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So, one of the unfortunaties of using archaic domestic appliances, as I’m prone to wanting to do*, is that as far as I can tell one of the traditional failure modes for these things is to attempt to burn your abode to the ground. Whilst modern equipment would, I’m sure, love to partake in this fun and enjoyable experience, ongoing design developments seem to have made this less of a feature of devices. My old TV set – the beloved beastie – sported the instruction “DO NOT LEAVE SET SWITCHED ON UNATTENDED” and ran hotter than the sun (it actually had a heat haze above it when it’d been on more than a few minutes)**.

Anyway, combining ancient equipment with archaic (and frankly very dodgy***) wiring lead to a thoroughly 70’s experience for Kathryn this morning. Our iron caught fire. (more…)

So, laying in bed waiting for sleep to come, which is a hobby of mine when I’m meant to be switching to nights, I am given lots of time to think. I stare vaguely at the pillows, the sheets, the bed head, the walls. And contemplate issues.

This is not to be our house forever.

We intend to be in this house long enough for us to enjoy the fact that Kathryn has indefinate leave to remain, and hopefully, possibly gain citizenship such that we can come back whenever the hell we want.

After that, we’re planning to run far and fast from this country. Although listening to the BMA’s speeches at the same time as lying here fills me with some hope for the country.

Anyhow, whilst I was lying there, I’ve been thinking of setting fire to our desire to substantially increase the amount of insulation in this house. We wanted to put insulation outside the house, turning the walls into a giant heat sink. The front of the house, though, sports rather neat architectural features – making that difficult or indeed, impossible, to do well. So instead we were planning to insulate the inside of the front, and much of the inside at the rear (much, not all, because the bathroom sports its original 1930s subway-style tiles, which we very much want to keep).

But as I sit here, and contemplate it, I think… it’s probably going to be at least a couple of thousand pounds. I can’t give an accurate quote, because no one local installs anything that isn’t petrochemical derived. Or at least, I can’t find anyone who does. Apart from Urbane with their wit-and-humour quote where the “we’ll break it down for you so you can see which bits cost what, and what you have to cut” turned into a single total figure.

So I lie here, and I think, we should perhaps save that money. The house, contrary to expectations and despite being not heated properly, is actually quite warm. Which is nice, and perhaps adequate.

So when Kathryn gets back, I’ll raise the spectre of chopping out another of our desires. The advantage is, of course, we can pull the plumbers in now…

It’s funny, really. I mean, I knew, factually that my train in the morning left at 0945 and that my train home arrived at 2030. I knew that at each end there’s a good 45 minute walk (it’s 2 miles to the station from our house, and I’m not particularly fit). I knew that, because of the timings of the appointments, my entire day basically revolves around a 5 minute injection in a clinic in Guy’s Hospital, and that however I work it, unless I get an insanely early train (and an expensive one) to London, I’m not actually going to get to spend much time anywhere.

Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of FirstGreatWestern, the train pulled into Parkway just in time to watch the London express I was *meant* to be sat on, in my nice reserved seat, pulling away. The doors on my train actually opened as the doors on the other train shushed shut and the whistle was blown signalling its departure.

Then when I got to London I made a foolish error, and ended up at the wrong station. Since I’d planned to go to the rather nice market right by Guy’s Hospital, I had plenty of time, and headed instead to the National Gallery, which was conveniently near my incorrect location…. The only teeny tiny problem was that by the time I’d got there, and used the loo (important given the dearth of public loos in London), it was pretty much time for me to go. I managed about half an hour of poking around (which was fine, I saw the interesting exhibit of early American painters).

Unfortunately, what I’d forgotten, which is funny because it upset me last time, is that the market days are, well, entirely not Mondays. Mondays are very definitely ‘oh look it’s closed’ days. Given my cunning plan was to buy lunch there, this placed a moderate sized crimp in my day. I started to feel a wee bit grumpy (to put it mildly), instead of a nice morning touring the V&A, or at least a little bit of it, I’d instead had 30 minutes in the National Gallery, thanks to a combination of my ineptitude and good old First Great Western. However, a very nice lunch from a little cafe, which was I’ll grant a touch overpriced, but was very tasty restored my spirits, and I sallied forth to be jabbed with pollen.

The entire point of these jaunty little trips to London is to get my seasonal rhinitis (hayfever) under control, because in addition to my allergic rhinitis (I’m probably allergic to the medication I take) the combination makes summer an itchy scratchy festival of sneezing and crying mournfully about the lack of availability of sleep.

The jab itself lasts a mere few seconds, the actual time spent with the nurse, mere minutes, but you have to sit for an hour and be ‘observed’. This, in general, occurs sometime around 2 – 3pm. Which means the best you can hope for is escape at around 1600. Which is a bit cack, if you can’t get to London until 11. Anyhow.

I slipped out after my hour, and attempted to find out where Paul A Young (Chocolatier) is, or more accurately, their opening hours. This was made more challenging by the fact that Orange’s 3G signal in London is somewhat absent. I wandered around like some Tricorder wielding Star Trek extra doing the signal hunt. Eventually I settled on walking back to the cafe where I’d eaten lunch, because I’d intermittently had a signal there. Having failed to get one, I sighed, and wandered down into London Bridge station where, randomly, and for but a few moments I had sufficient 3G lovin’ to discover that the branch of Paul A Young, Chocolatier, in Islington to which I was planning to head was… Closed on Mondays. I nearly wept, openly, there and then. My plan to return home with exciting Belgian Fruit Beers, which I love so dearly after our delightful holiday in Belgium; and also with the best-damn-chocolate-in-the-World (at least, certainly the best I’ve ever tasted); was lying in ruins.

And then another brief moment of 3G signal sufficency allowed me to discover that the other branch, the one which just sells the fine, fine chocolatey goodness; that was open on Mondays, and until some reasonable hour. I faffed about finding the nearest station that I could conveniently get to, and hopping aboard a conveniently trainlike train, headed to the Royal Exchange.

I had not realised how bitter and twisted I am about the ‘Banking Industry’ until I was walking through some of it, and noting it’s unpleasantly opulent nature, and considering that they fucked the entire world, not for world domination, oh no. For something far more tacky, money. And now the same shits have got their pet government elected, so as to protect their nasty little piles of cash from the people they stole it from.

Reminded me of hackers, it did, my little rant as I wandered around.

“But for what, you ask? World domination? Nay. Something far more tacky…What could be so vitally important to protect that someone would create such a nasty, antisocial, very uncool … program?”

Ah well. I’m hoping and praying that this is the death throes of the capitalist model. It isn’t, I know, but I comfort myself with that thought.

Anyhow, eventually I made it to the chocolatiers, and bought more chocolate than I should, then to the Science Museum where I gazed happily at ERNIE and snapped pictures just before closing time, and finally headed back to the station.

And then I wandered home… and it’s suddenly been a very long day.

And I’m really not looking forward to next week’s intra-night-shift trip to London. The tickets I’ve booked are (a) depressingly expensive and (b) mean that I can get some sleep before hand, hopefully some on the train, some on the way back, and possibly some while I’m there… But I won’t be visiting anywhere…

In other news, we’ve had the second quote in for the garage. We won’t be having a building with a green roof, then. Onduline sheeting, and a cheap timber frame overgrown shed it is.

So, today I thought we might make a bit of progress. Struggling as we are to get the project started, let alone finished. We have quotes for green roofing material, for a roof we can’t afford to build (at least based on the only quote we’ve got back, so far). Hell, we’ve got quotes for putting the membrane down ourselves. Then quote with us putting up the boards underneath the membrane…

I just located some companies who are suppliers of recycled aggregate, which could be mixed with compost and topsoil to create a green roof. None of this, frustratingly moves us forward, because we’re still at a grand total of one quote. We did, however, have a groundwork person come around and examine the work for his builder mate, so hopefully we should get a second quote through soon…

What’s truly frustrating today was that we had scheduled a visit from an architectural technician – and he came, and was lovely, honest, and informed us that he was the wrong sort of person for the job. What we apparently need is a structural engineer with CAD skills, because he can’t calculate the beam required to go in. This is more distressing because I’m working and then on nights. So while he helpfully offered to email us some recommendations, I have no idea when we might get to see them, and therefore when we can move forward with quoting. And the cost of it all means we need to know, because money’s a bit tight…

So, one of the things which has niggled at me for a long time, lurking in the back of my head, is whether I had some degree of face blindness. Why this came about is that I often have trouble picking friends out of a crowd – sometimes using clothing as cues. Frankly, I have trouble looking for most things – at work I’ll quite often walk straight past the, for example orange lunch-box-sized Blood Sugar Monitoring equipment boxes, while looking for them. But I don’t seem to be alone in that. And wandering around the house looking for something which is in plain view is a traditional hobby of mine.

More tellingly, in the hospital I’ll meet patients I’ve looked after and be vaguely aware that I might have seen them before, but often be completely unable to place them.

At any rate, I saw this link on boing boing and thought I’d give it a go. I scored a massive 64%. The average ‘normal’ result is around 80%. So I possibly have some degree of prosopagnosia, which would explain much and makes me feel both better (about the fact I can’t always recognise people) and worse (damnit, my brain’s broken in yet *another* way).

And, in other useless fracking brain news, I forgot to ring somewhere (time-dependent) for my wife. Bollocks.

(Urgently).

So, I’ve been terribly negative of late. Which is funny, because when I’m with Kathryn I’m way more cheery. This is, of course, one of the reasons I love her so; when things seem unutterably crappy; when I’ve spent 200 quid I don’t have to spend on an electric car and it’s dead; when I’ve sent my car off for ‘a few small jobs’ and am suddenly faced with a bill for £800; when I connect up the free speakers I found and they kill the amp? She makes it all okay. When the bank statements arrive and I look at them in dispair, she makes it better. When I’m tired and work’s been shit? She tells me I’m not as crap as I tend to think I am, and that I’m good at my job, and that I help people. And it means so much.

Anyhow, so she was home for her brief interlude between works (she works a silly number of jobs for less pay than she deserves because she’s stuck in that “You were wonderful, but there was someone with more experience” loop, which is the hell of trying to get a job in an area where there’s people with lots of experience…

So, anyhow, she made me feel like the world was less shite and we sat down and tried to consider the kitchen more. And she convinced me to try something I’ve not been keen on – to put the kitchen in the dining area, and create a dining area in the current ‘kitchen’ area. I’ve been resistant to it because it involves putting the kitchen around the current fireplace, and I quite liked the idea of having the fireplace with a stove in it, as something of a snug area. But we tried it, and we fiddled and footled, and finally this emerged:
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