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So, today we’ve had a less lazy, but superbly unproductive day; instead of doing any of the jobs that ‘need’ doing we headed out into the hinterlands twixt Slough and Maidenhead and wandered about enjoying the beauty that is available, free of charge, to those who like to wander. We actually spent much of (or indeed almost all of) the morning engaged in web-browsery activities, with Kathryn reading and me hunting down bits for the DAF. Not, as it happens, particularly useful bits, but bits, none-the-less. I’ve got four sets of brakeshoes heading to us – not because I need four, but because it was cheaper to buy 4 than to buy two. And while we may not (it is likely not) get through 2 sets in the time we have remaining here; we might. And it seems silly to chance it. I also paid for a new side repeater. This is because, for some random reason, the DAF has a side repeater on one side and not on the other. It has a cable for it, and I imagine that at some point, someone’s replaced the wing on one side. Presumably they suffered a fit of intense lazyness and decided not to get or transfer the rolo shaped side repeater. It is, I am told by some very nice members of the DAF Owner’s Club Forum, the same as that used on the Fiat 500 – and thus it is that which I’ve ordered… Unfortunately, the sills haven’t materialised yet. They did say 2-3 weeks, so if they’ve not appeared after my nights I’ll have to contact them and check progress. It’s not like I can afford this, but hey, what’s money if you don’t use it? I also sorted out my Agency application; it’s been dragging on for a while and thanks to them I’ve had live vaccine injected into my arm (because my MMR wasn’t complete, because I didn’t get it as a kid) – but I neglected to get a copy of the evidence that I got it. So I need to send that in… Which is silly, because if I’d’ve put on the original form: Dates of Vaccination 22/4/03 and 29/05/08, and then sent it, that’d’ve been fine. But I can’t write to them and say I’ve had it now, because I put I wasn’t sure of the dates. Which I wasn’t. Bah. BUT – by ringing them – they’ve been through the file, and all the stuff they said they didn’t have it turns out they *do* have. So it now does just hang on me getting a copy of my vaccine dates. I have, however, failed to change the oil in the bike. I’ve been thinking about changing the oil in the bike, but quite frankly, I’ve done so few miles on it that I resent the need to change the oil. This is, I suspect, linked to the reduced top speed – in that I suspect that some of the missing petrol is going into the gearbox oil, and some of the gearbox oil is being burnt instead of petrol in a crank-case-over-pressurisation issue. But I’m not really sure enough to actually consider fixing it myself – because the only way I could do so is to strip the engire engine down, replace all the seals and measure everything to check tolerances. This would take me weeks, and ideally require a workbench. I don’t have one of them, so… The afternoon, however, was spent wandering the countryside which was a far more sensible way to spend it – despite the grey and overcast nature of the day. It’s been warm and not actually muggy, leading to a very pleasant walk (hayfever not-withstanding). Photos are here. And now, given the impending arrival of my mother, it is probably time to clear and clean the lounge. And perhaps also, finally, put up the cabinet in the bathroom. Kathryn’s painted it, and I’ve done the wall in the office… Which means, it’s time to do things.

So, Brick’s winged his way to a new owner; apparently en-route he shed some bits of distributor, but handily the spare one we’d thrown in the boot (along with all the other spares) turned out to have the relevant bits. The new owner didn’t seem that mifffed… it seems about par-for-Brick’s behaviour. I hope that he gives the new owner less trouble.

Anyhow, on to the Dyke cred. We’ve gained points:

We’re terribly green little dykey people; Kathryn cycles all over the place, she cut my hair today, we grow our own veg (and fruit, if the tomato brings us fruit), I do car maintainance, ride a motorbike, we do DIY, and for extra bonus dyke cred:

We made our own granola!

The recipe is not quite right; more honey, and such… but I’m dead chuffed. I do, however, need to find a bulk purchase place for rolled oats, almonds and such.

In other news, we went into a charity shop today, and I left with 3LPs, a single and a book; oh, and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game (that’s almost certainly terrible) and we got Trivial Pursuit.

And in final news for the day, Jejy’s now insured; and Kathryn’s been added to the insurance…all this at a grand total of nothing :)

I’m quite pleased. Well, it cost the £15 administration fee, but still.

We’ve also been making progress, slowly, on the house, the hideous wall of doom in the office has had a coat of basecoat and it’s 3rd coat of yellow. Hopefully one more (and hopefully when it dries it won’t be all cracked like the last 2 coats) and it’ll finally be done.

 

Kathryn found this comic. It’s excellent.

So, our social life here in lovely Slough is somewhat, well, limited. We don’t know anyone – that’s the easiest way to put it. So our social life tends to consist of going somewhere else. Unfortunately – at the moment we are without a road legal car, and have only one set of bike gear (not to mention the bike’s top speed when it’s warm is about 50mph; instead of the more normal 90).

So the sudden offers of visitation and a party was a bit of a coincidence. Then, to make it more odd, Nikki offered to visit too… So all in all, we had a crammed Saturday. First up, Alex, a very nice chap with a DAF came down to let us have a little ride in his DAF 33. This is the model before ours, and has a smaller engine and body. Having sat and generally chatted for a while he let me go out and drive the DAF.

Nikki, you’d love it – apart from it’s pollution producing engine it’s just like driving an EV. It’s completely smooth – you basically put your foot down (something I struggle with as I try and modulate the acceleration) and the car gets faster – there’s no clunky gearchanges. The 33’s apparently somewhat noiser than the 44 should be. And there’s a couple of tips he gave us and some advice (apparently the non-forced-air heating and cooling system isn’t hugely effective; and augmenting it with a dinky little 12V fan is a cunning plan). Also, the heat-exchanger which uses exhaust fumes to warm the carb is missing. It could be repaired, and I may at some point discuss doing so with an engineering workshop.

Anyhow, after our little journey in his ‘Little belter’, Nikki and Kate came round. We showed’em the local abandonment (mostly ‘cos when they arrived we were showing Alex the pain of having a workshop and a large garage feet away from the house completely in disrepair). They very kindly offered us lunch, and we grabbed some Pizza from the local pizzaria. A fine time was had showing them the progress on the house and chatting about their new Prius, and being reminded that I’d promised to make a music video for one of Nikki’s songs (but she’s not supplied the good-quality copy of the track yet. It’s only been a few years… I also need to find some actors to do the video).

Anyhow, the plan then was to hang around for a bit – Kathryn looking to see what we might do to kill time in London – before heading to a party (in London, obviously). She found this. I wish we’d’ve had more time to explore it – the live music we heard was good, and it looked like it’d’ve been a fun place for us to kill a few hours – but because it was so out of the way (it’s quite some distance from Mile End tube), we ended up only having around an hour there.

Unfortunately, someone spilled beer on Kathryn’s jacket – which was somewhat annoying. We headed out from there and across London to the party – which was with some of her University freinds. It’s ages since we’ve been to a party and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was pretty nervous, not being good at meeting people outside work; but in the end it turned out to be a thorougly pleasant evening. 

It was ostensibly a Eurovision party; but they were (perhaps thankfully) not playing any of the Eurovision music! Sadly, the host had cooked – and what looked like awesome food – but we’d filled up on burger and chips and flapjack at Paradise Park, not realising there’d be proper food at the party… They’d got homecooked flatbread and cous-cous and…. it looked so yummy. So we chilled out and chatted to people and so on for a while. Unfortunately, the trains being the trains we had to leave at 11pm to get home. Or so we thought.

The tube took us almost 50 minutes to get from North london to Paddington (we were about 5 minutes walk from a tube station) – meaning we pulled in to Paddington station and our alledged train was no longer on the noticeboard. Of course, there weren’t any people to ask. However, what we did note is the last train of the night which was meant to stop at Burnham, didn’t. Indeed, there were no trains that stopped at Burnham. The little paper timetable said Burnham, the computer said no. In the end we took the next train to Slough, and ended up forking out nearly 8 quid to not-quite-get-us-home. We didn’t have much change left – and the Sunday night rate on taxis here is extortionate. I’m pretty much convinced that we should stop getting (or attempting to get) the train in to London anymore – and go back to my old system; Drive in much of the way and the tube from there inwards. The train is so astonishingly unreliable that the minute benefit of being able to drink just doesn’t seem worth the hastle anymore.

Today, the plan was to sort out the Viva ready for blokie to collect it on Tuesday. Unfortunately it’s rained all day; and having taken us in excess of 2 hours to get back from London we’re both absolutely wrecked. We’ve both spent large chunks of the day asleep (Kathryn’s asleep up on the bed atm), and, well, that’s really all there has been to our Sunday. We watched Into the Woods – which was excellent, heartily recommend that to everyone. Haven’t even eaten lunch (which is handy, ‘cos we’re really short on food!).

So, whilst I may not feel lucky, I was, in fact, incredibly lucky yesterday.

I had what I can only describe as a nice day at work and headed home. Part way home the Viva overheated and I pulled over. Cutting a long (and dumb) story short I ended up with a hand and face full of boiling hot coolant and steam. Slightly panicked I realised I needed (a) an ambluance and (b) (rather more urgently) something cold. The car proved to be lacking anything cold (like water, for example), and so I dashed of down the motorway spitting furiously on my hand to try and cool it, and dumping, some what unsavourily that onto my face to try and cool that. Sadly the first marker post I reached indicated that I’d set off in the wrong direction, so I headed back the other way.

Fought with the car which had a bay full of coolant now; and got it to limp to the next emergency phone where I called for an ambulance and a recovery vehicle. The Highway Officers turned up first bringing with them much wanted water – which cooled my hand, and got rid of the retching from the coolant that had landed up in my mouth. The firebrigade were next with their (really very nice) tea-tree dressings (which soothed my hand and face a lot), and then streaking down the road – blue lights and sirens wailing, the ambulance.

I can’t thank the crews enough. I’m sure I was hardly the most appetising sight covered in flecks of brown coolant-and-rust-streaked water, saliva and such. Retching and constantly swilling my mouth with water and spitting it out.

But the thing I can say is that I was lucky. Very superficial burns to my face and left hand and superficial, if sore, burns to my right. The nurses got me oromorph; I hate morphine and can now say that oromorph does absolutely fuck-all for me. Then sent me off with Naproxen and CoDydramol. I’ve a whopping great dressing on my right hand. and my face feels like it’s sunburnt.

I will not be sad to see the back of that Viva.

 

Really, I’ve nothing interesting to say. At least I don’t think I have. I could go on at length about feeling undervalued and mightily underpaid because my shift roster includes a 9 day stretch that goes ELELELLEL; and which, well, when I struggle to pay bills and we can’t actually afford to see friends or eat out, or go out, those nice things which make life a lot nicer; well. I can’t say as my opinion of my job is high at the moment. That shift roster is also likely to impact on my ability not to laugh idiots out of the department, or at least suffer from snarky-sarcasmitis. 

By idiots I mean the sort of people who turn up at A&E with an ‘irritation in their nose’ which has gone on for 5 days. Now, I’m only now doing the training which allows me to assess our newly booked in visitors, but I have to admit as I stood looking at this individual and my highly skilled trainer questioned him on his symptoms I feared breaking out into hysterical laughter.

Why was he there? Why did he stop A&E doctors treating minor injuries and people who need our services? Because he couldn’t be bothered to wait the extra 30 minutes to see the local GP out of hours service, and he also couldn’t be bothered to register as a temporary resident at a GP.

When the assessment nurse I was working with wrote his notes for the doctor to see – and I admit to hoping it was one of our less patient doctors who booted him out – I did suggest she could stop after the first word (“irritation”). After much laughter we put him (well, his card) into the doctor’s box; but I wish we’d not been so busy I could have peaked in and listened to the conversation.

Although GPs are something that I increasingly find I have less respect for; having had an individual come in a while ago with a ?Dislocated shoulder from a GP and found her to be septic – the doctor it seems hadn’t even bothered to check her pulse when he’d seen her… there’s busy and there’s busy. Thankfully our assessment nurse did her obs and found her (for the technically minded) tachycardic, tachypneic, pyrexial, hypotensive and hypoxic (or her heart was going to fast, she was breathing very quickly, had a high temperature, very low blood pressure and had low levels of oxygen in her blood)…

And, as a side point, having been there a while – I’m able to prompt the newer doctors on correct management of acutely unwell patients. Which is nice.

But, for all my whining they’ve offered to (possibly) send me on the ATLS course as an observer (I’m too green to go on the course for real, yet, but knowledge even without qualifications is a good thing). I’d seen the poster up, but presumed there’d be others who wanted to go who were perhaps more skilled, or experienced than me. But it seems I’m the one who’s been offered the place (because no one else is interested! Not because of skills or experience, sadly). But I’m looking forward, if somewhat nervously, to that. More strings to my bow, as they say.

Anyhow, so that’s put me in a better mood; and ironically it may fix my attrocious shift pattern too (or, I suppose, potentially make it worse).

In other, other news, the DAF should be off to be repaired shortly. A nice chap from the DAF owners club’s offered to come and let me/us take a little ride in his DAF so we know what we’re getting in to. I’ve bought a DAF manual off e-bay (various people kindly offered to give me a manual, but one needed me to ride in and collect it (which isn’t far, but my bike’s not exactly the wellest thing in all christendom and was *very* kind of him) and the other seems to have been struck by the disappearing curse of e-bay) – since there was one on there for a fiver – and it means that I can start servicing the brakes and such like so as to get the little car up and running (the intention being that I get it taken down to Langley for it’s repairs and then take it straight from there to an MOT).

What is proving to be a little of a challenge is that the previous owner can’t locate the V5 for the car. Despite promises from the chap who had the car in the garden that it’d be with me soon, the previous owner (who I have to admit, is disabled and thus I don’t really hold a grudge about this, it’s more an annoyance) can’t locate it at the moment. Is, apparently, looking for it though. It’s not a disaster, instead it’s an annoyance. I can apply for a new one – but I just know as soon as I do that then it’ll appear.

I’ve also been plotting a new route to work – given how sickly my MZ is becoming, with it’s new top speed of 50 whole mph, I’ve started to contemplate the usefulness of a non-motorway route. Unfortunately, between my home and the hospital there is one moderate sized town; through which I would be forced to ride. Unfortunately googlemaps reckons it’d take me 40 minutes (which I take to mean, at least an hour). So I think I may have to pull Charlie back here and get her fixed and running. Ach. Life, it’s too complicated.

 

So, with the arrival of summer-like-weather (yes, I know it’s spring, but it’s also bloody hot), comes the tradition of whining about hayfever. I’ve not got *that* much to whine about (yet); apart from the frequently runny nose and sniffling, oh and the sneezing. And the eyes that while not desparately itchy are, well, itchy.

I wanted to get on the Sublingual Immunotherapy (or quite honestly the Subcutaneous Immunotherapy) trials but no, my GP failed to actually do anything. The alledged referal to a local immune system specialist? Well, either they’ve got the world’s longest waiting list or he didn’t actually bother.

So another year of itching and eyedrops approaches. At least this year I’m saving on contact lenses I can’t wear because of my failure to get around to having an eye test!

In other, less whiny, news. I spent yesterday sorting out Brick ready for sale. He’s up on ebay now, so hopefully, the sunny weather will bring out the classic car desiring peeps, who will bid vastly over his expected value to bring me some money.

It took most of the day though; washing, drying (‘cos it was so hot that otherwise the water dried in big streaks), cleaning the interior, spraying the interior with hideous “Outside Fresh” turtlewax interior shine stuff – which distressingly failed to fulfil it’s containers claims (“returns [vinyl/plastic interior parts] to pristine condition”). But did make them look shinier.

So, today I’m going to do a bit of cleaning (I’ve swept the bedroom and put my clothes away), and read my ‘streaming guide’ for it turns out I’m getting a new skill at work. Not Triage, but Streaming. I’m listening to Peel Night (having been reading John Peel’s Margrave of the Marshes I’ve been having a resurgence of desire to listen to Mr Peel himself. I’d like to get my hands on copies of the Home Truths show too; but that seems a little unlikely), shall have my tea, clean the kitchen and then set to on my assigned reading.

So, Kathryn spotted a link to this petition which is objecting to the DSM-V comittee’s members consisting of a individuals who pathologise gender identity disorder. I know quite a few TS people and while I’ve met some thorough nutcases, I also know some truly wonderful people who happen to also be TS. GID is something that the individuals appointed to the committee believe can be ‘cured’ with reparitive therapy; something they’ve tried on queer folk for quite some time with no real success.

Mostly, it seems to produce very screwed up people.

These members of the comittee have links to Narth (who advoctate reparitive therapy for homosexual and other queer individuals), the human biodiversity institute (a eugenics group who advocate for more research into the “racial IQ gap”), and to be honest scare the pants off me.

If they start to pathologise GID more…and gain credibility for their theories through inclusion in the DSM-V (rather than, say, finding any actual research to support their theories which didn’t rely on wildly skewing the subjects towards those who fit their theories) it leads towards worrying steps backward in the DSM, and a danger to everyone queer. .