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For once in my life, I appear to be ahead of the curve. I’ve been into Scott Pilgrim since I visited Toronto… And the movie is finally due out this year.

I advise you to go and watch the teaser trailer

…the audio tracks to make the short versions for the podcast I thought… that’s odd. There seem to be…rather a lot of them. Given that I need to record a vinyl track and a gramophone…

I’ve already recorded the speech segments, because it was easier to do it that way around this time (what happened to one week ahead?!) so I’ve already done the research and recorded and edited the speech…

…and the bloody show’s got an extra track. *fwaps self*.

So, this week, the podcast will have a bonus extra track :)

So, it is, officially spring. And I think what we’re doing can be correctly classified as ‘spring cleaning’. The builders are not-yet-finished, but nearly (some light sanding of the bedroom ceiling, and another coat of paint, and a few small jobs kicking around the place) so we’ve commenced the massive task of removing the layer of filth from the house.

We’re currently sleeping in ‘the nest’. This is the spare-room, which is pretty darn small anyhow, but add in the mattress from our main bed (too wide to go in, really, so stored vertically), lots of ‘stuff’ from the bedroom, the scrap-chunks of Minor from my court case, the vast piles of shite we have in there ‘to sort’ anyway, and it’s somewhat “snug”. There’s about a 30cm gap betwixt the door and the mattress, which is wedged between the desk and the bed. It is possible, just about, to sort of squeeze-wriggle yourself in, and flop onto the bed.

So, we started at 10:30 this morning, cleaning the kitchen. We have a few problems, I’ve still got a massive pile of stuff to sell on e-bay, and a chunk to sort through and decide what I’m going to keep. I’m thinking I’ll give myself a largish box for “my dad’s stuff” and what doesn’t fit, doesn’t go. Although I’m not classing some things, pre-herited things, as my dads (Miner’s lamp, Dansette radio, slide rule) because I’ve had them so long.

So, anyhow, there’s four big boxes. But really? Mostly it was just that it was filthy. And layers of dust which had snuck into drawers, cupboards, and stuck to the fine grease deposits which lurk atop the extractor fan and cupboards. It is now awesomely clean however, and once the floor is dry we get to move onto the lounge. The problem with the lounge is that it’s got hundreds of books (I think around 700 books), a good number of 7, 10, & 12 inch records / gramophones, and a selection of random other stuff. Ornaments, for example.

Anyhow, the floor is looking dry, so I think it’s time to continue the cleaning process. Cleaning the house, phase 2, the Lounge. Ph3ar th3 du5t.

So, posts have been a bit scarce of late, lots of stress, lots of busyness, not much time for work. The house is covered in a fine film of white dust, as builders have been variously:

– Putting in missing joist hangers, that the lousy last builders failed to put in. The old builders claimed that the joists were firmly abutted to the wall, and hadn’t moved, so they felt that it was fine. On opening the flexi-floor, we found that the shortest joist was an inch from the wall. Either it had shrunk an awful lot in the last year, or they lie like persian rugs.

– Repairing the hole they had to make in the ceiling to put in joist hangers

– Repairing the bathroom ceiling (which was just tatty)

– Removing the artex from the bedroom ceiling (‘cos it was tatty, and we thought we’d have to replace it. We don’t… but it has been patched, and now the entire house is full of artex dust).

….

All of which makes the house fairly unliveable.

I’m still working on the podcast which is cool :)

And now, bed.

So, another week of nights is over; I’m less sleep deprived than normal because I had another allergy shot today and felt that attempting to get into central London and get jabbed with needles with no sleep at all – at a time of day when I’m already normally feeling nauseous would be attrociously foolish. Instead, following the arrival of the builders I laid down in the bed and let sleep wash over me.

I’m feeling much better than I normally do but hesitantly suggest that I suspect it’ll screw with my sleep patterns. Since they are challenging enough to get back on track – this is probably a bad thing.

These nights have been fairly much horrendous; one of them was bad enough that I reached the stage of looking very fed up and ranting almost continuously. It was when it had taken me 2 and a half hours to finish filling in the second and third child-socialwork-discussion form simply because there was no one else available to cover triage (so every time a patient bboked in I’d stop and triage them) – not counting the two hours it had taken me to give up on the idea that there might at some point be someone available to cover me before I attempted to interleave the referral and the document completion. The words insanely busy and desperately short of our own staff sprung unbidden and frequently to mind. Sickness and vacancies can really screw with the skill mix…

Spent some more time in charge – and it was non-disasterous.

Anyhow, as the nights flew past I contemplated how people abuse the ambulance service, the emergency department, and I suspect public services in general.

And the lack of realistic expectations. I don’t expect pissy ‘that long’ responses to a wait time of an hour for minor injuries. Frankly I think that’s pretty bloody fantastic. And when I say ‘no, I won’t be putting you ahead of everyone else because you’re in a hurry’ (albeit more politely), whining at me isn’t likely to improve things. Potentially severing am artery while you wait might make me reconsider, but then you’re unlikely to make it to whatever you’re endevouring to hurry for. And perhaps if you *are* in a hurry, attending the ED at 0200 with your two week old provlem is not the best bit of planning.

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant.

What has kept me occupied over the last week has been poling around the nets looking for a GT 550. Not the suzuki two-stroke triple, temptingly insane though it is (they seem to have aquired somewhat of a cult status) but the work-a-day Kawasaki. It seems I’m not going to be in luck though, because I want one with a dinky MZ like faring and a top box, which is also a runner, and in fair shape… And they seem to go up in price somewhat quickly… Or in the vase of the one I really wanted it for removed (presumably sold locally :( ). I’m also pondering the Rotax ‘zed; or maybe even no bike, but having endured riding in winter it’d be nice to get some summer riding in. I am, essentially bored of kickstarting. Wuss that I am. I’m becoming weak and feeble in my old age ;)

The other fun thing has been doing the podcast. I’ve been really enjoying the research for the show – I need to relax a bit at the start of the show, and Nikki’s promised better software for me to use (and John’s apparently repaired a better quality capture device) so we should be upping the quality of the show soon :)

So far we’ve not hit the bandwidth on my hosting here; I’m assuming that it’s never going to be awesomely and suddenly popular; so if it starts to get close I’ll pay for more bandwidth :)

Today, just before I headed home it poured with rain. Bucketloads of it tipped from the sky drenching the world and its inhabitants. I made distressed noises and whined. I was informed that ‘this is why I drive a car’.

My comments about the bike being really rather wonderful in the dry fell on deaf ears.

But as good fortune would have it the rain stopped just before I left and the world was laid out fresh, clean and new for me. It sparkled and shone. The bike ran just as it should; it’s little two-stroke heart thumping away.

It was glorious.

Some days the ice-cold fingers, 7 layers of clothing and kick starting a recalicitrant MZ is all worth it…

I finally finished the first episode of the podcast. Be gentle, I know the levels are a bit up and down, but audacity and I are only slowly becoming friends, and let’s be fair, the ‘studio’ or ‘lounge’ isn’t the ideal place to record it, as I tend to change my distance from the mic – depending on where I decide to sit on the sofa.

Anyhow, the site is here. Try not to kill it. It’s been submitted to itunes, so it should appear on there once it’s all checked and approved :)

So I finally got around to filing the claim against the company who ‘restored’ my car the first time. It’s actually not for anywhere near as much as I thought because I looked at the bill and realised that a big chunk of their bill was for ‘mechanical’ and ‘interior’ works. Indeed, that should perhaps give me an idea of what I should have expected in terms of quality.

Anyhow, since I was angsting about it I thought I might as well be mid claim and angsting about it.

For those of you who aren’t yet in the world of XKCD (Particularly Chrissy)

So, being a classic car owner, and occasionally driver, I’ve spent a fair bit of time lurking and chatting on classic car forums, and one thing that gets me is that – as a broad sweeping generalisation – classic car owners seem to be very much in the climate change denialist camp.

Any suggestion that you’re someone who feels that the Climate Change theories indicating global warming are correct, and you’ll be commented on by a miriad of people who all feel that climate change is a load of rubbish. These people also seem to fall into the ‘oil will never run out’ camp, or that it’ll run out in a very-long-period-of-time, at least, they appear to.

Fine, okay, let’s put it this way:

Option A – I’m wrong and climate change is rubbish:
Result of following the ‘climate change is happening’ course of action: We spend a lot of money and time investing in new technology, creating new jobs and improving our environment. Old industries decline, and people have to be retrained in new skills or fall out of the workforce. Cities become cleaner, less polluted places. We reduce our dependence on foreign oil, start developing drugs and food technologies that aren’t dependent upon oil. Final result: It’s expensive, and lots of work, everyone lives. Oil continues to lurk under the ground.

Option B – They’re wrong and climate change happens:
Result of following the ‘climate change is rubbish’ course of action: Sea levels rise, vast areas of land become unusable, vast numbers of people are displaced and die. We run out of oil, that means no food (no fertiliser) no drugs (petrochemical derivatives), no transport. We are, in short, screwed.

Given the two options, I’d rather be in camp A which spends money to fix a problem which doesn’t happen. Except that I think it’s a problem that will happen. I’d really rather not be in camp B.