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Heh, alliteration.

Since we’ve moved (in my case, back) to Bristol we’ve made a conscious effort to change the way we shop. We are not big fans of supermarket/cheap food/etc, and we both have ethical concerns about the push to make food cheaper (e.g. cows not being allowed out to pasture at all – after all the crap we’ve done to cows, not even allowing them outside…). So, independent little local stores and ethical stores are the order of the day, as far as possible*.

And it’s interesting, I’ve never hugely enjoyed the whole supermarket shopping experience, it’s largely bland and soulless. Shopping at the little independent stores has been delightful. Lots of interesting new foods, lots of lovely people who actually seem to care about the food they’re selling. And actually, it’s quite a lovely way to spend a morning; less so as it’s got colder, but still going and picking up fresh produce (not in bags or wrappers), eating really great food that’s carefully prepped, and meeting sellers who know who you are**.

So, I recommend it, it’s just a nicer way to shop.

As a side point, the BBC’s Turn Back Time – The High Street is a really interesting series.

* We drink Lactofree milk, which seems to be a supermarket only thing, largely, and the milk appears to come from a Co-Op farming scheme, which is good… I suppose.
** Although we’re apparently a memorable couple, many of the staff in Sainsbury’s Taplow seemed to know who we were, which is odd.

So, I thought it was about time for another update. I’ve been lurking on the fringes on the internet a lot of late, largely because our landlord’s Sky box has the worst connectivity up here on the 3rd floor, (or 2nd floor, depending on how you count). Why, you may ask, do you not go and sit down on, say the ground floor and enjoy much improved connectivity? Well, that comes down to this device:

Circa mid-70s, this Agni Cuitomatica (I think that’s what it is, it’s all wavey 70s fonts on the front) is a charming butane heater which keeps the room warm. In fact, sometimes it keeps it positively hot. Unfortunately, lugging 14kg of butane up/down the stairs and a hot metal object is not something I really, really want to do. Hence I am living upstairs, with occasional well wrapped forays into the downstairs universe.

A few days ago we had a friend come by – and bizzarely, completely inexplicably, our landlord had the heating on, the fire in the lounge on (which we don’t know how to light) and had chopped wood and lit the woodstove in the back room. It was positively *roasting*. Which was nice, similarly the next day was warm. The day after that though we’ve gone back to chilly, and today it’s frankly *cold* downstairs. Which starts me coughing, which brings me onto another piece of delightfully wonderful news.

Apparently, I have Asthma. This is not, in fact, a huge shock. I have been faintly denying the possibility that I might have Asthma for, well, years. I had this peculiar cough which would (does) start if I laugh too hard, and sometimes if I go from hot->very cold. Given my mum’s fairly serious Asthma, I suspected for many years that there was a high probability that I had it and had largely ascribed the coughing to ‘very mild, doesn’t need anything doing about it’ Asthma. Unfortunately, the Matron at work disagreed when I called in sick coughing an insane amount as a follow up to my cold.

Having been seen, and doled out an Inhaler, a Peak flow meter and instructions to keep an Asthma diary for 6 weeks, it’s somewhat harder to deny the possibility. Although I’m not wholly convinced that I actually *do* have Asthma, because some of the time the inhaler seems fairly definitively to be ‘doing something’, and other times it seems to, well, not have helped at all.

So, we’ll see where we’re at after a few weeks.

I have finally admitted that ShinySmall, the MacBook of mine is in need of reinstallation. In fact, that’s probably putting it mildly. It’s got loads of cruft on it and I’ve been waiting for a new version of Office before I unleashed 10.6 on the laptop. And now I have Office 2011 and OS X 10.6 to go on. Of course, most of the other software is lying in a storage box in my sister’s garage, which makes some things a bit… more… difficult. There’s other stuff I’d like to get too, like a new Adobe suite (but the stroppy gits say doing a Masters isn’t enough to get a student discount; sods), and obviously I need to get Logic back on here. The Xmas epsiode of DBJ may well shuffle into a new year’s one, or a new year one.

So I’m sat waiting for the computer to do a fresh, shiny back up of my main directory, and *then* we shall nuke the entire site from orbit (it’s the only way to be sure). It’s funny, because this laptop is not ‘old’ but I’ve got so used to OS X’s not-requiring-much-from-me-ness that this whole reinstalling thing – something I’ve previously been very used to (with Windows, really) is a bit weird. It’s just under 2 years since I got the Mac, and it’s been inflicted with (and uninflicted with) a wide variety of hideous, cludgy, interesting, and dubious software. It has stood up to this test well, but now it’s time to be a proper work machine, so away with the toys of youth (apart, obviously from the fun ones) and on with shinyness.

And the *other* thing which is no doubt not filling your minds with concern is, well, the house purchase. Like a fossilised snail, our house purchase is bounding along at the standard rate for british purchase (i.e. you have to keep poking it to make sure the purchase process hasn’t died and started quietly rotting). Apparently, we are waiting for *ONE* sodding search (the local search), which they’re going to poke the council for. Also for the actual signed contract which, I’m told, was with the buyer. I also need to pop a copy of our Marriage Cert (certified) in the post to them, to prove I’ve changed my name legally. Once all of those are in we will, actually, possibly be in a position to exchange contracts. And then we’ll theoretically be down to the relatively simple bit of setting an exchange date (which will, hopefully, fall while I’m on nights*), exchanging and then actually moving. The word ‘simple’ doesn’t really apply to any of this.

I continue to hold my faint hope that it’ll be before Xmas.

And that, is largely the news. Especially because… the back up has nearly finished! Woot!

* While I’d rather not be on nights while moving, I’d rather be moved than not.

So, actually today’s a good day. I submitted my essay yesterday morning, and it’s the two week break between modules, so I’m hoping to relax a bit. I may cut loose and read something non-work-related.

So, I’ve been trying to source a second hand calor gas heater. Now, given these things have been around since the dawn of time, you’d think that they’d be fairly easy and cheap to pick up. You’d be wrong. They sell for actual money on ebay. Before I looked hard I thought I’d try freecycle – but no, not even any luck there.

So I’ve been trying to bid for one that’s not desperately non-local, that’s not as expensive as buying a new one, and that’ll actually keep us warm. See, having had a chat with our landlord I discovered that his concern about the heating is that we’d spend millions on heating this room with electricity. And to be honest, it’s proving to be a very difficult room to heat – 4 external walls, and a roof. Heat just disappears rapidly and since the heating’s on for a total of 5 hours of the day… well, it’s a challenge to keep warm.

So we agreed to get a Calor gas portable heater. Which would be nice, because guilt free warmth would be good, but it’s not happened so far. I may have to resort to just ‘buying one’.

I have, however, (braced myself for the cost and) splashed out on a new copy of OS X and Office for Mac. I’d like to update to Adobe CS5 too, but that may have to wait. Which is irritating because I wish to nuke the mac and reinstall – being as I’m a very nukey-reinstally person. And the disks for installation of softwares are lurking in the packing boxes in my sister’s garage.

Which will, I’m sure, mean my mac will be very quick. Very quick and lacking in some of the tools I like to have around.

There is, incidentally, no exciting news on the house. I’ve got a bunch of things to sign that hopefully Nikki’ll be collecting for us. Until they arrive not much else is going to happen.

In other news, we met Kevin McCloud on Saturday – now while for some of our friends this is not deeply exciting, for us it was quite cool. He’s published a very interesting book/manifesto for modern living/collection of concepts called 43 Principles of Home. And we went to a book launch / talk thing by him. He is a very interesting speaker, and the book provides lots to think about (it’s quite ‘big’ so it’s going to take a while to look at!). So yes, that was very cool.

Sunday was Thanksgiving which was awesome. Great food, great company, and much to give thanks for, even with all the stress this year. And now I must shower and prepare myself for work….

So, I note that again it’s ‘been a while’. This is not for want of trying to get around to writing. I’m meant to be doing my MSc, but as usual house stuff has taken up my morning. The bank is far enough away and open late enough that I did the bad ‘killing time’ this morning before going and then there was ‘the queue’ which mean that by the time we got to ‘now’ I’ve not had time to work.

Anyhow, enough grumbling at myself. At least I’m done reading the story I’ve been reading which had sucked me back in surprisingly successfully to it’s little world. That means I’m less inclined to spend ages staring at it, and hopefully more inclined to actually write the damn essay I’m meant to be writing.

So. What’s the world been up to? Well, theoretically, the house is sold, we’ve sent back a signed contract and just need our buyer to sign it. He’s apparently “got a few questions” – but we don’t know what they are yet, and no one’s rung me yet – mind it is only 1120 on a Monday. Hopefully they’ll ring, but I’ll be checking mail midweek, so either/either/or I’ll get those questions soon. We’re *hoping* for a completion date on that sale of mid December. Frankly, tomorrow would be good with me, but it looks like we’re going to have to struggle through another month of the fun-and-games that we’ve been doing.

The house we’re buying, the mortgage is lined up, the survey done, I’ve sent off the payment to start the land/everything searches – so hopefully we should be able to get that going quickly. And then we will have somewhere to move into. I have this faint, faint hope that it’ll be the same day – but it’s really a ridiculously faint hope. Moving house, it turns out, is a nightmare straight from the seventh ring of hell. It’s made more fun and entertaining by money that Kathryn freed up for this moving process taking the longest time possible for the bank to actually process her cheque from the States (they said ‘five days’, and then…said well… it might be more ‘weeks’). And because I thought about – but wholly failed to really consider thoroughly – whether I should bring my savings account information with me. Now my savings account is a laughable name for what is, usually a few hundred quid put away over the last few months. It’s a bizzare idea considering the debt in which I continuously seem to lurk, but I do occasionally find myself in these moments when I just need ‘a bit of cash’ and lo, there goes my saving account (again).

Unfortunately, the 40 quid’s worth of fuel it’ll take to *get* the damn account info, and the lack of time, meant I had to put the payment on my credit card. As a cash advance. Which means I’m paying 17.5%APR or something ridiculous, thanks to a stupidity on my part.

As usual at the moment, the money’s there, it’s just in the wrong place. I really can’t wait until all this is over, because once all this is over finances will go back to being something I’m generally quite useless at as opposed to something I’m proactively and effectively making a hash of.

I have this distressing feeling that we’re going to put money into this house, which is actual real money, and my usual level of financial acumen will come into play and we’ll get none of it back :-/

I’m assuming that I’m wrong on this front. But there we go. It still lurks in the back of my head and goes “Hey! Kate! You suck at this! You’re sure to be wrong!”. My head can be helpful like that.

The upside is that we have the potential to have an enormously cool house. Well, frankly a fucking freezing house when we move in; but a house which is cool in the relevant and interesting ways, and not so much in the ‘ah, I’m living in an icecube’ ways, which it will be at first. I’m really hoping that we can get planning permission and afford the works we want done on the house, because they’ll make the house just such a great place to be.

In other news, less positive, I got a speeding ticket. On bloody Wells Road, which is mostly dual carriageway – and is on the section on which I was caught doing an awesome 37mph in a 30mph zone :(

The frustrating thing is I’m *normally* very good about urban speed limits (20/30/40/50s) – while I’ll whine about them – but it was just after we’d move down here, and I’d forgotten that we weren’t in Slough where all the duals are 40mph. Accelerated up – then remembered and started braking – and then saw the bloody speedcameravan. Annoyingly, they don’t send you a copy of the speed-camera-picture, either, which would at least be slightly more worth it. And they say moggies are slow.

Anyhow, I’m going to go eat lunch and head to work… Hopefully we’ll have more news for you soon and then normal service can be resumed.

So, I’ve been meaning to update for a while, and as usual apologies for the radio silence. We have made some progress and, I’m pleased to say that I’m marginally less stressed.

We’ve possibly got some progress on selling the house; but no house is sold until the contract is signed. We’re looking at 11 (yes, eleven) houses this week with the hope of finding our new home. The previous favourite is, well, beyond our reach because the owners imagine that their structurally unsound*, electrically unsafe**, house with a rotten lean-to*** and no kitchen**** is worth way more than it is. Even had we lots more money, we’d probably not be offering much more because it’s simply not worth it.

Wish us luck!

Work’s been getting better – the first weeks weren’t great, week three I’m feeling a bit more settled and comfortable… :)

* BIIIIG crack in the rear wall of the house up through the chimney stack.
** 1950s – at best – electrics with rubber/cotton insulation.
*** Some of the structural beams in the lean-to’s construction are rotten to the point where leaning on them hard would probably make it fall down.
**** The kitchen is too small to have both a cooker and an opening door…

Okay, so picture the scene: You’ve just renovated a house in a nice, pleasant area. It’s got off street parking (for two cars), is at the quiet end of the street, has a pretty garden and is, really, a nice 2 bed terraced house.

Now, imagine how insanely frustrating it is to have a succession of people tramp around the house and say ‘Oh, gosh, it’s just perfect, only… it’s got no badgers’ or ‘Oh, the decor is wonderful, it’s really beautiful inside but the sky is slightly too blue today for me to offer’.

That is, basically, the way it’s gone. We’ve had viewing after viewing with nothing but positive praise for the *house* and yet there’s always one minor niggle. It’s not near enough to London, it’s not got secure parking, it’s got a rented house next door (it’s a family rented home!).

Gaaah.

I feel like Thomas Becket, all of a sudden.

So, a lot of our time is spent considering the fall back position for when things go wrong. Like, for example, the hideous delay selling the house – as we enter the depressing winter months and no-one buys houses I’m contemplating the possibility of a mortgage hiatus, and so on.

Today we had the interesting experience of watching a large supermarket who have, apparently, no fall back position. Just after we loaded the conveyor belt in our local Sainsburys, their EFTPOS* system fell down. Or, to the uninitiated, they could no longer take card payments. Gradually the entire line of tills consisted of cashiers with arms up holding ‘next customer’ dividers – which appears to be their method of indicating that they need help.

Slowly the supervisor made his way around the agitated queues – and they announced that they were no longer able to take card payments, and could only take cash. I made a rapid dash for the cashpoint, leaving Kathryn in the queue – and made it to be about the 5th person in what quickly became a very, very long queue. I just found it very interesting – I certainly rarely carry enough cash to buy our shopping, and I no longer carry a cheque book, as I once did.

Back when the world was new and shiny they had the kerchunky-carbon-copy credit-card machines, which would be yanked out when all else failed and the shiny new EFTPOS systems fell over. Hell, when I first had a debit card that was *all* that was around, pretty much. So it was a bit odd to see that Sainsburys appeared to have absolutely no fallback plan for when their systems fail. Pretty impressive way to annoy customers, though, I’d’ve thought. For me, it was no great shakes *this week*. But last week? When we were down to living off credit? Well – then it’d’ve been a complete pain, ‘cos we’d’ve had to go to another store – probably Tesco, and they’d’ve been left with a trolley load of stuff to put away. Ah well.

In other news, we’ve had 2 viewings this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed, because we’re pretty desparate.

* Electronic Funds Transfer (at Point of Sale)

So.

We have been waiting since Saturday to hear if Bob, for that’s what I shall call him, after his 3 viewings of our fine abode was going to make an offer. Bob, after some discussion with his family, it appeared was planning an offer on Monday. For those of you who are into these things we call days, I believe it’s Wednesday and no word from Bob on the matter of the offer.

Now, I’d been very good – things have not gone well enough to count chickens, but I’d certainly been optimistically eyeing the eggs – and now I’m not feeling so good about the situation. There’s another viewing on Saturday which will maybe give us the much needed sale, but as we move slowly towards a time of year when sales are more scarce I get more worried. We need to sell the house, but at the moment we’re stuck in a miasma of no forward motion – if we don’t sell the house, the amount it doesn’t bear thinking about is quite high. The only solution I can think of is for me to do an extra two agency shifts every month (at least) just so we can pay mortgage and rent.

As a side point, the unexpected extra costs of selling include:
– Extra eating out to ensure the house is empty for viewings
– Gallons of extra cleaners ‘cos we’re essentially cleaning the kitchen surfaces every day, and mopping the floors way more frequently than normal.
– Electricity because, you guessed it, we’re running the hoover loads, and running the lights more than normal too.
– Lightbulbs! Because while we’ll put up with the odd blown halogen bulb in the kitchen, we want them all working for viewings…
– So much time. My paranoia means that I have normally cleaned at least one room before I go to work. :-/

We are *desperate* for someone to come in with a decent offer on the place. We’ve come so bloody close and it’s really, really frustrating. Once it’s sold, that will be a huge weight off my mind.

Anyhow, we’re running up to the last few days at my current place of work – which is quite interesting. People seem sad to see me go and I’ve had the depressing realisation that I will, at least for a while, have to pretend to be faintly professional in my new job. I’ve always had a very relaxed relationship with my work colleagues, and also a level of sarcasm that sometimes surprises even me; so that’s something I’ll probably need to tone down until I get to know people… It’s all strange.

I have, however, managed to spend a big chunk of the morning listening to MSc lectures. I can’t remember how I got my head to take in information so much when I was doing my BScs, ‘cos two lectures and my head is going ‘uh – no more thanks, I’m grand’. Still, it’s not looking quite as scary as it was from a distance.

Anyway, I’m going to chill out for the hour before work now :)

Don’t worry, this won’t all be cars…

So, as we hauled ass down to Bristol (again) on Monday poor old Chester announced his dissatisfaction with the massive milages he’s been called on to do recently (over 1000 miles extra this month alone) with the disintegration of the exhaust. It appears, from the garage, that the engine mounts have given up the ghost. Ironically, looking for replacement ones I found a website talking about living with a volvo 340 – and one of the things on there was that the engine mounts die. Something I’d not noticed before, but it does explain the slightly bouncy engine which I vaguely noticed when the top of the carb was loose a few days ago.

Unfortunately, when Kathryn went back to collect Chester they couldn’t get him started. Kathryn rang me and reported some worrying things – I rang them and found out they’d been running and starting him in Park. The 340 came with a big hang-around-the-steering-wheel ‘DO NOT START THIS CAR UNTIL YOU’VE READ THE OWNER’S MANUAL SUPPLEMENT’ sign which said – ‘Do not start or run the vehicle in Park’*.

Anyhow, I advised them not to do that – they charged the battery because they’d managed to flatten it, and he started just fine. I collected him, and drove him home, and he ran fine. This morning he got to the petrol station and declined to start. Kathryn rang – I drove ‘becca down there** and he was definately not in a starting mood. I looked under the bonnet to check that nothing had been dislodged or moved by HiQ – pressed the coil leads firmly to check they were seated, but couldn’t see anything. Moved ‘becca so that we could at least push Chester away from the pumps. Sat in Chester to give him ‘one last go’ and there was the nearly-starting-ness of nearly-starting-dom.

A bit more effort at off he went. Running and idling fine. Odd, is what I say. He’s off to Volvo for new engine mounts tomorrow, so I’ll ask them to have a quick look.

Anyhow. So hopefully he’ll be sorted. We need to get Kathryn’s AA cover sorted though, because I can’t so easily ‘pop’ across for when I’m in Brizzle.

Anyhow, yesterday we took Rebecca and headed up to Milton Keynes to see Girlyman – a group Kathryn introduced me to – who are just utterly fantastic. They do incredible things with harmonies (and, apparently suspended fourths and minor seconds – this is where you get to discovered despite Dead Bug Jumping my musical knowledge is as thin as ice) – and are incredibly talented. It’s the first time in years I’ve made it to a gig (seriously, quite a few years. The last gig attempt was Metric – and that was nearly 4 years ago – and I was sick the night of the gig).

It felt really, really good to get back to live music – and this was an exceptionally good gig to start back at – with an intimate venue, sitting one row back we listened as Girlyman talked about the inspirations for their songs – completely rewriting the way that I’ll listen to some of the tracks. Particularly the reasons behind Reva Thereafter – a song I’ve really, really enjoyed (Kathryn has that CD in the car :) ) – and suddenly that song is tinged with much more melancholy. Ah. Discovery – now it makes me want to cry (which Kathryn mentioned on the way home last night – and I agree)… didn’t particularly expect it to keep affecting me the same way today.

Anyhow, as usual I suck at reviewing gigs – but they’re touring the UK at the moment and I heartily recommend people go and see them – it’s also interesting to see them with their (newish) drummer JJ.

They’ve also inspired me to tweak the DBJ format a bit. I’m not sure if it’ll work – depends on cheekyness being answered :) But we’ll give it a go.

Anyhow, I need to go shower because the Volvo’s issues meant I leapt into clothes without showering. Also I should look and see if I can print out my Uni stuff so I can take it to work.

* Because it’s a faux automatic, Park is provided for the Auto drivers so they feel more at home – but is actually achieved by locking the transmission. All fine, except if you rev the engine you’re running it against the auto-engaging clutch with a locked transmission behind it. And depending on your luck either the clutch or the transmission gives :-/ IIRC.
** I have quite a lot of experience starting recalcitrant cars.