Mostly lemon based

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  • Morning update (‘cos you need more than one in a day)

    So, plan for the morning was:

    Ring BeThere and order the new ADSL
    Collect car, collect packages, buy more adhesive, paint stripper, stanley blades.
    Drop off car

    And y’know what, it’s all been done (well, sorta. I rang BT to get my MAC Code, which they can’t actually produce at the moment; I await a call back with the same expectation as I have that the world will freeze over tomorrow). I tested the adhesive I’d got on the wood, and no, it still won’t bloody stick; so I’ve got a different brand of adhesive which, according to the man in the tile shop will adhere tiles to wood. I collected Kathryn’s prezzie and my MP3 player (but the batteries are flat and it’s not quite clever enough to charge from the USB cable, which is slightly distressing). I then dropped off the car, and walked back pausing only to pick up more Nitromors (mmm, volatile organic compounds) and stanley blades (I’ll actually use up the old ones stripping paint now I’ve got some replacements!). I’ve found who I think will be our VoIP provider – mostly because they offer in their basic price plan free and unlimited UK and International calls (to certain countries). Given that we’ve a penchant for calling Kathryn’s family in the US then that’s quite handy.I just have to get everyone I know to keep national geographic numbers. Or join the same company for VoIP ;)

    And in other news… I’m intrigued by this. If only I could find a trailer for it… It’s still fracking cold here, incidentally. My feet are wondering how it’s got to be so cold…

    Annnyhow. Off I go, it’s tiling time now I’m fed and watered.

     

     

     

  • Brrr.

    It’s chilly and foggy here today, much with the chilly and much with the foggy. Theoretically I get to collect Brick from the motor engineer today; sadly the oil leak persists; it’s not a failed seal of any sort. The sump (which for those not in the know is the reservoir for oil) has a crack in it, apparently. How it gained this crack I don’t know, although I have a sneaking suspicion that it had a crack before I bought it that had been sealed using glue, or pixie dust, because it started leaking pretty badly as soon as it was home. Unfortunately despite people fairly frequently chucking entire engines, without getting a whole and entire engine (which seems ‘excessive’ to me) I can’t easily lay my hands on a sump. People’ve suggested waiting ’til I go to sort out the welding and then have the engine out / sump off / clean / weld / replace. But there’s a fair amount of welding, and it’s leaking oil at a frantic rate of knots, which makes me unhappy.

    Another thing which makes me a little unhappy is this. See, I want to run all my vehicles on E85. I can’t afford an (adequate) EV conversion, I can’t do biodiesel, and I can’t not commute to work. Even working in the hospital in the town where I live is far enough that I’d have to commute by car; so I’d be stuffed anyhow. So Morrisons starting to sell E85 is great, except that the nearest station is so far from me that I’d use half a tank getting there and back, and given that I’d have to adjust the timing and possibly the mixture once I’d filled up with E-85 I’d be a bit stuffed. Come on guys (specifically, Esso, Jet, Tesco and Murco ‘cos they’re the ones I actually go near every week), let’s have E85 at all the stations, then I can have a selection of much cleaner vehicles. Infact, they’d be heading for carbon neutral, which would rock. Well, theoretically at least. When E85 production methods improve there’s a good chance for carbon neutrality.

    Anyhow, so I had a really fantastic weekend. Which is odd, because I spent the second half of it (i.e. most of Sunday) tiling. I’m 3/4ths done in the shower cubicle though, I’d be tiling now before heading off to collect brick were it not, well, too early for diamond-saw noises. I misjudged the remaining number of tiles though. I thought I was down to about 200, but I’d neglected the ones that went in the spare room to use as a table when we had lauril staying (ah, the magic of a throw). At any rate, I don’t know if the tiles are adhereing to the wood yet (or if they need *another* coat of paint) – if they are then I can commence that final section of tiling and the plan that we should be done and dusted by the end of the week could actually be true. I am not looking forward to grouting though. Kathryn’s done a wall and a half, and between us we should get the rest done without too much pain. But it’s still the most tedious thing in the world.

    So, what else did I get up to this weekend; well, mostly I just spent time with Kathryn – which is a pleasure unsurpassed in my book. We went for a little wander down to what we thought was an abandoned abbey, but turned out to be an active abbey, and met a nun in purple. Apparently they’re an Augustinian community; at any rate, the nun in question seemed nice :)

    On the way back we stopped to disassemble a skip full of parts of an alarm. A shop’d been stripped out and there was a large amount of depressingly useful wood there, all of it being dumped, and also a significant quantity of electronics. It’s always rather sad, I feel, when people strip out shops throwing away stuff that’s potentially useful. We came away with two small plastic FixSystem bins (of which there are some more at my mum’s house, somewhere (little plastic bins you put on the wall to store things in)), and some small piece of the alarm system. Then we headed home stopping at the local supermarket for provisions, ‘cos Brick not being here, and us living where we do means that shopping on foot would be an activity unsupassed in it’s tediousness.

    Sunday was tiling day, although come the evening I took Kathryn’s advice and actually had a break. I’d been tiling pretty much solidly from 1130 to 1700, which to be fair got 100 tiles on the wall, but did take it’s toll on me. So, today I collect Kathryn’s Xmas Prezzie which handily has arrived same time as my new nipod. This time I actually got a branded one though, the nipod’s awful interface, and the fact that they don’t show any shots of the interfaces on the adverts put me off getting another – although it was very small and cute.

    And it did play video.

    This one however is just a music player, and possibly not quite so robust being hard disk based (like the ipod) but hey, we’ll see. Anyhow, shower, phone BeThere and then head off to collect the car, if it’s ready (it bloody ought to be since they opted not to take the engine out and just to switch it to unleaded; I can do a head swap on an A+ in a few hours…. and I’m paying them for a few hours work). Anyhow, enough whining.

    Hi ho, Hi ho, it’s off to tile I go…

     

     

  • Meh

    So, Brick’s at the engine place, who’ve now said that they won’t do the crankshaft oil seal (I suspect that they wanted lots more money to do that), so if Brick’s leaking from there then I’m stuck. He thought that the seal was replaceable from the back, but apparently he’s remembered now that you have to take the crankshaft off to do that seal (which I knew, which is why I was impressed with the quote!); and he doesn’t fancy that. I debated asking him how much he’d want, but I don’t really want to spend that sort of money on the engine unless it’s going for a full recondition.

    And I’m not going to do that…

    So I walked back, healthy soul that I am; stopping briefly at B&Q. The oil leak related puddle outside the house has been attacked with driveway cleaner, and I’m now waiting to see how improved it is (not very, I suspect). There’s still a lot more driveway cleaner left, so I suspect I’ll be having a go at the oil every few days for a while. It was somewhat like skating though, the road’s really slippery outside. So that brings up my total of ‘things I’ve cleaned this week’ to the bathroom, the road, the inside of the car (a little). It’s not exactly house-work, but hey.

    I also had a look at that tyre and now have formed a hypothesis about what happened: got a nail (or somesuch) in the tyre; this gave me a slow puncture. Hence the tyre was a bit but not completely flat when I left work. Hence the slightly squiffy but not awful handling. Having got to the motorway, the increased speed / heat / pressure managed to force whatever it was back out (providing the bang of something hitting the underside of the car) and the tyre rapidly deflated.

    Which all adds up to me needing a new tyre.

    Pooh.

    Anyway, I must now finish my tea and then set to on the tiling.

  • Bugger

    So, last night I stayed late. A patient arrived at ‘just the wrong moment’ (as they are wont to do, not that I minded, he was soooo cute (a baby, incidentally, before you think I’ve gone odd)); so I ended up leaving about 20 minutes late. When I got to Brick I was knackered, dead on my feet as it were, so when the car handled a little oddly I presumed I’d just run through my patch of oil from the leaking engine. It settled down fine and I was happily trundling down the motorway when suddenly I heard a *BANG*, presuming I’d hit a bit of debris I scanned the road hard checking for more…

    …and then things went a bit weavey. Not terribly so, but not right… unfortuntely I was next to a set of roadworks with concrete barriers…

    …having made it past them with the car definately handlying a little strangely, I pulled over and hopped out. The rear nearside tyre was flat, completely dead flat. I don’t know if it came off the rim, or has a puncture… but it wasn’t right. It was also dark, and cold, and I’ve no torch in Brick. So I stood there with my Neuro obs torch trying to get my pint-pump jack under the car. It does fine on Rebecca, but on Brick there’s no where to put it. Eventually, cursing, I got back in Brick (still idling) and called the RAC. Thankfully, being as I was woman-alone parked on unlit-motorway next to woodland, they did the ‘urgent assist’ and I got help within 30 minutes.

    Less fortunately I stopped the engine just before he arrived and Brick let-go his coolant again. He arrived to find the car suffused in a gentle glow from self-produced mist. I felt a right twit having to have my tyre changed for me; but I had a nice chat with the guy who seemed deeply concerned about brick’s coolant leak. The tyre on the car is a rather dubious one, it’s got enough tread but it’s more than 10 years old. In fact, I suspect it dates from when the car was last in regular use.

    So on the way to the engine place, I shall be stopping to get two new tyres.

    Bah.

    Still, it could have been a lot nastier….

  • With thanks to Royal Mail

    So, in the past few months the Royal Mail appear to have consumed around 30 quid of my stuff. A CD I’ve been waiting months for, and a tee-shirt I’ve been waiting rather less long for remain MIA. This high quality service is something I’ve come to expect, but it does make me start to worry about sending anything by mail. This whine came to you courtesy of me deciding to listen to the MP3s for the CD that I’ve not got. It sounds awesome, even on my crappy laptop speakers (one of which sometimes gets bored).

    I thought I might post something about work; basically as time filler because it’s so fracking cold here this morning (I feel very sorry for my poor beloved who was up at 5 freezing her arse off); and I’m waiting hopefully for the bathroom to heat up. ‘cos I’m going to work ‘early’ I’m thinking I can’t be bothered to tile; but I may change my mind when I’ve had my shower… Yesterday I made it as far as the faux wall which makes up one end of the shower cubicle. I’ve got another few tiles to go on the real wall (I only did about half height); and then I should be able to, well, tile the shower. I also did a ‘test’ tile on the painted wood, so we’ll see how that’s stuck. If that’s okay I can tile that; which can then be grouted, and the bath can go up against the wall and be finally locked into position. I can see the bathroom being finished in a few days. It’s going to be tedious and seriously hard work, but it’s possible.

    So, work. I said before I’m settling in; which is definately true. Most people are fairly used to the fact that I talk to myself a not insignificant amount. It’s more that I think aloud almost continuously if I’m not “thinking” about being quiet. I would ascribe this to working from home, and my childhood spent mostly on my own. I got used to my voice being the main one that I’d hear; and without hearing it I’d not hear anything. I’m unlikely to stop talking to myself, even though one of the returning-to-work people I’ve met finds it a little, well, odd. Some people seem to be getting my sense of humour more, and I’m more and more comfortable joking with people.

    But with nearly 100 people working with, there are still days I’m with people who have barely worked with me before, and those days can be a little more tiring.

    Despite that number of people working there; there are few days where we’re not short staffed, and those days are just way more tiring. Even yesterday when we were theoretically fully staffed in Majors, because of confusion when we started we never got on top of the influx. That and there were almost always one or two people queueing. I did have two good moments though; there was getting a new doctor I’d not met to see a patient who I was concerned about; there’s an art to getting doctors to see people and I think it’s the fact that I’m now much less fazed by sick people that does it. I just say things like ‘well, she’s a little blue around the edges’… and they get the impression that I know what I’m talking about :)

    Which is quite nice, previously it’s been a bit of a struggle. That and I got blood (not, sadly, enough, because she yanked her hand away) from a woman with the worlds tiniest wobblyest veins. I more and more have a go at the hard people, because if I don’t do the hard ones, then I’ll never be any good at them. And I succeeded, at least more or less. I didn’t get the Biochem (which she really did need) – but it took a Dr 4 attempts to get the biochem.

    Basically, that’s my update. Incredibly I’m not that tired today; but I don’t have a great deal of enthusiasm for the whole sitting in the cold bath and showering with the feeblespray.

    I’m also suffering temptation to replace my stolen MP3 player. I’ve got a little bored of my CD collection in the car, and I miss having the nice smallness that was my nipod. Meh.

  • What to say?

    Well, I felt like I should do an update; in fact, I’ve been positively intending to do an update for several days now. The only problem is I don’t really know what to say…

    I’ve been working, for the most part. Work continues to produce a strange bounty consisting of a mixture of really sick people who desperately need to be there, and after a day of work you come home and though you may be exhausted beyond words and tired beyond anything you can imagine, you know (vaguely and somewhere in your heart) that you helped people. And some days you just get endless dross; “I’ve stubbed my toe and it hurts”, and “i’ve had this niggley ache for 5 months and I saw the A&E sign and I thought, you know what, I should get that checked”.

    I’ve actually been tempted to film a snarky ‘Do you really need to visit’ advert, in the vein of the old war time ‘do you need to travel’ posters. Of course, for every tale there is something which you need to watch out for. We had someone in who’d had moderate (not severe) chest pain for some time – and it appears they really were ill (to be fair, I assumed she actually was, she seemed sensible).

    Today was not really a latter or a former day, but it wasn’t a very impressively doing things day. I kinda limped through my day at work, not achieving a great deal, indeed, disturbingly when I left the situation was much as it was when I arrived. Still, I tried my best.

    Things in the house continue to be continuing. The bathroom now looks like a bathroom. White tiles adorn most of the walls, I can’t remember where I was at when I last posted; nor can I be bothered to check, but now there’s basically about a metre, and the entire of the shower stall to do. And that’s it. I’ll be done with tiling, until we do the kitchen. Of course; we’ll be tiling a lot less of the kitchen!

    Kathryn’s drawn up some neat sketches for the back bedroom come office, which is cool. I must admit though, the two weeks off (approaching) are going to be much appreciated by me. I’m needing a break from work; my sympathy levels need restocking, and my patience is all but exhausted. But they’ll also be much appreciated for another reason. Hopefully (and I know I’ve said this many times), but really; hopefully we can get the central heating in. And the bathroom finished to the extent of actually having a proper shower. I ache so much and so often, and the idea of being able to come home and have a hot bath or a hot shower without having to wait hours, and without having to crouch. Lord it seems like such a luxury. I guess it *is* such a luxury.

    Also, to have a reduced cost of heating would be really rather nice. Anyhow, there are pictures of the current state of play in the bathroom. They are, in fact, here. Complete with snarky comments and tags, as usual.

    So, anyway, I promised a picture of us, and that is here:

    I note that flickr have been Yahoo!’d , I’m not entirely happy about that; indeed, I’m debating whether to renew my pro account. For I love Flickr, but Yahoo just drive me fracking nuts. Every experience I’ve ever had with their techincal support has lead me to want to rip the cables out from all Yahoo’s connections to the internet and ban them from ever touching a computer of ever sort ever again. Yahoo messenger is awful, Yahoo groups ruined a great e-groups system and Yahoo’s search has remained awful since the very first day that they set it up. Oh, and they associated themselves with BT; and BT to me is the kiss of the dead. Inviting BT into your home is like having a Zombie come to stay. Sure, it’s a talking point, but the shambolic mess is going to piss you off eventually.

    Anyhow, enough ranting. (Hah)

    So I’m relaxing and spending my evening attempting to increase the ratio of working to not working computers. Currently it stands at 0:4 (None fully functional, 4 working to some extent). The Mac is going back to 10.4.6, which worked. 10.4.10 and 10.4.9 are determined that the network card doesn’t work. A frustrating problem. Of course, all this will likely be immaterial when the real-mac arrives, and this machine is relegated to being a video editor.

    Technically it’s only firefox that doesn’t work on the laptop; but I daren’t fiddle, ‘cos the laptop’s the only machine that’s ‘working’ to any extent. Although the crack in the case continues to widen. And I can’t say I’ve got any great ideas for fixing it. But so long it works, fiddling with it is kinda out of the window.

    At least the Mac is now network capable… :) Ra.

  • Anyone used Be?

    Was considering Be Broadband – anyone got any experiences?

  • Progress (at least in some areas)

    So, I’ve had a to-do list on the computer for a while; I’d like to imagine that I was getting through it at great speed, but I’m not. Indeed it’s been the same list for most of the week. Or at least modifed versions. See, sadly as I’ve crossed off items from the to-do list I’ve found new things to put on it; at least, until today, when I found out just how dead the laptop battery really is. I accidentally unplugged my laptop and about 15 minutes later it was dead. Dead as in died without even flashing up the low battery warning. Feh.

    Anyhow, I’ve been plodding through it. Not with a great deal of success, to be brutally honest. But there we go.

    I had stuff to write about when I started writing this yesterday; but I’ve largely forgotten it. Since Kathryn asked about the ‘Things I want page‘ so I’ve updated that. I’m sure I had more of a reason for posting. The past week’s been really quite crappy; I mean, I’ve enjoyed it in some senses of the word but it has been incredibly hard work – and to be honest a lot of patients haven’t got the care that they deserved. Some have got rather more than they deserved too; to be honest. I think my judgement’s been off as I’ve been tired.

    For some reason our poor little department has been flooded with patients, and pretty much every day has been full and really, really hard work. I have a faint feeling there was one nice shift. But I can’t really recall it. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy my job, I just sometimes feel that it’s a bit like bailing out a rowboat using a sieve.

    Anyhow, so this week has been a bit frustrating. Brick’s starting problems have returned. I’m going to have a clean of the relevant connector and maybe try measuring the voltage while waving the cable around and see if it suddenly drops to 0 or somesuch. But even applying the jumpleads doesn’t always seem to make it work, which was my trick last time around.

    I finally rang Virgin to find out about the phone, and it’s a no. The street is cabled, just not as far as our house; I did actually put ourselves on the ‘come look and call me if you’ll cable it’, but I doubt it’s worth the hastle for them. There’s only 6 or so houses (possibly as many as 10) that are on the street that aren’t cabled, and most of ’em have Sky. So it looks like I’ll have to trawl through the broadband suppliers and find a ‘good’ one. BT seem to have given up offering me things to try and convince me to stay with their crappitude.

    I’ve done more tiling; Kathryn did some grouting too, so there’s a section that’s more or less finished. But there’s still a lot of tiling to do. But one wall is done bar the wood at the bottom; which needs different adhesive. And the wall the toilet’s on is similarly done. The one with the radiator on is done bar 6 tiles. When I’ve put those last 6 on I’ll start cleaning up the radiator; because once the radiator’s on then we’re very close to calling in the gas engineer. It’s getting fracking cold here now, cold enough that the fire’s starting to be slow to warm the lounge and that it’s cool in the bedroom. So I guess the fact that we’re now not going to Italy is actually quite handy because a solid week of work should see the bathroom finished; and then the happy chappy who is my gas engineer can come and hopefully stop us freezing to death. I’m actually tempted, if I can, to connect up the lounge radiator too. That would be positively spiffy, but we’ll just have to see how we go.

    I’ve also finally got around to filling in the NHSP forms, so I now need a signature from my manager and some lovely photos of me, oh and some photocopies of my passport and stuff. Then I’ll be able to earn the extra cashes required for…

    …the Minor. I’ve also finally got around to ringing JLH – and Rebecca will be heading up there towards the end of November, beginning of December. She’ll be fitting in around other work; and it’s quite terrifying how much she’s going to cost. It’s a big chunk of the original restoration costs. I’ll also be adding recovery to my breakdown cover before we try running up there because she’ll now have not been run for just shy of a year, and is *not * a well bunny. If we decide we’ve had enough on the way up there, then we can stop and call breakdown then.

    Poor old Cherry Red’s been doing the run to and from work; she’s still just as sick as she has been for a long time, with a top speed of about 80km/h to maybe 100 km/h. She’s next on the list, and will have to get taken down to London at some point. I keep thinking about what could be causing it but I suspect without stripping it down I’m not going to find out. She still leaks two-stroke (which I need to get some more of from somewhere – and not the local bike shop who I was very unimpressed with). It’s getting bloody cold though, riding the bike. And my bike gear’s beginning to show it’s age (even more!) – the zipper’s starting to come apart on the jacket. I may have to make a run down to Bristol (since I want to head down and see friends anyhow) to my favourite bike shop and see what they’ve got on offer :)

    Yes, so.

    (And now, thanks to e-bay, I have oil. Ra).

    So, last night we went out to the A&E and Paramedics’ Halloween party (yes, as many people pointed out to us on the way there, Halloween is not for a while yet) – with Kathryn’s help I went as a Witch and she as my familiar :) Despite my shyness I did actually talk to a few people although I didn’t do a great deal of socialising. We also screwed up travelling there; I forgot how crap Firstbus are and we tried to get a bus to the station. Obviously at obscure times like Saturday night, at say 1900ish, you need busses no more frequently than hourly (oh, and let’s make the times the bus run completely unrelated to the online time table). In the end, despite my ridiculous heels we decided to walk there, which would’ve been fine, apart from the fact that my cheap-arse boots had a staple come through the sole while walking, and the balls of my feet feel like they’re working up to revealing some blisters of significant size. I had a good time though, and we headed home after midnight. I may share the picture of us; when I feel enthused enough to put it on the laptop :)

    We had a very relaxed day today though; it’s really nice just to spend a day relaxing, I’ve not touched the house all day, I’ve not dealt with the E-mail to JLH, although I may ring this chap about the Enfield…. and JP about the Enfield also. And that, that is my update :)

  • Retraction

    So, I thought that it was the cable at fault; I now retract my pseudo modern car parts are rubbish rant (although it stands as a general comment) because it turns out that the idiot who owned my car before me (s/idiot/cunning git) failed to put part of the clutch cable mechanism back; when I replaced the clutch I didn’t realise it was missing and so put it back the way it was. It now appears that all of the strain from the clutch has been going onto the pedal box and has snapped part of it off. With some difficulty I managed to sort-of-fix it. It works now, and hopefully should stay working.

    I couldn’t see why the brakes were having issues though, so he’ll have to go to the garage for definate.

    I did however put the cover back in the engine bay so that fumes are less inclined to come join me in the passenger cabin, which was a positive.

    And then I had this great idea; you know those great ideas you get? Well, I thought I’d fix the broken window winder. A while back the window in the passenger side decided it was not going to shut properly; or indeed open properly, or do anything very much. So I whipped the cover off and had a bit of a looksie. Of course, it became apparent part way through this process that neither could I see well enough, nor could I find anything that felt wrong and then I had my second great idea of the morning. I’ll put the new door card in while I’m here. So I got it, and while fitting it managed to unhook part of the door lock. Having spent about 10 minutes cursing I worked out how to put it back together, and discovered the new door panels are *exactly the same* apart from one teensy tiny difference. The door handles are subtly smaller and don’t actually operate the door lock on brick. Having cursed a little to myself I then removed the door panel again and refitted the original one. During which time I again dislodged that fracking bit of door lock mechanism.

    Finally I got it all back together and although I can now say the clutch works, and the fan sucks in air rather than engine fumes, the door lock on the passenger side now only locks with a key, or from the inside. You can’t do the button-down-hold-door-handle-and-slam thing. And the window winder still doesn’t work. Gaaaah.

    Just to round it all off, while I was posting this the laptop’s battery demonstrated that it is, indeed, a bit fubar. ISTR reading that this laptop does have problems with killing batteries fairly quickly, and it was a cheap battery. But still. Disconcertingly, having stopped and died stone dead, the battery now states it’s fully charged. *sigh*

  • And winter commeth

    It’s starting to get cold outside, and the ‘heating’ such as it is is something I’m becoming increasingly fond of. The gas fire in the lounge is really quite nice of an evening, and curling up beside Kathryn ‘n reading or watching telly, or a film is about the nicest way to pass an evening. But, there is one thing that goes with the coming of winter…

    …car problems.

    Brick seems to have heard the call of the winter somewhat early and has had a little bit of a quirk with his brakes for the last few weeks. That is, namely, that pressing them leads to smooth application of the brakes until about half way down when the brake pedal will sink about a quarter of an inch with very little effort and the brakes will come on incredibly hard. It seemed that flicking the brake pedal upward (it would stick slightly down) would remove this tendancy, but it seems to be getting worse and worse at a rate which means I’ll have to fix it rather than wait for the service. I’d been intending to do that this week but it’d got lost under the battle to get the radiators in (2 out of 3, the third needs stripping and painting before it can be fitted), then all the heating-plumbing is done upstairs. It’s just fitting taps ‘n the shower mixer now for the other plumbing. Mmm.

    But this morning we got the ‘won’t start’ quirk back. Fortunately I recognised it quickly, but I’m now at a loss as to what’s causing it. The voltage seems correct at the coil, so the resistor clearly is working correctly… bypassing everything does work, but it’s a touch tedious. And the coup de gras today; a while ago the clutch-end of the clutch cable disappeared through the plate into which it is mounted. For reasons best known to themselves the cable appears to be slightly smaller than the original and the hole into which it is meant to rest is big enough that it goes ‘whoosh’, straight through. My lovely local garage sorted this by sticking a nut on the end of the cable so it can’t go through the hole. As if to torment me, today as I left the railway station having dropped of my beloved, the other end of the cable went *chunk* though the top of the firewall and approached the pedal. Fortunately, it still had enough length in it to work, but it remains irritating.

    Far be it from me to suggest that this cable is not correctly manufactured and to utter a rant about the quality of modern parts. It would never occur to me even to consider suggesting such a thing, but now I have to disassemble the clutch cable mechanism and see if I can persuade the bloody thing to go back through the hole and sit, correctly, on the correct side of the firewall. I’m meant to be tiling, but I’m just steeling myself for a cold day outside covered in oil. Whether oil is worse than tile glue is something you may debate (yes, is my opinion incidentally), but it’s not something which makes me happy. Especially when I’ve forked out the first 50 of around 150 – 200 quid to have brick’s engine converted to unleaded.