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  • Gardens, headaches and things of significance.

    So, my head hurts.

    I’ve no idea why, although possibly the 30 odd hours with an hour or so of sleep in the middle during which we gardened, shopped, I did a complete night shift at work, and so on, that might explain why every time I move my head it feels like I throw a large brick against the side of my head.

    I did try going outside for a walk, and I’ve been drinking plenty of water, but it’s all not helped. Which is saddening.

    Anyhow, I mentioned that we did gardening, we also went to the garden centre (to get plants to do gardening with) – this has resulted in our garden going from a huge pile of rubble (which sadly I have no photos of) to this:

    We’ve got what we’re hoping will develop into a nice flower bed, and a also a nice veggie patch. The flowers already smell nice in the sun too; using a trick from Bristol, the path’ll be covered over with gravel (to hide the concrete), and we have plans for a small bog-garden, a raised bed (where the coal shed used to be, or possibly outhouse), and a bit of lawn. Decking is still part of the plan too.

    Other than that; I’ve been around to the back-garden-adjoininger responsible for the slow collapse of the shed (the back wall’s giving up due to them undermining the foundations) and given them a letter saying I want a new shed. On the way back I was witness to a lot of high-speed driving by police and general bemusment of peoples because – I am unreliably informed – a youth was ‘waving a gun around’. I didn’t see any youths with guns, thankfully. But I did see a lot of people milling. Now, I’m sorry, but my plan on hearing ‘youth running around with gun’ wasn’t to stand there like some sort of startled dugong, but was instead to head to the house (not, I grant you with any particular urgency, but more because it was where I was going and I reckon being inside was better than being outside in such a situation). One imagines that lots of milling around people must annoy the police.

    Of course, people do like to stare at things. On my last night, on my way to work there was an upside-down car and a lot of flashing lights on the opposite carriageway of the motorway; this, one imagines, was an accident. What this might require from someone travelling in the opposite direction is a quick glance (ideally nothing at all, but I’m human and my interest is piqued, especially ‘cos I like to know what might be at work waiting for me). What it doesn’t require is letting your foot off the throttle, dropping speed from 80->65, then actually braking to slow down more and get a better look, when you’re in the centre lane of the opposing carriageway. Doing this when I’m behind you leads to me hitting the horn, flashing the lights and also hurling abuse in your general direction. It’s dangerous and annoying… 

    In other news (I might post about work in a bit, given that I’ve done 3 loads of laundry and we’ve not got any newspapers kicking around), Brick’s for sale. He’ll do ’til the end of the week with just posters in the car, and then come thursday I intend to run him round to the jetwash, take lots of photos of the clean’d brick and pop him on e-bay. The DAF Welder is coming on Thursday, so hopefully the DAF’ll be returning to the road shortly. Of course, he may turn up and give me a quote that’s entirely insane, in which case I’ll be calling the other welder.

    It’s weird, I find it so hard to take time off. Today is basically my only full day off in a run of 9 shifts, and it was only yesterday morning I came off nights. But to take the whole day off seems excessive somehow. I guess doing laundry and writing a letter’s hardly challenging, but hey. I’m going to stop there because this post’s taken hours to write and been completely rambly. In other news, my headache’s gone :)

  • Tax

    An open letter to the PM

    I must admit that while I take a fair interest in politics, to a degree through self interest, but also through a desire for a unified and evidence based approach to the environment, I hadn’t really been watching the political (and more importantly) the tax situation that carefully.

    And therefore this is, to some degree, an issue I should have been aware of – and indeed preparing for. But then it wasn’t so hugely advertised, and politician’s depressing practice of spinning news rather than providing information may have contributed to my failure to notice. But the abolishion of the 10p tax rate has left us (my partner and I) facing a dramatic shortfall in our finances.

    Both of us; sadly; are foolish to work in the public sector. I am a nurse, and my partner is a teaching assistant. While your delightful government ministers are paid a miserly £61,000 (which must make it awfully difficult to cope), our *combined* salary weighs in at a substantial 35,000 (that’s with me working nights and weekends).

    Only, thanks to your tax changes, we suddenly find that almost £80 a month has suddenly vaporised. And while you harp on about the over 60’s on low wages, you seem to have forgotten those under 60. Those who don’t get winter fuel allowances, and in the case of my partner, those without recourse to public funds. In other words, you’ve taken a huge chunk of our not substantial funds, and we can’t get them back.

    The only thing for us to do is to:
    (a) stop working for the public sector (my plan).
    (b) work more hours (we’re both trying to do that).
    (c) stop eating healthy ethical food and switch to supporting child slavery and human rights abuses (we’re trying to avoid doing that).
    (d) leave.

    Thanks so much, and remember it’s not just people over 60 who vote.

    As a side point; I used to care about working in the NHS, now I only stay there because the NHS is the only place I can do the job I want…. until we leave this country taking the skills of a trained specialist nurse, and an incredibly talented TA with us.

    Yours, annoyed as hell.

    Kate.

  • Incoherant ranting

    So, whilst I’m frequently prone to bounts of incoherent ranting, they don’t often end up on here… but I have just seen the election results. And seriously? BNP on the London Assembly, Boris Johnson elected mayor. I don’t even have the words. BNP representing one of the most multicutltural places in the UK?

    I guess it’s all just fuel for my desire to leave the UK, but it also fills me with a sadness that the BNP’s intolerance has been allowed to flourish. I find it abhorent that people are spreading such hatred. I suppose in comparison the election of the conservative puppet Boris is just a depressing drop in the ocean. But it just brings a depressingly right-wing impression to London.

    And I liked Red Ken, he was nuts and he scrapped the Routemasters in a hideous act of environmental stupidity*; but hey.

    * Busses which effectively last forever, have the possibility to be modified for wheelchair access and can have modern low/er emission engines fitted. What’s not to like? Apart from the fact they’ve been scrapped.

  • y’what?!

    So, as I wait for my Viva’s exhaust to arrive I’ve been riding the ‘zed to and from work. Thankfully, given the extent of the rain yesterday, they let me come home early (to be fair we’d just had a faxed-through flash-flood warning) and the bair-hugger did a grand job of getting my boots dry enough for me to be able to ride (despite wearing my walking gear and my bike gear my arse still got wet though).

    I’d hoped the exhaust would arrive today; not least because of the weather…

    Anyhow, so I’ve been lurking around the internet today and I found this. Am I alone in being appauled that Mazda is crushing nearly 5000 new cars because there might be something wrong with them. Sure, if they looked and found that brakefluid’d leaked out all over the car, or that the engine bay was filled with oiley-watery-sludge then fine, okay, strip them for spares. But they’re destroying the *wheels*. Wheels? Do wheels mysteriously get damaged by tilting them at 60 degrees?

    Interiors? Are they unsalvageable?

    *le sigh*.

    I also went on the hunt for the previously mentioned TCO report on older cars – which I’ve heard of – from the SMMT of all places, which still said that owning older cars was better than buying new ones. Unfortunately, I can’t find my reference to it (which I think was in Practical Classics) and can only find the ‘green car’ booklet which alledges 10% of pollution coming from manufacture and 5% from recycling (although this from my quick scan suggests around 20% from manufacture). I’d like to find a good and at least less biased reference on whether I’m right about driving an older car. It makes sense to me that keeping it on the road longer is better than recycling it and driving a new one. Of course, not driving at all is better still; but until I live somewhere were nurses are actually paid a reasonable sum of money then I’m not going to be able to live near where I work, and thus driving is a necessity (unless public transport suddenly manages to cater for people who need to get to and from work at late and early times of the day).

    Anyhow, now that rant’s over and done with. I’ve called a welder and am going to have to arrange for him to come around on monday to look at the DAF. I’ve also written the ad for the Viva – but I’ll go and fork out a few quid for a jetwash before I photograph it – and shan’t do that until the DAF is decided upon. I also need to make a run to my mum’s to collect the ramps and the jacks and suchlike.

    Anyhow, I should go shower….

  • Zines

     So, today we had a discount London day, heading to the London Zine Symposium. Kathryn and I have discussed (her suggestion, and an awesome one at that) the creation of a zine for a while; and while we were in Brighton I spotted the card advertising it, and so we headed in today…

    …and it was cool. There were many zines to be had, and even at the discount zine price of £0.50 – £1 which most zines occupy we managed to spend a fair few quid. Not helped by my picking up a self-published book (I nearly got the Rick Dakan / Geek Mafia book too, but had run out of change) and some of the other more spendy things.

    We also had some very nice cake (well, I had cake, Kathryn had muffin); we were very good and took our food with us tho’.

    Anyhow, it has reawakened a desire to do a zine, although with my mind working the way it does it’d probably best be called ‘off topic’ ;) but one of the things I also fancied, and discussed with Kathryn is whether we could get hold of a banda machine to reproduce it. I’ve always fancied playing with one and did try to convince my parents to let me grab one when the school chucked them (in the end we rescued an ancient photocopier, but ended up stripping it for entertaining bits, like the eye-damagingly-bright light because it was totally knackered) but never ended up with one.

    However, finding a spirit duplicator (or gestetner as I call them (I have a feeling roneo-vickers made them too)) has turned out to be harder than I thought. Whilst I knew it was obsolete technology of the most obsolete kind I imagined it’d still lurk on e-bay. But no. Searches for spirit duplicator / ditto (the US name) / banda and roneo-vickers have revealed a marked absence of anything. I tried Slough’s freecycle without so much of a whisper… I fear that this may be a plan that fails.

    Of course, I think we’d also have to find a dot-matrix printer to produce the original on, too. But I love the idea… So, I know this is hardly a well read journal, but some of my friends work in education, or are at uni, so could ask around. If any of you can find a 24pin dot matrix and a banda (ideally with some of the purple magic paper (I had a whole pack once!) and some copying spirit) then you would rock my little world :)

    And that, my dears, is all.

  • More Impressed

    So, yesterday was spent doing some ‘preventative’ maintainance on the bike. If you can really call it preventative after riding it a week having left it sitting for 2 and a half months and having not done any maintainance for a while before that…

    I adjusted the brakes, which took longer than might be expected due to the unfortunate fact that they were only just off, and only just moving to on; and when I adjusted them so they were only-just-off but could move to fully on they jammed. In fact, I don’t recall ever greasing them…

    …So I spent some time unsiezing the brakes. They’re still ‘sticky’ but it’s a lot better than it was. It was slightly embarassing to go for my test circuit of our roundabout, put my foot on the brake and then not be able to start moving again.

    I also spent some time doing the DAF. The rust is over quite a large area, but it’s also ‘a big flat panel’. Well, actually it’s got an L shape to it at the end, but I reckon it shouldn’t be too expensive. I need to ring round some welders… I don’t suppose anyone knows the actual rules on ‘to and from a place of repair’ for non-MOT’d cars. Can you take it ‘to and from’ one for a quote? (I’m assuming not, though I can drive it *to* a place of repair when I’ve chosen someone).

    meh.

    Anyhow, the DAF runs – and starts easily – and is quite cute really. It also moves, it’s a bit odd to drive after the Viva and the Minor, but it trundled the 2 feet down the drive and back up the drive without too much trauma.

    Kathryn spent the day sorting out the back garden. We’ve modified and simplified plans for the back garden; mostly to cut costs. I don’t think there are any shots of the back garden at the height of ‘stuff piled everywhereyness’; but she (and I helped a little bit with the bigger chunks of shite) moved all the rubbish into a heap where the dog-hut (which she took down) was. In the process of this, we noticed that when the people-building-a-house behind our house did their de-tree-and-fence work, they have undermined the foundations for the shed. There’s now a fracking-huge crackin the back wall, so I’m going to go and demand monies from them for the shed.

    Aaanyway, so she cleared the ground, and having been defeated on the DAF brake service (because, well, I don’t actually appear to have ramps, jacks or axlestands here, something which I find a little surprising) helped dig it over. Then we went to b&q and spent 26 quid on compost/plants/seeds and a rake.

    We were going to plant them this morning before heading to the zine symposium…but the grey sky are likely to make us leave it… that and it’s a bit late….

  • Conflict of interest

    So, in my hospital above the glove boxes are located above the bins. The reason this is important will become apparent…. Against infection control procedure, I do, occasionally land up with a pair of gloves in my pocket. Being a latex-allergic soul, and the fact that the nitrile gloves are not in each bay, this isn’t entirely surprising. I won’t use them for anything remotely invasive, obviously. But might well use those be-pocketed gloves for scooping up poo, or one of the other delightful tasks that occasionally comes my way.

    If I don’t then, sometimes, even more rarely, those gloves come home with me and they go into the box-of-gloves I have at home; being as I do my own car and bike maintainance and with the decoration we’ve been doing around the house *and* the fact I’ve been on holiday for 3 weeks the little box (which was once B&Q Vinyl gloves) had worked it’s way down to being empty…

    Then a thought occured. When I pull gloves out of the box, sometimes extra gloves will fall out (because they’re very cheap packs of gloves and the gloves appear to have been wedged in by some sort of glove-wedging-obsessed-ape, rather than a nice machine that puts them in in an orderly fashion, leading to them sometimes being incredibly tangled). These falling gloves land – somewhat unfortunately – either on the floor or on the clincal waste bins, and are thus, well, somewhat inappropriate for using for anything ‘clean’. My usual response to this is to hurl the “no longer clean” gloves in the bin. But today it occured that, well, they’re probably still fit for working on the car…

    …so now my clumsyness is, well, a conflict. Am I subconciously being more clumsy to make more of them drop… :)

    Incidentally, the reason I don’t just buy some is that every time I’ve checked they’ve been around 14 quid for a box (plus postage, of course), which seems excessive to me.

    In other news, I think Brick shall be sold in the nearness of the future. An exhaust has been sourced, and it sounds like Rebecca’s nearing completion. Where the money for Rebecca comes from I am unsure.

  • Huge house / holiday / car update

    Oh lord alive, I’ve not updated for a while, and there is much to say… There follows:

    So, let’s start at the beginning (since that’s generally a good place to start). At the beginning of the week (the one before the one before this one), as we commenced our ‘week of tormenting the house’ we discovered the availability of one, free, DAF44. Now, to those who are unfamiliar with the DAF, it’s a car with a constantly variable transmission driven by big belts. It’s really awfully clever, and now, apparently, Mercedes do something similar.

    At any rate, I’d fancied one for a while and it seemed like the perfect (simple) vehicle to get Kathryn so as she had an automatic to drive to work. It does, however, need some floor.

    It’s also not a runner. Ignoring this, at the beginning of the week we headed down to see it, and decided that for the cost of transporting it, it was worth it. So, at the end of the week Joggernaught (not Juggernaught) arrived outside our house, somewhat reluctantly, and covered in a 3 year accumulation of tree-gunk. Some scrubbing by Kathryn (and a little light helpfulness from me) and she was kind of off white. Not exactly going to win Concourse, but presentable. Which probably relieved the neighbours. J-g needs a service, some fresh petrol, and I spent a lot of time persuading the passenger side door to shut. It’s in need of a little adjustment still, but it does shut, which is altogether goodness.

    Annoyingly, the idea was to get the car and decide later if it was salvagable, but it’s kinda cute and it’s burrowed into mine (and I think Kathryn’s) heart somewhat. But there’s a financial limit on what we can do, so we’ll have to see what we can sort. Kathryn’s devoid of driver’s licence at the moment anyhow, and we’ve not even got the Autodata manual to get it serviced, so it’s just sitting for the time being. Shots of the DAF are here…

    The week, however, was mostly spent gutting and redecorating the office and the bedroom. This did not entirely go to plan. Essentially, the idea was that we’d empty the bedroom and the office, sand and paint the office walls (which were already stripped), strip, fill, sand, paint the bedroom walls, paint both floors, varnish ’em and move back in. Oh, and construct a desk and a wardrobe at the same time.

    Unfortunately, although it mostly went pretty well, we had two disasterous walls in the bedroom (which now await my attention to replaster), and some lazy sod had applied wallpaper over old wallpaper. This doesn’t come off unless you attempt to apply filler over it, at which point it leaps from the wall with reckless abandon. And the wall that used to have a fireplace in is also a complete state – one which requires us to attack it either with cloth or wallpaper, as it’s also a strip-and-replaster job otherwise.

    But we achieved an astonishing amount (with some assistance from my Mum and Parmito, who popped down for the day and opted to spend the day sugar-soaping the walls in the office); the bedroom is so-much-nicer…

    Before:

    Bedroom, before decorating

    After:

    After decoration, or at least part way through

    A bit of a change, I hope you’ll agree.

    To be fair, we’ve not spent the last year sleeping on the camp bed, but it does let you see how hideous the carpet was.

    So yes, the office now looks like an office, too. This is awesome…[House reno photo sets]

    Anyhow, because of the disasters we were a day late heading from there to Brizzy to see Nikki and Kate. But we piled in the car and headed down to see them having spent some time making the house liveable. Having got down there we headed down to Weston giving Pepper and Eddie a chance to run around like maniacs, and Kathryn, Nikki and I a chance to take photos of them running around like maniacs (and a few of each other). Despite the sun-shine the wind was cold, April this year feeling a lot like, say, November.

    Anyhow, ‘cos I’m lazy, the photoset from Weston is here.

    We then spent a few hours the next day (monday) mooching around Bristol. I love Bristol, it’s a great city, and were I staying in the UK it’s one of the places I’d be happy to live (and could actually afford to live). Oxford is beautiful, but way too expensive to stay; Brighton (the last place we visited) is another I’d happily live in… Anyhow, I wanted to show Kathryn what I mostly feel is ‘my city’, so we took a bit of a wander. Mostly around the St. Nicholas market area; we were going to head up into Clifton but unfortunately, no one warned us that Fopp has reopened. Sucked in as we were by the sound of cheap music and cheap books calling us, we ended up spending far too much time and money in there… and thus Clifton and the Camera Obscura and such shall have to wait for another day.

    So the photoset from Bristol is here… (see, really blindingly lazy, but you’re getting an update, what more do you want?!).

    Anyhow, we then headed up to the Lakes, this was for somewhat of a working holiday in that we had 7 hotels to visit to check out as wedding venues. In the end, what we thought might be a hard decision turned out to be astonishingly easy; in that one hotel really stood out as being just the most gorgeous views, the nicest staff, and just really the hands-down winner. After some trecking we did come up with a second, but it’s not really in the area of the lakes I love. It’s a beautiful place, and quite definately a fantastic venue. Had we not have seen the one we’ve fallen for then it’d’ve been first. But yes. So I rang the Registrar today; there’s not many times available, so when I get home from work today we’ll have to sort it, hopefully.

    Because my birthday fell while we were in the Lakes, we did take a day off from venue hunting, and wandered up to Easedale tarn. Kathryn got me a shiny shiny book (and it turns out a Suzanne Vega single, and something that’s not arrived yet…). It was wonderful to be up in the fresh air, on a mountain, in the quiet again. Just looking out over the vista was beautiful. Being as we’d not done lots of walking to build up to it, we just went up to the Tarn and back down – but that alone was a fair walk – and the weather though cold was clear and sunny most of the day. It rained for literally a couple of minutes (really lightly) just after we got back, and while we were preparing to head out for Dinner. Kathryn also took me to dinner at an italian restaurant in Grassmere which was just lovely. The food wasn’t anything to write home about (it was fine, not unpleasant or anything, but definately itallian as cooked by the english), but the company was excellent :)

    The next day was back on the road, touring more venues. Poor old Brick’s exhaust’s temporary repair started to give up; I suspect the road up to the hostel was to blame, but he soldiered on; slightly more throaty and distinctly more rattly than is ideal… and we headed, after touring venues, down to Manchester.

    The lakes photos are here.

    Kathryn’s friend Helen lives in Manchester, and she showed us the city a little (We toured Ontario basin in Salford before heading in to the city); we spent lots of time chatting to her and her housemates, and had a very good chinese takeaway. I had a thoroughly nice time – and it was really really nice to sleep in a proper bed. It was also fantastic to meet one of Kathryn’s friends. I’m not very good at being not-shy, but I tried… No photos from Manchester because, well, most of the things I wanted to photograph were inconveinently located in the kinds of areas where taking a camera out is an invitation for someone to take the camera…

    So, huge thanks to Helen for showing us some of Manchester and putting us up for the night :)

    Then onward again, this time to Brighton. 

    Brighton is one of my other favourite cities; although I’ve not spent much time there, that which I have has been good, and it has a thriving music and culture scene. Unfortunately, it’s also home to West Pier, something which I have watched disintegrate since my youth. I love West Pier, I think it’s the most damning inditement of our Listing laws that there is a Grade I listed building lying in the sea. One which could, and rightly should, have been saved.

    Anyway, ignoring the ranting, the plan was to chill out in the afternoon, get some food, head to the hostel to book in and go clubbing. All of which we did. We headed to the museum too, and encountered work of a very cool musician called Al Start; we also risked life and limb entering a variety of bookshops and other-small-thing shops, but the clubbing bit? Friday night at the Candy Bar was quite empty. Even come 11pm there was not much life there. We did have a game of pool, which was excellent, and then headed back to our Hostel. Finally we spent Saturday Morning touring the shops and going down to see Brighton and West Pier. We’ve already had the rant, so you could just have the photos…

    So, finally we get to the Car. Poor old Brick has racked up 1000 miles this week; he’s burnt virtually no oil, but he’s dumped around 3 – 5 litres of coolant. Flushing the radiator was inadequate, it seems. And while short journeys are conducted fairly reasonably, long ones are only okay as long as you are very, very gentle with the throttle. And no suddenly stopping for fuel or you’ll get that coolant explosion.

    However, we seemed to get away with just topping up the coolant regularly; but what we didn’t get away with was 1000 miles on top of the 12 or so thousand miles on the temporary exhaust repair. It snapped sometime up in the lakes, and unforunately the hostel near Brighton was actually up an unmade track, and that spelt the end of the front section which, it seems, also had a temporary repair at some point.

    Unfortunately, about 40 miles from home the exhaust gave up completely, shearing into 3 separate pieces; and the RAC bloke couldn’t bodge them back together. Thankfully, the very nice RAC bloke towed Brick home (despite me only having roadside assistance) – his argument being that it was freezing cold, and it’d take him as long as it would to wait with us. He was an absolute star, and will mean that the RAC get my recommendation and continued custom. They rock.

    Unfortunately+, I can’t seem to get hold of a new exhaust for Brick. Well, I can get a stainless steel one, but I deem that somewhat excessive. Especially when Rebecca’s looking at being finished fairly soon…  I’ve got to head to work now, so we’ll save the rant about cars and money for later, shall we?

  • Update from the plaster mines

    All is not going to plan. Further work necessary. Full update when timing allows.

  • And for a change, we went to Oxford :)

    So, having examined the pros and cons, we headed off to Oxford yesterday for a few more Oxfringe events; in the end we only made it to two; mistiming it and arriving after the other exhibition had shut…

    We did: Things on the wall (both venues). In both cases there were paintings I really liked (see, I am a sucky reviewer); beautiful images and images that made you pause and think. Several that I’d’ve happily hung on the wall, were I paid rather more than I am. I did buy a book, though, from @183, which cost me all of a pound. It’s a copy of Stasiland – a book I wanted to read when it came out (but which, oddly enough escaped going on the wants list). It looks, from the beginning of it, very interesting. We also stopped off in a comic / video store, where we didn’t buy anything (possibly to the distress of the owner). It turns out the Scott Pilgrim in the window is but one of a huge shelf-load of Scott Pilgrims. What is going on? I know it’s awesome, but it’s meant to be my bit of Canadian Awesome! Ah well, I s’pose I can share with the world. I did however pick up a free Oxford music magazine, so I’ll have a nose at that for free events….

    We tried to do: Illustrators and Book Artists  – this is in the O3 gallery, which we somewhat belated located inside the Castle development. Not that it really mattered, we’d been wandering around being touristy and enjoying the freezing cold, and thus arrived some time after it shut. Peering through the door, it looked interesting. Better planning is called for next time, on our part, obviously.

    We then meandered around the city taking photos. Well, I took photos until my camera had a strop about the batteries being flat. Given that they were immensely cheap rechargables, which have been hideously abused, and it was fecking freezing out there yesterday I’m not entirely suprised. I’ve taken some shots of Kathryn while she’s asleep on the sofa today (it’s lushously sunny, if also bloody cold) and the batteries are happily displaying ‘full’ so I suspect it really was just the cold that’s upset them. Anyhow, we then made it to various bookshops, and in the end landed up in Borders, to check if there was anything else we fancied doing. Having spied various ‘stage’ type things we um’d and ah’d and were as traditionally decisive as we were, in the end picking “Do something, Martin!” (Martin White) because it was late enough that we could go and get something to eat first.

    It turned out that our choice could have been much less limited by time, because the Mexican Grill at which we got Burritos was the quickest Burrito provider I’ve encountered, and we were fed and on our way with plenty of time to sit in the bar at the theatre/college… which was nice, because it was one of the few warm places we’d been.

    Do Something, Martin! turned out to be excellent, if very very odd. It’s essentially a one-man story with accompanyment on an accordian, and some rather odd little songs in there. Kathryn mentioned a slight Tom Lehrer-esqueness, which I can agree with. 

    Do Something, Martin! also turned out to be where 

    [info]bluedevi

    was that evening (Oxfringe hoodie in evidence), and after some prodding from Kathryn (I have this vague fear of looking like some kind of stalker when I meet people off Livejournal) I said Hi. It’s always nice to put a face to a journal – although we were somewhat hurried – she had more Oxfringe things to do, and we had to go freeze our arses off getting back to the car.

    Of course, Brick having had all of the previous day being played with, declared that he wasn’t going to have any rear lights. Brake lights were fine, indicators just dandy, but no rear lights, no number plate light, and just for real top-level-Vauxhall-Viva humour, no dashboard lights either. Of course, the only thing I actually knew we didn’t have was dash-lights, until we pulled into a petrol station where a recovery truck driver mentioned it.

    Having spent about 10 minutes prodding bits, but foolishly assuming it must be the fuse (made of unobtainium) that I’d blown and bodged (because they are, in fact, made of unobtainum, or in my car 30A fuse wire soldered across the fuse body) I gave up, and we ran the last stretch home with the left indicator on permanently. Not ideal, but it was fracking freezing, and waiting for a recovery truck seemed unappealing).

    Today, of course, I checked and it’s Fuse 4, not Fuse 3 (the one I’d been fiddling with) which does the back lights. Taking it out and putting it back in seems to have cured it, I suspect though I need to find that emery and clean all those fuse connectors :-/

    Today is of course, Kathryn’s birthday. Kathryn’s been dozing in the sun, seems happy with her prezzies and her Pancake breakfast, and so we shall probably have a nice chilled out day before commencing the world of work we’ve planned next week.Â