Mostly lemon based

Category: Moggie

Stuff directly related to my Beloved Moggie Minor

  • The Sunday Catch-up Post

    So, it’s very strange. If I’m here, no one updates at the weekend. I go away for a weekend and have seven pages of LJ to read through. 7. Pages. Seven. Gah!

    Anyway, on Friday I got home from a (shockingly useful and interesting, no really, Work Based Learning Day) during which I handed in my NP5 placement documents (I passed, thankfully; however now I’ve got 10 weeks of ‘work’ on a new ward, during which my only outcome is to not kill anybody) and struggled through shaving my legs well (as opposed to the ‘adequate’ I normally do when going swimming) and gathering together the stuffs for my trip to Rocky Horror. I even remembered to take the map, so as I could pop in at Ray’s and collect the Towbar. Of course, it being me I managed to get out the door a staggering hour later than intended (though to be fair I did spend rather longer than I’d intended at Uni / Hospital, what with popping by to greet the new ward. Of course, I neglected to ask them what time their shifts start).

    Having piled stuff in the car I headed up the motorway. And for the first time in my life I am thankful to a Bentley driver, because as I was heading up the motorway the engine’d got a bit louder. Not *lots* louder, but the level of louder I associate with the exhaust manifold managing to slacken off and thus, giving the effect of hole’d exhaust. But given the fact that the exhaust I’ve got doesn’t really fit the manifold very well (for reasons I don’t understand given that it is the right part) I’ve kind of got used to this occuring.

    But as I tore past the Bentley he dashed out behind me flashing his lights rather excessively; I pulled sideways, looked round as he came past and he mouthed ‘your exhausts come off’ at me. I thought ‘arse’ and made a dash for the hard shoulder. He was half right; it’d snapped. The high quality, long life, stainless steel exhaust’s snapped just in front of the rear silencer. The application of a substantial amount of force and the thing came off and was dumped, unceremoniously in the boot. I pondered for a second and decided I still had one silencer and that’s good enough for the original mog, hopped in and headed on up the motorway.

    And hit traffic. I’d planned to nip by Ray’s on Friday… but this was clearly a flawed plan; insofar as if I ‘nipped’ by Ray’s then I’d not get to Chrissy’s until after we were s’posed to leave. In fact, given the traffic I was encountering getting to Chrissy’s in time to leave would be hard anyway. Fortunately, I have a plan for moments like this… “Drive faster”.

    So, yes, ignoring the near annihilation by careless lorry drivers, the near-emergency-stop to avoid becoming one with the minor and a 7.5 tonne truck, and the insane number of people convinced that being overtaken by a Morris Minor means that they must instantly speed up, pass the mog and then slow down again; ignoring all of that, I got there at ten past 6. A mere 1.5 hours later than intended.

    I flumped into a chair and Chrissy offered me a tea. When she came back I queried when we had to leave. A quick check of the time table and the discovery was made that ‘in about 20 minutes’ was the optimum (*only*) time to leave if we were to make it to London in time. Thankfully I’m pretty quick at getting a basque on, although the stockings really didn’t want to play. The new suspenders were a bit tight on the stockings and it took a while, but at any rate, we made it; looking something like this:

    Lauren and Chrissy

    Kate on a Train

    So, err, yes. That’s me. On a train.

    The Rocky Horror Show absolutely, totally and utterly rocked. It was such a laugh, and made me wonder why I’d left it so long to go again. Apart, obviously, from the ever present monetary issues. And it really is quite fun being a shameless hussy now and then, wandering through the streets of london in my undies. Although by the end of the day, when we got home (at 1ish, I think?) my feet were saying something quite rude about the 3″ / 4″ heels. I’d measure them but all my rulers appear to have disappeared. Anyhoo. There’s more rather random picture spam here (although only one more underwear shot, and that’s blurry). It really is random by the way, what with covering my wander round Huntingdon this morning.

    So, yes, then yesterday I spent most of the day asleep; and then having woken up, wishing that I had much stronger painkillers. Eventually I downed my usual brufen / paracetamol combination, drinking lots having not helped, and started to feel remotely like some kind of human being – which meant that by the time Dr Who came on I felt human. Due to Chrissy’s NTL box having a fit of insanity we watched it in 4:3, which was very odd (no, seriously, really quite odd, it’s obviously a Widescreen program, on a widescreen telly, but the edges were being chopped off). Good episode, although very very much a second half to the first one. Probably want to watch it again with the first episode – so as to get the whole flow of it.

    Eurovision came on I could eat Curry and drink Cider. Which turned out to be an excellent plan. And watching Lordi win Eurovision has got to be the Best. Thing. Ever.

    They simply Rock, and I await the Arockalypse with baited breath. I also have the Lordi Album now…

    Um. So. Yes. I fear I have become sick, I have the lurgee waiting with baited breath to consume me.

    Anyway, so I wandered round Huntingdon this morning and took a few shots of an abandoned house. At least I think it’s abandoned. The bizzare thing is that the hedge is trimmed, but there’s no signs of use on any of the locks, and there’s lots of broken windows. So I suspect that the council may have nipped round with hedge trimmers.

    And then I spent a very chilled out morning back at Chrissy’s, before piling in the car and heading back (via Ray’s, this time).

    And then I got back and my PC wouldn’t boot. Yes. hal.dll was apparently missing, and there were a couple of corrupt files on the disk. Now I’ll just say this once, okay?

    WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH WINDOWS?!

    There.

    I shut it down, and it *dies*. Well, semi-dies. A reboot and a checkdisk and it thinks it’s okay. I await the collapse of the tower of cards with a real fear (since it’s my work machine). *sighs*.

    I am starting to wonder if it’s time to start from scratch. New *everything*, because I can’t help but wonder how it’s going so badly wrong. Anyway.

    Having got the machine to boot I read this. This is a very good post. You should all go and read it. Go. Now. I wish I had the skill to express thoughts this well, but she’s managed to put everything I can consider thinking about this and the related issues it conjurs up.

    But then I read this; which is Awesome (no, not like a hot dog).

    I think you’re sufficiently updated on my life now, so I’m going to eat food; and vegitate; because I feel rough as hell.

  • And pause.

    So, I went to see my mom (deliberate) this weekend; I’ve not been down for a while and consequently the list of things that needed doing was quite long. I did start to wonder about how my dad kept up.

    (skip past this bit for the wittery kate talk)
    I… bought fencing material and fenced off with barbed wire both ends of the river (after 6 years of people trespassing and damaging my mum’s garden the fight just got a bit nastier; incidentally, while Nikki I’m sure (being a farm-lass) would have had no problems dealing with barbed wire, I found it almost as much fun as it looked like it’d be); put up the new washing line; repaired the gate; removed the excess fencing from the gate post; ‘repaired’ my mum’s car door lock (it jams, locked, irritatingly); cleaned up mouse crap from high up where my mum couldn’t reach; put up a shelf and hangy things in the shed (well, technically, my mum, in a disturbing character change has decided to become much more independent (she’s perhaps fed up of having broken things around the house waiting for me to visit) so I drilled holes and she screwed the bits of wood up); I also prepared but didn’t put the edging up on the bridge (I think we need some ‘nicer’ wood). This took up the large majority of the weekend and when I left, just before lunch today I was knackered.

    I also checked and found out why the speaker in my car was working intermittently, the ‘quality’ soldering I’d done when I put it in (like a lot of other jobs) was rather botched, so it’d snapped. I put that on my ‘when I get home’ list. However, when I got home I did the supermarket shopping (Woot, I have food!); finally fixed the frying pan that’s been broken for months (now it has a screw made from some high-quality-metal or other which will I’m sure soon add the daily requirement of rust to my diet); the saucepan that’s had a loose handle and thus sat on the table for weeks; the broken wire to the speaker in my car (‘cos I couldn’t go to work without it working!) and now I am… knackered.

    Oh, I also watched Jean de Florette, with my mum, which turned out to be excellent and added to the strangeness (my mum had been excitedly showing me screwdrivers earlier in the day, a quality I presumed I’d inhereted from my dad…) when my mum professed a need for a widescreen telly. I tried and tried to persuade them when my dad was alive, but no need for a widescreen telly ever existed before… suddenly now, I’d given up hope and watching stuff on the ex-rental telly with the poor colour rendition and the flickering from bright to dark had become kind of normal. And then, suddenly, she’s all ‘I need a widescreen telly’. The world is going odd.

    (and stop skipping) 

    Anyway, I had a long chat with my mom about moving. About not being able to afford to stay in Bristol and thinking about moving Northward… I kind of expected a flurry of ‘no’ – me being further away will almost certainly mean less of me seeing my mum. But there was none. My mum basically said ‘for god’s sake, get on with it’. So, now I’m thinking about it more meaningfully. I’ve even got a Birmingham Univeristy Hospital application form sat on my desktop waiting for me to fill it in.

    I guess I’m starting to step outside my comfort zone again. Which is kinda scary. I was talking (I do a lot of that) to Trey about it; and it came down to the fact that I want to leave this country in 2 years. Either I can struggle in Bristol, probably not be able to get the kind of house I want, and so on; or I can move up North, get paid the same, live in a cheaper area, almost certainly find a house I actually want, or at least that’s appropriate and in my price range (and has a garage, hell, I’ve seen a few on Fish4 just scanning the listings). This will hopefully also allow me to save up a bit, and having a garage will mean that left-hooking Rebecca and getting her all prepped for the journey shouldn’t be so hard. So I’m going to give a couple of places a ring on Monday afternoon, see if I can’t scare up some jobs.

    Of course, this is in addition to writing my dissertation; and I’ve realised I really need to start preparing Rebecca for Pride. The call is still out, incidentally for Stewards. We just need two shiny people who’d like to be stewards around a shiny, shiny black Minor. Go look at (last years, okay, I know) the Pride of Minors website. The car that needs stewards is Fifi, the shiny black one, driven by our mate Guy. Go’wan, y’know you want to be a star…

    Anyway, I seem to have stopped, and I want to go play with this form, so I can get it sent off nice and sharpish like. So. Yes. I’m also very tired, and quite hungry (all I ate for lunch today was a slice of plum and chocolate cake).

  • Lacking in title

    I’m in the weirdest mood. I should be working, I’m aware of that, but I just feel vaguely distracted and; well; not entirely 100% there. I want to do *something* but I’ve no idea what, I’m kinda tired, I’ve got about 1000 words of Dissertation done which isn’t really enough. I ended up watching Dr Who (that is such a sweet episode) and then flumping through my music video collection watching things almost at random.

    I kinda want to listen to music, but I’m just… blah, really. I’d like to listen to music and lie downstairs reading a good book, but I’m slightly too tense to do that. The house auction is this week, and I want to know the result. To quote talking heads, I feel tense and nervous and I can’t relax (although, I’m not, as far as I know, a psycho killer).

    I think I’ve just got a lot on my mind (do I ever not have?); the LHD bits arrived for Rebecca (not entirely helpful in some ways, ‘cos I can’t *do* anything with them but look at them and go ‘ah’). I’ll probably ask Lauren if I can use her yellow paint to mark it as an LHD part.  But that – and the stuff I was saying after the weekend – has left me very thoughtful. My future lies before me, but at the moment it’s all slightly unattainable. Worse than that, there’s nothing I can really actually *do* about it.

    I also found, if I book direct with KLM or Air Canada then the flight to Toronto is actually *cheaper* than paying a chunk with Nectar points. Even more frustrating; the cost of flights from Toronto to Anchorage, which I was kinda hoping to do to visit Kara, Kaisa and Trey (et al.) adds 700+ dollars! Err, which is 350 extra quid. So it’ll cost me 300 quid to fly from the UK to Toronto and 350 quid to fly from Toronto to Anchorage? (Although it is *actually* about the same distance. Meh). Anyway. Yes. Hrm. I was thinking, well, hell, I’ve got 10,000 points on this Nectar card for me to just ‘spend’ then (although we’ll save that thought until we get the flights booked) – and y’know what? I discovered that 7,600 points gets you a 30 quid dvd. *sigh*.

    I think something may have changed in the Nectar points system.

  • Return to planet Earth

    Okay, I’ve ceased ranting. Mostly because I realised that the learning outcomes tied into the questions way better than the ones in the pack, which made life a lot easier. It’s now finally printed and done. That’s all of them done. All of them. All the EU Packs are *done*. I just need to go down to Bath and hand them in.

    In Canada shaped news I won the auctions for some of the parts to convert my dearest beloved Rebecca to Left Hand Drive. It might be two years away, but LHD minors are pretty uncommon here and so getting the parts is quite a challenge. I’ve even won one of the incredibly rare LHD accelerator pedals. This may seem sad to you, but it’s a little step in the direction of where I want to be.

    I also won the bits to put Cherry together. Let’s hope that Cherry gets an MOT when all the bits are put on, I really could do with being able to ride to work.

  • MMOC website rally

    Pickytures from a fabby day are here

  • I’ll just take an hour off…

    (4 hours later)

    Yeah, so I thought, I’ll just swap the hinge, a really nice bloke on the MMOC sent me a replacement hinge, ESM only list one so we wrongly assumed they were all the same – it turns out there’s a different variant of the hinge. Of course, this only became apparent when I looked rather more closely at it, having spent several happy hours swearing, leaning heavily on things attempting to persuade the panel gaps to be right, trying to coax the door into not hitting the wing, and eventually calling John to see if he had any ideas.

    Attempts to remove the hinge pin to take the different part from the old hinge (which was okay) and swap it for the new one, that failed too. Eventually we settled for making up some spacers… and adding some washers… the door now shuts beautifully, but the word ‘bodge’ springs to mind.

    I shall clearly have to obtain a new hinge. I also, sadly, need two hinge bolts as two of them stripped their threads instead of coming out. Sometimes I wish I’d not started these jobs.

  • Do you see the impressed?

    Securon, the makers of my now faulty seatbelt and Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre in Bath have agreed, impressively, to replace with a new one, my 3 year old faulty seatbelt; this is better than I wanted and I am, to be honest, very impressed. Thus I shall favour them with gifts of cash (in exchange for a new hinge and a couple of windscreen wiper arms).

    In other news: The NHS has moved my appointment, thankfully to later the same day; but still. I have started to recognise that cheery NHS print on the envelopes and go ‘oh god, what day am I going *now*’.

    In other other news: My battle to get a letter between one consultant and one government department rages on; the consultant saying ‘it’s been sent’ and the government going ‘la la la not listening’. Thankfully I’m a student and this process is free, otherwise I’d really be ‘quite angry’. As it is I’m just kind of bored.

    Int other (other) other news: I’ve got an appointment to view this other house. I might do a driveby and see what it’s like – I *think* there might be pedestrian access to the back too (looking at the land registry – who now have a direct line to my bank account) so I may pop down there and have a nose beforehand.

    Sadly I can’t think of anything to describe as other (other) other (other) news, so I’ll stop there.

  • And with a summary of the news

    1: I’ve got my appointment through. It appears it may not be a mammogram; it’s a full breast exam though, comprising (potentially) an ultrasound (definate), a mammogram (possible), and a needle aspiration (hopefully unlikely).

    I am, unsuprisingly, not looking forward to this. It’s 5 days before my birthday. Be gentle with me, I’ll be stressed.

    2: My iPaq sleeve has arrived. It’s charging at this very moment. Now I need a PCMCIA -> CF card adaptor and the biggest CF card I can justify.

    3: I am going to look at a house tomorrow. I’m simultaneously scared and thrilled.

    4: I went swimming today. I need to go swimming more often, as I am unfit.

    5: My MP is on the committee examining the ‘Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill’; he seems to be pro it with some changes. I remain very skeptical. Infact, I remain against the bill’s passage to law.

    6: Securon wish to examine my faulty seatbelt to see what was wrong with it. I have been offered a new replacement on the basis that if Securon want it back after examining the faulty one then I give it back in 2 weeks time. *sigh*. I think that’s probably the best I’m going to get. So, I’ll give them a ring and arrange to drop it back on Friday (I hope).

  • Oh dear god I’m tired.

    So, Friday night, I’m planning my weekend away to say goodbye to Trey – who’s heading off to climates colder and more northern – and I arrive home after my day shift to a phone call which runs thus:

    Mum: “Kate… the cistern’s leaking again…. quite a lot…. do you think you could come down and fix it…”

    The temporary repair I did a while back (because I couldn’t get the right bit) had finally given up – well, actually it’s given up because I replaced the ball-valve with the same type of ball valve instead of going with my (feminine?) instinct and deciding that the plumber had fitted the wrong kind before and changing to the type of valve I thought it should be.

    Unfortunately I’d also agreed to collect my Victorian cistern for my new house (which I have not got) from Freecycle – before I left on Saturday – and so it was on Saturday morning that I flew out of the house and round Bristol to collect a toilet cistern. Having collected it the bloke said ‘do you want the toilet too?’ – I looked, and a Victorian toilet in *staggeringly* good condition (apart from being somewhat mud filled) became mine also. Of course, this meant that my original time saving plan was somewhat destroyed – having an *entire* toilet in the car was a bit much when travelling a couple of hundred miles.

    So, I switched back, headed home (enabling me (handily) to collect my camera); unloaded the toilet and cistern and piled back in the car only to discover… a car accident.

    Then I joined the M4 Roadworks queues. I got to my mums. I fixed her toilet cistern (seeing a pattern?). I jumped in the car and (more…)

  • Eth eth eth eth eth eth eth Chris Waddle.

    I’ve been watching too much fast show, I fear.

    Yesterday my plans to do work were foiled by… well… my own stupidity. When I changed the points I didn’t noticed a subtle (not so subtle) difference between the Mog ones and the Ital ones. The ital ones have a small plastic locating notch which has to go over a pin. I noticed yesterday morning a slight hesitancy which, by the end of the day had become such a hideous misfire that going anywhere was pretty painful.

    After pratting about for 30 minutes in my nice posh jeans I decided to call John, eat lunch and reattack. After a bit of prodding we discovered this bit of plastic and it’s misplacement. Correcting this enabled a fully functional ignition system to be returned. At the same time I readjusted the idle and the mixture… So now she’s hopefully running a bit less rich.

    Today we went down to Marcruss Stores in the centre of Brizzy to get police uniforms costumes; in the end all I got was a hat and a little scarfy thing – but it does make me look roughly like a police woman. I do need a proper white shirt – I check the effect with the only plain white shirt I’ve got (it’s a dinner shirt, part of a dinner jacket I’ve got for the purpose of having it recut). It definately will work – although it needs a bit of a wash :-)

    I also need a new black skirt – my old one, well, I’m not a size 10/12 anymore – and it is. It does fit. Just. Either that or if I manage to lose a stone (unlikely).

    I also changed the battery in my iPaq which is now sat charging away. I didn’t realise the original was only 1000mAh; the new one’s 2250, so… hopefully that should be a bit better. Changing the battery in the 36 series iPaq. Ridiculously easy.

    Anyway, I should get on.