Mostly lemon based

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  • Picture post

    So, today’s been a day of doing car jobs. I had been intending, for a while now, to sort out Brick’s so called coolant. Having nearly had him overheat heading in to Oxford, and again heading into Reading I reckoned that nearly was close enough and it was time to bite the bullet and pull my finger out and get a round-tuit, as it were.

    Oh, just before we do that, we saw a hedgehog last night, it was lurking ‘twixt the front door and the window. Awesomely cute, it was :)
     

    So, I lifted the bonnet, having nipped first to Halfrauds to get some fresh coolant, and I drained out the most revolting brown gunk in all brown gunkydom.  

    gunk in a bucket

    That was *blue* when it went in. Not only that, coolant generally has similar consistency to water, this was a bit like soup. And that’s not even what came out with the radiator flush. So; a flush with plain water, and then a load of radiator flush went in. I also noticed that somewhat disconcertingly one of the bolts that hold the alternator on had wandered off somewhere. So I fished around in my toolbox and found something just-about-long-enough, and threw that in, tightening the thing back up. That was actually somewhat alarming, but never mind.

    Anyhow, while the car idled (to get it warm and allow the stuff to work) I tackled the non-functional indicator; the nearside one slowed down a while ago, and then stopped flashing completely. Having opened the cover, I thought the cause of this was instantly apparent…

    indicator lens

    I was completely wrong though; the inch of water sat in the indicator wasn’t actually the cause of the problem; the bulb had just gone. And the connectors were covered in shite, too, which I imagine can’t help. The offside one was just the same. I’m thinking of switching to LED bulbs now, actually, and having located the indicator relay am quite tempted. Especially after seeing the price of the normal bulbs in Halfrauds

    Anyhow, having at least located the fault I headed back to working on the cooling system, and in a fit of insanity whipped the radiator out. The radiator, rather distressingly seems to have been attacked by Radiator Moths, which probably also goes a long way to explaining the barely adequate cooling the car’s had since I got it.

    I need to make a decision on Brick’s future soon, because I suspect that if I want to keep him then I’m going to need to sort that radiator out. I straightened out some of the bent over fins, but really they’re disintegrating rather easily now…

     

    Finally I put together the 8-track hack. I’ve got a little bored of travelling and listening to my MP3 player; it means I can’t have music on and chat to Kathryn, I have to have uncomfortable little earbuds in all the time, and I can’t here the noises the car makes to maintain my paranoia appropriately.

    So, yesterday I started stripping down the 8 track; gone is the motor, gone is the tape head and most of the selector mechanism. Today I guestimated where I think the line-level part of the circuit starts (I think. I’ve connected it the other side of the preamp, I think) and connected that to a pair of phono connectors (because the in-car-entertainment project had to cost nothing at all, ideally).

    Having butchered a broken 8-track tape to mount the phono connectors on (the least tidy external bit of the job), I put it all back together and threw it into the car. It looks very 70’s in there, and apart from the slightly distressingly not as good as I’d like job I’ve done of the phono connectors (really I wanted to do something much more complex, but I’ll save that for when I’ve got a bit of money), it’s all in and done. Unfortunately I blew the aux fuse on the car while I was fitting it, due to a moment of sheer unadulterated stupidity (having found the ‘auxillary’ line on the connector block, connected it up, and then gone to check the voltage at the other end, I neglected to turn the ignition back off before attempting to connect the tape player.

    Even more unfortunately, it’s a 35A short glass fuse, of a type which Halfords apparently Does Not Sell. They do up to 7.5A in that size, so I grabbed some of them, as far as I know it’s the only item on the Aux circuit, so hopefully it’ll be okay. I need to pick up a new spare anyhow, because it turns out the 35A spare fuse is blown too… 

    Anyway, it being dark and cold outside I’ll test it all tomorrow… on the trip to Oxford :)

    [All the photos from today are in the Viva Set]

  • Oxfringe, and what’s wrong with Slough

    So, last night we finally made it to Oxford (and to Oxfringe), having lived near Newbury, and my sister preferring to claim to live near Oxford than near Reading (though she’s definately nearer the latter than the former, but the former’s easier to get to, and more worth the trip) I’ve spent a fair (though not huge) amount of time haunting the city. I distinctly recall lurking on what appears to be an AMT Coffee’s forecourt, waiting to meet friends, in the shade of the trees there. Oh, and going to the pub with Peter (to play pool) and suddenly realising that without intending to we’d landed up in a gay pub. Not exactly a problem for me, but I did feel a bit sorry for ‘im :)

    Anyhow, so, although it my head it’s stored as City:Beautiful:Touristy, I’d kind of forgotten just how pretty it really is. Living in Slough has kind of blunted the beauty of the world around me, because it is, to quote Kathryn “a dump”. Although Betjeman’s words (“Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough / It isn’t fit for humans now“)were written of a town in the second world war, it feels like they still apply now. I’m told by Wikipedia that there are a number of listed buildings in Slough, but the sprawling mass of uninspired box like houses hide them from you (I’ve noticed if you wander round you’ll find nice, interesting and quirky buildings hiding, showing a history not always so bland). The big thing that Slough suffers from is the same malady that struck my town of origin, it’s too close to London to develop anything of it’s own.

    Going to Oxford (or indeed even to Reading, hardly a scintilating star of cultural greatness) quickly highlight’s Slough’s shortcomings. It appears to be a land of culture devoid, intellectually a vacuum. Ironically, Slough writer’s group doesn’t even meet in Slough :)

    Interestingly, there’s a plan to spent millions redeveloping the hideously depressing grey monolith of a town-centre (which, if you were to film Life on Mars here, would have been incredibly easy, because great chunks of it still live in 1972 (I actually mean to go down and take a picture of me in 70’s garb with Brick, because it would actually be very hard to tell which decade it was really taken in)), which leads me to wonder – they do seem to want to build a new, whacking great library (somehow appropriate given that Amazon UK is based in Slough, a town which is also devoid of decent bookshops), and maybe there’ll be some opportunity for quirky little shops, and theatre spaces to be incorporated. But I suspect that it’ll be a standard monument to capitalism.

    Anyhow, so enough about Slough. We left the town yesterday and headed up to Oxford, I somehow thought Oxford was somewhat closer than it actually is. It’s really about an hour away, not a bit over half an hour as my brain lied to me that it was. Having hunted down a parking space not dreadfully far from the city centre we wandered in; Kathryn succombing quickly to the shinyness of the place (and shops which’d not be out of place in her home city/town). oxford has interesting, strange little shops. I was, I must admit, in Awe (with a capital A) at finding a comic shop displaying Scott Pilgrim in the window.

    But, we were on a mission. My navigation of Oxford is not necessarily terribly good, especially having not been there for a few years (apart from direct to the JR when my dad was dying) so I had the directions on a post-it note and we weren’t going to veer off to explore. That and we weren’t as early as I’d hoped. We arrived at the venue (Far from the Madding Crowd) for Ha ha from the madding crowd, a night of performance poetry and comedy.

    Although Kathryn formally introduced me to performance poetry through the medium of the iTunes podcast, that was kind of putting a name to a face. Lurking in the battered collection of tapes (now MP3s, for the most part) was Henry Normal’s Encyclopaedia Poetica, which probably counts in some vein as performance poetry. However, when she put a name to a face she also reawakened a love of poetry inspired by my parents readings of fragments, my dad’s love of Betjeman, of… that bit of me that Kathryn reckons should have landed up in theatre.

    Anyhow, so I was loosely aware of performance poetry, but I’d never actually seen any performed live. I’ve been to plenty of stand up comedy in my life though (and a few comedic plays too), so anyhow, when I saw this oxfringe event, my heart went “whoop!”, thinking instantly of Kathryn and also of what a nice evening out it’d be for free. Noticing that it didn’t start until 9pm was somewhat of a pain (‘cos we’re normally hitting the sack around 10 these days with Kathryn rising so early for work). But we chatted and decided to go. And I’m really glad we did.

    I’m an awful reviewer, because I just am. The compere / presenter (Laura King) suffered somewhat from a lack of stage presence, which was a shame because some of her stuff was excellent. I don’t know if people were just there to see the people they were there to see (and therefore not interested in Laura), but I guess ‘cos I was there to see all people I’d never heard of before, well… Anyway, that aside I really enjoyed the whole thing (well, we headed off at half 10), I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t get to see Nishani Nijjar, the only female apart from the Laura King; she was due on stage and seemed to have disappeared, and so if she did appear it was after we’d left. I was a little concered at the beginning of Richard Soames routine – the stretch about alcoholics anonymous didn’t really make me laugh much; but he seemed to find his feet after a minute or two and turned out to be very funny.

    But my favourite of the night was definately the performance poet Danny Chivers. I’ve always had a thing for political comedy, and political performance poetry; well, it’s awesome. Especially when it expresses rants I have bubbling inside me much better than I ever could. Go, click on the world of evil that is that MySpace link above and hear what you missed :)

    Anyhow, we landed up back home at midnight, somewhat later than intended, having paused on the way back to go to G&D’s Ice Cream Cafe (specifically George and Delila’s) to grab me a coffee (for to help with staying awake on the drive back) and a cookie each. As a side point, the coffee was *excellent*, one of the very best Mocha’s I’ve had in a long, long time. Possibly since leaving Brizzle.

    I’m quite tempted (if Kathryn fancies and doesn’t mind helping with the Petrol) to head back to Things on the Wall on Saturday – giving Kathryn the dangerous chance to see Oxford in the day time…

    Anyhow, since it’s taken me over an hour to craft this entry (and I’ve spent the morning browsing) I really ought to get my act together and do something. I’ve finished the putting in of grout in the bathroom, it’s now ‘just’ polishing to do (and paint on a couple of things, like the door), and silicone sealing around the floor-skirting board / tile joins, and re-silicone sealing the shower again (because, for some evil bloody reason the silicone sealant just does *not* want to stick to the damn shower base).

  • Being bad

    I’m normally very good wandering around abandoned places, I don’t pinch no matter what I spot; although, to be fair, I’ve never spotted that much that I really wanted to take. And even when I did spot things, well, I like leaving things for others to find. That’s kind of part of it, but I took 3 things today from my random local abandonment photoshoot.

    Why?

    Well, see, I know that it won’t be abandoned that long, or it’s unlikely to be. And the owner wants to pull down the property and build more houses on the site. Given that the property’s been ‘cleared’ the few items left are likely to be crushed under the bulldozer; and given their poor condition unlikely to be saved even by the most caring of clearance people.

    Anyhow, bearing in mind I’ve lived here over a year you’d’ve thought I’d’ve managed to get all of 2 houses away to the abandoned one, but no. I finally got around there today, and despite the owner’s clearance of the property there’s much that’s of interest, and I’m terribly jealous – not only of their space, but of their workshops. Not that it’s safely salvable; it’s all pretty much woodworm feed.

    One thing that truly did surprise me, and I really want to see if there’s anything inside it is… there’s an Anderson shelter. Unfortunately, it seems that they chose to put a pile of compost in front of the door; which is desperately frustrating. I also found an old pyrene fire extinguisher. I know these aren’t pressurised and are therefore, presumably, moderately safe to keep around, so long as they stay sealed. I’ve had a quick look, but no luck so far, finding someone who can empty them (they contain Carbon TetraChloride, I think).

    Anyhow, pics are here.

  • Progression and tiredness

    So, there’s been some progress this morning. I’ve headed out and got rid of the 19″ behemouth of a monitor which I tried to freecycle away but wouldn’t disappear. It’s a shame, ‘cos it more-or-less worked, and probably with a bit of effort could have been got to work perfectly.

    But it’s been offered twice and finally I got sick of it and took it to the tip. I then headed to the post office where I found out that they’d redelivered the package I’d gone to collect, hence why I couldn’t work out what it was. When I got home I searched through the bin, found the packaging and there it is, clear as day, the correct reference number. Why they put ‘come and collect’ on the card when they’ll reattempt delivery I’m not entirely sure. But hey. It was a pretty day and quite pleasant. Then I headed to Maplin, depressing remains of the shop that it is, and bought myself a set of Star drive / Torx drivers; then to B&Q to get a palm sander; then to the chemist (Ack! Prescription charges have gone up again!), and got my tablets (yay for anti-allergy pills!).

    And then my good mood was shattered because I got home and found the unemptied bin deposited in front of my drive. I’ve realised that the council object to taking actual rubbish away (DIY waste is apparently not appropriate for the tip, although I may endeavour to sling some there), nor for your bin, nor for anywhere else. Given that we produce so little of any other sort of waste I’m actually feeling quite resentful about the concept of paying tax for waste disposal.

    I had hoped to be here to pounce and see if I could convince them to empty the bin this once; but obviously I’ve missed my chance. I really need more rubble bags if I’m going to get rid of the last remnants of the building waste in the bin, but I forgot that I needed them when I was at B&Q. Forgot to get dust masks as well, which is annoying. But then, to be honest, my brain is struggling with being awake… 

  • First day off nights

    If there’s one failing both Kathryn and I have it’s Laundry. Neither of us is terribly good at getting laundry done before there’s a mound in the washing basket the size of 3 loads. And we’re also neither brilliant at doing laundry before it’s needed. This normally isn’t a problem; one of us will get around to it.

    Today though, I thought, I’ll change the sheets – we’ve both been saying it needs doing since the middle of the week; but while I’m on nights I can’t be arsed. I stripped off the old sheets, and fished round in the cupboard… And uh, we’ve not laundered any of the bed linen for so long that we’ve, uh, got none at all.

    So that’s the first job of today… (done :) ).

    Jobs I have planned for today are contact play.com about my mum’s ethernet adaptor which hasn’t been shipped 2 weeks after ordering (sorted: Cancelled the order and bought a different one from the USA since it appears that Apple are being slightly slow bringing it to the UK), installing OS X on the Shiny Mac, collecting a package from the post office and generally staying awake (I woke up at 4am, bloody sod it). I might do some grouting, and I might go get a palm sander and some little baby torx drivers to sort the Mac out.

    I’m still trying to work out what to do with the laptop. I wanted to install Gentoo on it, but the only X86 CD they do now is the minimal install CD, which is fuck-all use (to be blunt). I’m not in the mood to sit and play command line games, especially since my experience of WPA-PSK wireless under ubuntu’s live CD was a whole bundle of not-working at all.

    And spending a few days sorting it is not my idea of fun. But I’m sick of reinstalling windows on it.

    It needs reinstalling though, wireless is increasingly flakey, it’s slow and playing up loads in every respect. The mac awaits my attentions (and the Torx drivers), once that’s sorted I might retire this one… At least, until it can be the ‘kitchen music player and recipe finder’ or somesuch.

    No battery and a screen that’s disintegrating don’t make for a very long lived laptop… :-/

    I also need to take the carb apart on Brick, I think it’s sucked a bit of dirt in there (it did a fuel starvation thing on the way to work one night, didn’t do it at any point after, but before we go trecking round the country I’d like to check it’s not going to do it again).

    Oh, and some tidying and cleaning’d probably not go amiss.

    Right, time to go find my watch :)

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  • Original Content

    Yes, today’s one of those rare days when I’m writing original content. I’ve been reading a fair bit lately (well, one book, but reading it quite a lot) and we’ve also been watching Men In Trees / The L Word / Father Ted and the odd episode of Pushing Daisys. I’ve been watching House and Yes Minister as well, which just shows how little work you can get done if you really try.

    I’ve been feeling though, the lack of creativity in my life. I don’t *mean* to watch TV when I come home, but quite often I’m just exhausted and sit down thinking ‘oh, I’ll just watch one show while I have some tea’ and the the exhaustedness which was following me home gets through the door and catches up with me. And that’s kind of it, I’m stuffed. There’s still plenty left to do around here, but we’re holding off on the kitchen until I’m less in debt. Plan is to tackle the two bedrooms which are (hopefully) just a touch of plaster and some paint. Somewhat less trauma than removing an entire concrete floor and having it relaid, a doorway bricked up, a new doorway opened and so on.

    But in the name of doing something nice for a change (instead of, for example, sitting around the house reading stuff on the internet, watching TV or reading – all of which are pleasant enough but one does need a break, and it’s nice to get out with my beloved) we headed in to London.

    The plan, such as it was, was to tackle some of the time-out treasure hunts, spend some time lurking in bookshops and get something to eat… 

    Kathryn had yet to see Foyles, and wanted to do so, and so after a nice little lunch in the Foyles Cafe we started our afternoon with a tour of Foyles. Yeah. See, we’re both slow in bookshops when they’re tiny. Foyles used to be the largest bookstore in the world; it’s probably still the largest in the UK. We entered the store around 2pm and left around 5, carrying only 2 books… The list of books we could have bought was huge; I could happily spend thousands of pounds there.

    Which would of course, be foolish. When would I have time to read that many books? But hey.

    It being slightly later than perhaps intended, we headed off to do the Literary treasure hunt. It wasn’t really a hunt, as such, in that they basically tell you exactly where what you’re looking for is, and what it is. And apart from a few slightly clunky bits of navigation, it worked well. It was, however, nice to see a bit of London that, well, I’ve not really seen since my childhood, despite being really very cold…

    We also ran into a couple of people doing the hunt themselves, although they were doing all 5 and we – in the end – only did one (it was bloody freezing).

    Having satisfied ourselves that CC&K would be open for desert we headed to Palm Court for dinner; supping on fine cocktails (well, one each) and eating fine food. Being rich would actually be quite handy.

    Finally, we finshed the day in CC&K, and headed home to bed.

    …then on Saturday we got a phone call in the morning – the wedding dress place we wanted to visit was open that morning – my mother was coming with the hope that we’d get to go visit it, and so we quickly made an appointment and headed in. It’s a weird experience being fitted for a dress. I’ve never been fitted for anything in my life, not by anyone else, and so being prodded and poked and squashed into a dress was quite a novel experience. But, the women there were great – they didn’t make us feel bad for not having much in the way of a budget; they let us try on loads of dresses, and my mum’s and their advice combined to get us two good possible combinations.

    Obviously we’re going to try some others too; but that first experience was important – it’s quite unnerving to be in your undies in front of lots of people you don’t know who’re pulling you into dresses… And in the end it was quite fun; and Kathryn looked truly stunning. Even I didn’t look too shabby :)

    We then had a chilled out day at home – sorting out music and french lessons for my mum and Parmita. Today’s been a chilly day; the snow falling steadily all mornind, but distressingly not settling even a little…. I’m hoping for more… but a peaceful day of paperwork and snuggling lies ahead.

  • Damn shops

    So, I need passport photos for the interview next week, in search of which I headed in to town. Well, technically I headed in to the bank and they said “oh, the nearest is the sainsburys”. So I went to the Sainsburys who informed me their photo machine was gone; and the nearest was a Chemist which I couldn’t be bothered to drive around looking for so I went into town (where, incidentally I now know of 4, maybe even 5 photo machines in a tiny tiny radius).

    Anyhow, having got my photos I thought, hell, I’m in town, I should pick up the secateurs (sp.) and a green-wood-saw so I can trim the Bay tree. Oh, and a new cafetier. Apparently single cup cafetiers are somewhat less in fashion than when I bought it because having toured a large variety of shops I was unable to locate one. Thankfully woolworths’ still had the same model I bought before – albeit a penny more expensive this time – and this one, oddly, doesn’t say “PYREX” in the little hole where it should. Still.

    Unfortunately, I didn’t find it until I’d stumbled unwittingly into Wilkinson’s. Wilkinsons, cheap as they are also have the advantage of being needlessly vague about where things are made (instead putting “Distributed by Wilkinsons, UK”, or similar on their packaging). This allows me to assume that they’re not items made by people living on slave-like wages in a dictatorship (unlike labels which proclaim certain countries I could name). Of course their *price* probably indicates otherwise, but my rare purchases from them ameliorate my feelings of guilt, at least slightly.

    Anyhow, I wandered in in search of the Cafetier and the gardening implements and was lucky to escape with just a toilet brush, toothbrush holder, shower organisy doojit and a toilet roll holder. I was awfully close to getting the cheap-but-adequate bathroom cabinet but was stopped by a sudden fit of sanity. Oh, and the garden bench which is almost certainly atrocious quality but looks pretty nifty.

    Anyhow, I’m off to do some garden tidying; and if the light holds I might do some very local abandonment.

    I am, incidentally, feeling brighter. A bit of in-my-head poetry writing and some getting out in the sunshine truly did help.

  • Jeeze 2008…

    2008 has, for several of my friends sucked an astonishing amount. And it’s been surprisingly challenging of late for me. My oldest friend lost his dad 2 years ago (I think) to the same cancer that claimed my dad. This year he lost his mum too; something which has been stuck in my head since. In the quiet moments I think about it; it makes it harder to concentrate on the good in my life.

    I’ve also had some hard stuff at work; including a post-cardiac-arrest where I felt more useless than a chocolate teapot. I’ve done my ILS – which in theory is meant to mean I can ‘lead’ a cardiac arrest – if no one else is there. But with the doctor in charge doing less than nothing myself and the other nurse there flailed – expecting leadership and finding none. Thankfully an anesthetist took over, lead the care and once we were up and running it went much better. Well, sort-of. The whole thing was just…well, it left me feeling that I need to know more. My problem is that between the house and work I’m pretty much exhausted. I don’t feel like learning at home because I’m too tired.

    I know that’s a feeble excuse. But I mean it; it’s a hard old slog. A few days ago I was officially the only nurse doing ‘treatments’ – that means that everyone who needed a treatment in the clinic or who needed sutures or dressings had to have them done by me. About half way through the day when the treatments box was full staff from other areas were freed up to help. In the end it wasn’t that stressful because I just declared a ‘fuck-it’ and carried on at my own pace. I didn’t even think about the 4 hour target except to order the order of treatments. No breaches, though, which would have made the morning way more stressful (mostly because we had lots of clinic patients and not too many sutures until people were able to help).

    I am also still a little on the stressed side about money. I know that Rebecca’s going to be ‘ready’ soon; and that’s going to be, well, expensive. I need to send my letter to Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre, but I don’t see them sending me a refund of any sort. I see a fight involving the small claims court.

    I’m quite fed up about it though.

    In other news, I’ve finally finished the tiling in the bathroom. I’d been putting it off because I had a suspicion that it’d be a pig of a job and… it was, somewhat. The boxing is just slightly too big and I’d made it impossible to make all the joints line up because I’m some kind of mad person who likes to cause herself pain. And today, all things being equal there’ll be some grouting and some kitchen stuff done.

    And lo, the house moves on.

  • So not quite as posty as I thought then

    I’m surprised by my restraint, although until yesterday I’d not fixed either of the laptops and the dead G5 continued to vex me, so posting would have had to be done via Kathryn’s laptop or by the TV-Hackintosh. Yesterday I finally got around to stripping down the Dell laptop, it was broken in rather a lot of places; the screen’s casing’s disintegrating, the connectors seem to be working loose; but thankfully the power-supply connector hadn’t broken. Despite feeling crunchy and loose, it’s actually the cable that had died and pulling one of the spare powerbricks with a new cable from the attic had it working again. Still no battery though.

    And the screen, while clear and sharp still, has a serious flicker issue which isn’t related to the connector on the board. So rather than being back with a laptop that I can close and open at will, I’m still with one that has to stay in a fairly fixed position. And the screen casing’s cracked around all the screws that hold it together; so moving the screen without proper care is prone to making the screen casing come apart. Still, it’s all araldite-and-wire’d back into some sembalance of a structure. It’s nice to be able to pick it up without the whole thing flexing disconcertingly.

    I’ve stripped the hard-drives out of the G5 and will give the company who repaired it a ring as soon as they’re open; see if I can’t get that back up there to be looked at again. I am concerned though as to why the supplies packed up again. I’m switching things around though, it’s no longer going to be the video server; which will, frustratingly, make the machine in the lounge somewhat noiser, but should mean no more network streaming issues.

    As for the house (renovation photo set number 19), well, I spent thursday generating as much dust as it’s humanly possible to create, but this time I sealed the kitchen off from the rest of the house and channelled away with my wall chaser. While it is an ace tool, it’s also the most manky job in all of christendom. On the plus side I’ve got two electrical boxes to sink and then we can put the wiring where it should be. I removed all the wiring from the immersion heater – all the way back to the fuse box, in the end. The distressing thing is this house’s wiring is a mess, there’s no proper ring main to speak of, there’s just little pseudo-rings scattered around and linked by a big junction box (hidden) and spurs running here, there and everywhere. I could, were it not for the Part P regulations tidy it all up. Chopping some chunks out, drilling some new holes, etc, and I’d have a downstairs ring and an upstairs ring. But because I’d then have to call in an electrician to check over all the work I’d done; and to re-do wiring in the kitchen requires (‘cos of Part P) even more in the way of work that’s nice-but-not-required (as far as I’m concerned, and the electrician I spoke to agrees :) ) that I’m better off leaving it all alone and just putting new sockets on the front so it all *looks* nice.

    Incidentally, while pulling down the wall, I came across a Daily Mirror from 1963. Sadly it’d suffered from being right near the filler pipe from the cistern and was disintegrating pretty badly. Also, whoever put it in there then decided to use cement, not plaster, which probably didn’t help it any and made it somewhat hard to separate from the wall and from the huge clump of concrete. There’re some shots of it in my newly created ‘Renovation Finds’ photo set.

    Never mind.

    In other news (at least not house related news), I broke my Cafetier today. I’m quite distressed by this, being a coffee lover. I have a filter maker, but that makes a minimum of 2 cups, and I’ve got a little ‘filter in a cup’ which is just dandy, but I can’t just sit on the couch and have that. I have to make it then bring it in. So a new cafetier will have to be sought.

    I rather liked the one I had :-/

    And in other, other news. I went up to JLH on Saturday to see, well, what remains of Rebecca. It’s pretty distressing still, the car’s visibly got lots of work to go – and seeing what Charles Ware had done; panels (structural ones) that are meant to meet other panels and fall about an inch short? The boot floor (the *new* boot floor) was rusted through because they’d not protected it with paint… It’s another 2grand just to put right the mess they’ve made on that side.

    So, anyway. i’ve got an interview with the unnamed nursing agency in 2 weeks, so I need to dig out all the relevant paperwork for that today too. In addition to working a long day and a late. And hopefully heading towards reducing that debt again :-)

    And one thing I’ve not discussed is the Wedding; which I really should, but which warrants a whole post by itself (without my finger hurting each time I press a key (walls, slipping claw hammers and fingers don’t mix, incidentally). But, if any of you out there know a good seamstress… I’m going to talk to a colleage at work, but more options is always better than less if you ask me. We were thinking about doing a sort of gift-wedding; because we *have* everything (well, everything we *need*). Traditionally, marriage was move-in-together-start-a-new-home; but for us, we’ve got a home, we’ve got a complete dinner service, we’ve got tables, chairs, toasters, ovens, bed-linen, furniture, glasses, a fridge, a washing machine, a blender… We considered the possibility that instead people could gift us bits of the wedding (or something towards them), but we came to the conclusion (having discussed it with people) that this was more odd than normal, possibly even ‘too odd’. So instead we’re pulling in friends who can do things (or who know people who can do things) to keep costs to something we might be able to afford this lifetime.

    So; on that note, if you know anyone who’s a seamstress, that’d be handy, and if you’d like to do something for the wedding, shout – or we won’t know :)