cabled, and most of ’em have Sky. So it looks like I’ll have to trawl through the broadband suppliers and find a ‘good’ one. BT seem to have given up offering me things to try and convince me to stay with their crappitude.

    I’ve done more tiling; Kathryn did some grouting too, so there’s a section that’s more or less finished. But there’s still a lot of tiling to do. But one wall is done bar the wood at the bottom; which needs different adhesive. And the wall the toilet’s on is similarly done. The one with the radiator on is done bar 6 tiles. When I’ve put those last 6 on I’ll start cleaning up the radiator; because once the radiator’s on then we’re very close to calling in the gas engineer. It’s getting fracking cold here now, cold enough that the fire’s starting to be slow to warm the lounge and that it’s cool in the bedroom. So I guess the fact that we’re now not going to Italy is actually quite handy because a solid week of work should see the bathroom finished; and then the happy chappy who is my gas engineer can come and hopefully stop us freezing to death. I’m actually tempted, if I can, to connect up the lounge radiator too. That would be positively spiffy, but we’ll just have to see how we go.

    I’ve also finally got around to filling in the NHSP forms, so I now need a signature from my manager and some lovely photos of me, oh and some photocopies of my passport and stuff. Then I’ll be able to earn the extra cashes required for…

    …the Minor. I’ve also finally got around to ringing JLH – and Rebecca will be heading up there towards the end of November, beginning of December. She’ll be fitting in around other work; and it’s quite terrifying how much she’s going to cost. It’s a big chunk of the original restoration costs. I’ll also be adding recovery to my breakdown cover before we try running up there because she’ll now have not been run for just shy of a year, and is *not * a well bunny. If we decide we’ve had enough on the way up there, then we can stop and call breakdown then.

    Poor old Cherry Red’s been doing the run to and from work; she’s still just as sick as she has been for a long time, with a top speed of about 80km/h to maybe 100 km/h. She’s next on the list, and will have to get taken down to London at some point. I keep thinking about what could be causing it but I suspect without stripping it down I’m not going to find out. She still leaks two-stroke (which I need to get some more of from somewhere – and not the local bike shop who I was very unimpressed with). It’s getting bloody cold though, riding the bike. And my bike gear’s beginning to show it’s age (even more!) – the zipper’s starting to come apart on the jacket. I may have to make a run down to Bristol (since I want to head down and see friends anyhow) to my favourite bike shop and see what they’ve got on offer :)

    Yes, so.

    (And now, thanks to e-bay, I have oil. Ra).

    So, last night we went out to the A&E and Paramedics’ Halloween party (yes, as many people pointed out to us on the way there, Halloween is not for a while yet) – with Kathryn’s help I went as a Witch and she as my familiar :) Despite my shyness I did actually talk to a few people although I didn’t do a great deal of socialising. We also screwed up travelling there; I forgot how crap Firstbus are and we tried to get a bus to the station. Obviously at obscure times like Saturday night, at say 1900ish, you need busses no more frequently than hourly (oh, and let’s make the times the bus run completely unrelated to the online time table). In the end, despite my ridiculous heels we decided to walk there, which would’ve been fine, apart from the fact that my cheap-arse boots had a staple come through the sole while walking, and the balls of my feet feel like they’re working up to revealing some blisters of significant size. I had a good time though, and we headed home after midnight. I may share the picture of us; when I feel enthused enough to put it on the laptop :)

    We had a very relaxed day today though; it’s really nice just to spend a day relaxing, I’ve not touched the house all day, I’ve not dealt with the E-mail to JLH, although I may ring this chap about the Enfield…. and JP about the Enfield also. And that, that is my update :)

  • Frack me, it didn’t leak.

    That’s not to say it won’t start leaking in the future. But at this moment… *goes to check again* the only thing that’s leaking is one of the compression isolation valves which I threw on to test whether the pipes leaked. I am astonished. I rock.

    My house is, however, now home to a hideous cludge:

    Yes, that is in fact a hack to get water from downstairs to upstairs before I start attacking the downstairs plumbing. Clicky the picture for a couple more progress shots…

    The other thing I did today was go down and charge my mum’s Enfield. It turns out she can’t get the charger connector on, which is somewhat of a bugger; although I might try slathering things in silicone lubricant, since I’ve got some, and see if she can then. But it’s very stiff, even I struggled. This did, however, involve rearranging the garage; the best (albeit temporary) solution we’ve managed to reach is having the car half in / half out.

    This obviously won’t really *do* as it’s meant to go on charge for 8 hours from flat (although it took only an hour and a bit today to switch off). Having poked and prodded around the car some more I’ve discovered that it doesn’t appear to have it’s original controller; which is somewhat of a surprise, and that it comes with the front cover of the log for the research project of which it was part. Anyhow, more Enfield and related pictures here. My mum’s already talking about getting more range and fasterness with bigger / more modern batteries and a better controller. She’s not even *driven* it yet!

    Still, the MOT’s booked, so hopefully we can get down there and get that done :)

    I also took a few random flower shots, so you can get them here…

  • Distance is relative

    So, yesterday was an interesting day; I managed to haul myself out of bed early to go look at an EV. The guy had said it was probably only good for parts; but I never trust other people’s judgement in these issues – because often people can be a bit blinded by dirt and grot.

    In this case though, he was probably right. It’s rather sad, apparently there were only 110ish of these little cars made:

    Very sickly Enfield EV

    This being a rather sad example. I reckon it’s had about 20 years of hard service followed by about 10 of sitting unloved in the corner of a council yard. Although the body is glass fibre and aluminium, the chassis is a box-section affair with a big plate of steel on top of it, and that has basically completely disintegrated. If I didn’t have 3 projects on the go (the minor, my pink ‘zed, and the odds and sods on Brick) plus the house then I’d be tempted, because I really think it’s a shame that it’s going to go for parts, but it is a big project. The body’d have to come off the floor, and then it’d need a new floor, new electrics, new batteries, the door, if it is salvagable would need an awful lot of work – it’s not like you can pick these things up down at your local dealer…

    I rather like them though. They have a dinky charm.

    Anyway, so that was a longish treck in the morning – not aided by Brick having a bit of a flat battery in the morning. I have been having this suspicion that the alternator isn’t *really* keeping up – I’ve had this faint feeling for a while. Things like the lights dimming at idle, and this faint but almost certain feeling that the starter was going slower each morning…

    At any rate, it’s not charging effectively, which is another thing to look into. I was meant to be going to the parts day, but… well, I’ll get to that.

    So after the enfield trip I decided I was going to pick up Brian’s birthday present. Great plan, except that saturday in Slough is a slow-traffic affair. Brick – having come off the motorway – was very hot. Traffic was fairly much stationary. We actually sat through two cycles of one set of lights without moving, and I started to get the feeling that the engine wasn’t entirely running well. Then he stalled, in a line of traffic outside Tesco. With superhuman, she-ra like strength I lept out (having discovered he wasn’t in a hurry to restart) and managed to push the car (using a run up) half onto the pavement, thus allowing people to get past. For once, I don’t think I even got honked at.

    So we sat for a few minutes, I took the opportunity to reclean the rotor arm, and when the engine had cooled down a bit, it restarted. Still didn’t really idle, but with some effort I got us turned around and headed home. I suspect fuel vaporisation, which is annoying, ‘cos it’s not exactly *hot* at the moment, and I’m not quite sure what to do about that, except possibly knock up some sort of heat shield and change the layout of the fuel pipe.

    Aaaanyway, so then I walked into town (far more healthy, anyway), got Brian’s present and promptly turned round and walked back. It’s about 4 kms each way, and I’m not the fittest person on the planet (and also I do a fairly active job…), so after that I got home and was a bit tired. Having stripped the bed linen, put the laundry on I had a nap, this was also a cost cutting measure, because if I’m asleep I don’t need the heating on (alledgedly). I woke up freezing cold, and stuck the gas fire on… And then showered, dressed and headed to the strangest party.

    This, obviously, involved walking back to town. And then taking the tube. I am never, ever taking the tube again when there’s engineering work on. I’d ‘budgeted’ about half an hour to get to Brian’s house – reckoning it’d really take 20. It took about 40 minutes to get there – especially when the only option for reaching the Northern line was the Hammersmith and City line, which for some reason decided not to stop at King’s Cross. When I was going the other way on the Northern Line they implied that there was no Hammersmith and City connection too… so I had to go past King’s Cross and down to Moorgate. There was a lot of standing around and no information being given to customers. Or at least, the information being given didn’t aid you in getting anywhere, it simply told you that there was no service on the Circle and District lines…

    Anyway, I got to the party – but the tube situation meant that I had to leave early, which was a shame, because I had to leave at about the point I started to relax a bit. It has to be said that I did have a good time, but it was weird. Really weird. These are people I’ve not seen for 8 years, and I last saw them during a period in which I was not in the best state of mind.

    But the weird thing is that they really have just become older versions of themselves. Personality wise, they were pretty much the way I remember them. But they look…well, like they’re coming up on thirty. I forget that I’m nearly thirty, and most of my friends either are, or look younger than they are. So seeing this group of friends who are the same age as me, and don’t look old per-se, but definately look their age, and are all doing the same scarily responsible things as me (house ownership, pensions and jobs); many of whom are married, or getting married…. It was quite scary. And they’ve all kept in touch – which is quite weird – since they were school friends. Nice, but uncommon, I’d say. Anyway, it gave me this feeling like I’d teleported 8 years into the future. There were these grown up people, and here I am feeling completely out of my depth.

    At any rate, I had a good time, and I’ll probably see them again.

    It’s funny to think of them, writing for NME (I think), teaching and… in positions of responsibility.

    Anyway, I headed home, and had a bit of a nightmare with the tube, missing my connecting train by a good 20 minutes (despite leaving nearly an hour to get back to the station), but thankfully Kathryn was awake, so I had someone to make the journey back a bit more pleasant.

    When I got back (sorry, rambly post), I did try and persuade a cab driver to take me ‘most’ of the way back, but he declared that his meter starts running at a fiver (it normally costs 6 quid back to my street, so I’m slightly surprised by that (whatever time I’ve come back, it’s cost 6 quid)), so I walked, tempting myself with the thought of a kebab… Not that I was hungry, I’ve just not had one for so long I thought it’d be nice.

    So I wandered back, amazingly I’ve discovered the power of ‘layers’ and thus wasn’t cold. Oh, and thermal teeshirts from Alaska and Canada :-) And the stars were so pretty last night. It was a cold night – because the sky was completely clear, and even through the light pollution, I could see loads of stars. And then, as a special treat, as I approached my local kebab van (which, incidentally shut while I was looking at this), two groups of birds set forth each forming a beautiful V in the sky, the light from the earth reflecting off their light feathers producing a beautiful spectacle. The people on the other side of the road seemed to think I was a bit odd, as I just came to a stop and stared at the sky…

    …It was just supremely beautiful, and completely unexpected.

    Of course, when I got home I had to make the bed (*doh*) and I finally fell into bed and slept ’til 7 (thanks body), with some encouragement I managed to make it through to 1045 though, so now I’m pondering the rest of my day. I need to do some cleaning, and if I can get some reorganisation done in bedroom two I should be able to prep the bathroom for builders…. Not that I’ve got any yet. Lucky’s not brought back the spare copy of the plans, so I may have to photocopy mine, or somesuch, to give to the next lot of builders. Bloody sod people.

    I hate builders. Did I mention that?