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Please stop beating me with sticks, it’s getting very tiring and slightly disheartening.

In the last 2 weeks:
– Shower blocked in such a way as to be unblockable with a snake.
– MZ – died.
– Jejy – died.
– Vixy – died (well, she’s still moving but I don’t want to damage her clutch drum).
– Shower unblocked by Dynorod people, now leaking badly.

Next week I have scheduled:
– Take up three tiles in the bathroom (pray I’ve still got spare tiles), cut through and remove floor to get to the joint that I think is leaking, detach, clean, reattach.
– Strip engine out of Vixy, change clutch and exhaust, reassemble (assuming blokie sends me clutch shoes and they can re-con them in time). Ideally renew brake pipes.
– Strip engine out of Jejy and take to be reconned, change clutch drum and shoes, change exhaust.
– Put together and MOT pirate charlie
…
…
I could do with there being several of me next week.

Why is it the night before nights, as I stay up, I always end up feeling sad and lonely. Is it Kathryn sleeping away (hopefully) peacefully above me while I ponder the imponderables of my life? Is it that pool of sadness my counselor talked about back when I was in counseling? Is it that I often end up thinking about my dad?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that remembering that we got ID’d buying cider (in with our normal shop) cheers me up. I believe I went ‘woo!’ and threw my arms up in the air. ‘You look under 21’… Woo! I say.

Grey hairs and all :)

Anyway, we watched Star Trek tonight which, apart from the short skirts on women thing (why with the short skirts on the women? Why?), was very good. Very very good. My faith in the Star Trek people is somewhat restored.

I hate application forms. That is all.

And with it rain. Lots and lots of rain. Lots and lots and lots.

I’ve been intending to work on the cars this weekend, had heard (vaguely) that the forecast wasn’t great, but had hoped that it’d be dry enough for me to do some work. It is raining and raining and raining, and the forecast is for more of the same.

Much more.

Fortunately, the long term forecast for after the week of nights looks positive. I may have to spend an entire week working on the cars to get them roadworthy again. Vixy may be running so badly because of the exhaust problems, apparently. With no easy way to repair the rusting shell of an exhaust, she’ll have to wait until the replacement arrives. The two front sections continue to wait on the very nice bloke who’s got them having a chance to get a shipping quote for them, the wheels for Jejy and something else (I forget what). The weather also means that Vixy’s door is going to sit in the shed, unpainted, for a while longer.

And means that Jejy’s going to continue to leak for a week longer. I was hoping to do a quick run round both front and rear windows with mastic, but that’s now off the cards until the weather’s dried out the seals again. It looks like that week is going to be absolutely packed with vehicular entertainment.

Stressing me out though is that this week I need to drive and Jejy isn’t going anywhere, and Vixy is not the keenest to start at the moment. I hope that I can get this all sorted. I’m trying to be positive about it; which is a bit of a challenge, considering I’ve gone from 3 running vehicles (and one off the road just because of parts) to one running vehicle, which to be honest isn’t running very well.

Still.

Oh, and to round off the list of near-disasters; it appears I forgot to pay April’s council tax. I got a letter at the beginning of may saying ‘oi, you’ve not paid it’, but ignored that thinking it referred to the council tax I’d just paid. They obviously don’t bother with sending you a second letter.

So now we have to pay the tax for the entire year (bother) immediately, either that or I can stand up in court and go “uh, I’m an idiot and didn’t actually read the letter properly”. I hate paying the council in some ways, mostly because while the recycling scheme locally is much better than it was it’s not really ‘good’ as such. They only take plastic that’s ‘bottle shaped’; they only take tetrapak cartons if you carry them yourself to Tesco. All our waste now, pretty much, consists of stuff with recycling symbols on and text proclaiming ‘most councils collect this’; ours not coming under most. And Slough’s policy of destroying anything remotely interesting or historic and replacing it with the most unexciting and bland architecture makes the place as utterly soulless as you can imagine.

I was chatting, at work, with someone else who lives in Slough and we agreed that the best thing that could happen is for all of the denizens of Slough (literally, all of them) to move out. Move anywhere. Away. And then to let the place be reclaimed by nature (potentially after a brief fit of bulldozing). Perhaps there should be some kind of resettlement scheme where people from Slough are located in bohemian and indie neigbourhoods; thus enabling them to reestablish contact with culture and beauty and all the things Slough’s missing.

Anyhow, I need to look and see if the weather’s improved enough for me to look at Jejy and see if I can work out why she’s suddenly running like crap.

I promise, it’s not all car stuff. Skip the first 3 paragraphs to skip the car talk.

It has, by my standards, been a while since I updated. This is because I’ve been busy and/or tired – having come off nights my body’s been rebelling; not wholly unusual, but not that common either. We’ve singularly failed to achieve the positively huge amount of work we needed to do on the house this week; but Jejy is sporting a new front wheel bearing and her exhaust is only leaking a bit now; Vixy has been to the garage and returned with new wheel cylinders. Vixy’s also sporting two brand new spark plugs, it looked like she was running ‘a bit rich’ – so that’s been tweaked (the new gunson fuel-mixture-doojit has been tried out – and as someone once said to me ‘the mixture screw’s really not very fine adjustment on a DAF’; 7 screws in (more lean) and it was continuing to show a pale blue flame – which is what it ‘should’ be – but it said that when I started adjusting it; the plugs said she was running rich, so I made her run more lean.

I think she might be a bit easier to start. The huge, vast, enormous hole I discovered in her exhaust does worry me a bit. I slathered half a tin of Gun-Gum on it, and that was no-where near enough. I’m still holding out for the DAF person on my mobile to message me and proclaim he’s found one (or two) silencers. That would help.

Jejy continues to burn the output of OPEC. The parts for Rebecca’s gearbox continue to be MIA and ESM still list king pins as ‘hopefully end of may / june 2009’.

Anyhow.

What we have done, or at least did do, yesterday with our week off was spend a day in London. This was, of course, not because we had a sudden desire to spend the day in London; but instead because my allergy clinic appointment was due. I’d expected that, as usual when I go off anti-histamines the day would be spent with me having streaming eyes and nose, and being fundamentally miserable.

It was not the case.

I’ve been more or less the same – itchy eyes – a bit more sneezy, but not desperate. That’s pretty much been the case all this year; I’m not quite sure why. Pollen counts may be lower… anyhow. So rather than waste a travelcard on a simple trip in and out we decided to head into London for a bit of a wander. First up we hit a shop I’ve been dying to take Kathryn to, it’s a chocolate shop which has an incredibly good reputation; since reading an article on Boing Boing last year – we’d made it to the door – but he’d been shut that day and we could only gaze at the temptation within.

Anyway, this time we made it in to Paul A Young Fine Chocolates and well worth it, the trek was, if I say so myself. I’m not a big chocolate person, in fact, I generally don’t buy it myself; I buy it for Kathryn because I know she adores it. I don’t eat much dark chocolate because I’m a heathen, and so for me to recommend a chocolate shop it’s got to be pretty damn excellent. The chocolates were delicious. Dark chocolate and delicious, words I do not commonly put in the same sentence. We had dark chocolate truffles; and I got Kathryn some seconds, which she’s not tried yet (and therefore I’ve not tried either).

Comes highly recommended.

Anyhow, then we headed over to Borough Market – down by Guy’s Hospital (where the allergy appointment is). We could have spent so much there.

We ended up having Pie for lunch (PIE!) from thePieminster stall, fruit juice from another stall; coffee and tea from two further stalls, buying artisan baked bread to bring home (and some fruit beers (from belgium, I think)); and resisting the temptation to spend more simply because it would have to sit in a warm hospital for a couple of hours. It is always delightful to spend time in these markets, around people who care about the food they produce and sell, who know their products, and who aren’t just in it for the money.

The coffee was excellent by the way.

Despite being close we didn’t go to Neal’s Yard Dairy. This is probably fortunate. I didn’t even buy any cheese from the many cheese retailers, because I’m very good. And it’d’ve got spoilt.

Having munched our lunches sat on the grass by Southwark Cathedral we headed off to my appointment to get jabbed with pointy pointy needles.

The interesting (and very surprising) upshot of which is that I’m going to have immunotherapy to try and coax my immune system to stop overzealously attacking pollen, but it appears to only be pollen I’m allergic to. The other thing I’m potentially allergic to, or which is exacerbating somewhat my allergy symptoms is, rather worryingly, my medication.

Oops.

I’m hoping to organise a trip to my endocrinologist, and we’ll discuss if I should change my meds, and whether it’s worth trying or not. It would be nice not to be gunky all year round.

After we left, and because the clinic was running somewhat behind (it’s okay, I’d brought my copy of The Fifth Elephant (spoilers) which I picked up from a charity shop, an unsigned first edition!), we thought we’d head to the Tate Modern; unfortunately we arrived just in time to see it close. Having decided to stay in London for the evening we uhm’d and ah’d and at the possibility of seeing a play at The Globe. Eventually we decided to at least see what play was on (since three were listed as currently playing) and found out that it was The Comedy Of Errors – which sounded entertaining, unfortunately they were sold out. Fortunately, they informed us that the person sat over there has two tickets to sell. Please buy them outside the theatre if you do want to buy them.

After some more debate, we plumped for forking out the 30 quid for the seats, and watched a very entertaining Shakespeare comedy before eating out at Pizza Express. Thanks to not realising that Blackfriars tube’s shut (uh, ’til 2011, so we decided not to wait) we unfortunately missed the last train back to our little local station, leading us (well me) to curse First Great Western’s lackadaisical approach to transporting people on their trains (and don’t get me started on their ‘replacement bus services’), which was a bit of a shame after such a pleasant day…

…and meant we got home at one am. And now I feel old, because a few days of late nights and I’m comprehensively tired…

DAF pictures are here.
Food pictures are here and here.
Garden birds are here.