I decide to chip in

Our new bathroom, as you will have seen, is painted blue. But not as blue as the air was in there this morning.

The bathroom guys returned around 8.30 to collect the glass, and fix one or two snaggings (like the bath taps being plumbed the wrong way round), paint that annoying piece of skirting board down by the toilet where the original pipe was, connect up the basin, put the door back on, and also to collect all their tools and sweep up. We all still hope the glass can be cut to size, but as it's toughened glass there's a chance that it will shatter while being cut. I don't know what we'll do then. We can't send it back now the package has been opened, and a replacement would be another £495. I think we've decided to worry about it if we need to.

After the men left, Nikki noticed the door handle was loose. I fetched my screwdriver. The handle is one of those where the bar is square on one side and threaded on the other. I tightened the knob on the square side, loosened the grub screw on the threaded side and spun the outer knob closer to the door so the handle didn't rattle. As I was retightening the grub screw, the screwdriver slipped, fell from my hand and landed on the tiled floor. Blade downwards. A small chip of ceramic flew up from beneath it, leaving a cream scar beneath an otherwise pristine grey surface.

I was speechless for a full minute, my head in my hands, collapsed disbelievingly against the wall. Our lovely new bathroom, not yet even completely finished. Now irretrievably marred by my own clumsy hand. Since the tile upon which the screwdriver landed - and by the way if it had fallen the other way up, only the rubber handle would have hit the floor - is right in the doorway, the chip stands out like a sore thumb whenever we walk in or out, and especially when sitting on the toilet.

It remains to be seen whether the tile can be replaced without damaging any others, or disturbing the underfloor heating which we haven't even had chance to switch on yet.

Meanwhile we're off to the Chorlton Players after-show party. There are sorrows to be drowned.

Bathroom refit: Day 10

So this is it! The last day of the bathroom refit has arrived and the guys will be coming to grout, and to fit ALL the "furniture" (as the professionals call it). As luck would have it, I'd been called down to London again for another meeting (don't worry - this one did actually take place), so I wasn't there to see the magic unfold. But Nikki, who had to take another day's leave to oversee proceedings, was.

All day long I felt a frisson of excitement. Finally we would have a working loo back upstairs, so I would no longer need to take the cold and lonely trudge downstairs in the early hours to find relief. I pictured myself getting home from the long, hot, tiring and tiresome train journey, flinging off my clothes and stepping into our fabulous new shower, the first time I'd been able to do that in nearly six months.

About midday, I had a text from Nikki. A problem with the shower door. It was too big.

This is the same shower door that has been lying on its side, propped up in its packaging against the radiator in our hallway for almost two weeks. Since, in fact, the day work started. This is the same shower door whose packaging is clearly labelled with (a) the size - including maximum and minimum adjustments - and (b) the handing of the door. This is the same packaging that bears a very large label - yellow with red lettering - spelling out "Warning. Size must be checked before opening this package. Open packages may not be returned." Did they check the size? No. Did they check the hand (whether it opens to the right or to the left)? No. Did they open the package? Yes. Did the door fit? No.

Even with the door slid as far back into its fixings as it would go, the two glass panels overlapped by - wait for it - a half of one centimetre. So the door wouldn't close. Couldn't close. And now they have to come back tomorrow and take the small glass panel to a glazier and hope it can be cut down by enough to allow the door to close.

So no shower for me when I got home, but at least the bath was plumbed back in. With the hot water connected to the cold tap, and vice versa :-\ At least the toilet was working.

I've updated the photo set on Flickr - there'll be no more photos added to this set now until I can take a full set of "after refit" pictures including all fixtures and fittings (like mirrors) in place. Such high hopes for the day, and really we are almost there, but at the moment it feels like "so near, and yet so far."

Bathroom refit: Day 9

Today was tiling day and it was blimmin' freezing. The tile cutting machine, since it makes a lot of dust, stayed on the front path, with the result that the front door was once again open all day! Why couldn't they have been cutting tiles yesterday when it was sunny? I didn't have to worry about heating the street this time though: the heating system was partially drained to allow the connections to the heated towel rail to be made.

By lunchtime, tiling of the floor was completed and they'd moved on to the shower cubicle. This was quite frustrating, as every time I popped my head round the door I couldn't see anything. Mid-afternoon I finally walked into the bathroom to be greeted by this wondrous site:

Doesn't that look the dogs'? Well it will do when all those little tile spacers are removed, the gaps are filled with the nice dark grey grout, and all the lovely shower chrome has been installed.

So tomorrow is "fixing" day, and the guys are still aiming to be "finished" on time. I put that in quotes because I strongly suspect their idea of finished and ours will be slightly different. It's an early start for them: they have to grout all the tiles first and then fit the furniture.

They looked slightly nonplussed when I mentioned resurfacing the bath. We debated it for a while. They offered to clean it. When I checked the agreement it stated that the bath was "to be decided" which harks back to the time we weren't sure whether we were replacing it or not. Obviously the fact we decided to keep it and have it resurfaced never made it into the quote. Oh well. We're not really bath people anyway, but now we're worried new taps on a scratchy old bath will look odd. We'll have to wait and see how it polishes up.

Bathroom refit: Day 8

Although it doesn't look like much has changed there was significant progress today, especially considering the guys took three hours out to visit the car auctions to try and find a replacement van (they weren't successful).

Back here at the coalface, the heated towel rail was hung and plumbed in (new pipe runs required for that, so much chiselling of joists), the waste pipe laid for the bath, and the water supply for the loo. Once the plumbing was complete the floorboards were all secured, loose or creaking ones screwed down, and then the plywood sheet that will carry the tiles was laid.

On top of that they rolled out the underfloor heating pad, cutting it to fit around all the pipework. Once all that was done, finally, it was time to start laying tiles. Apparently flooring adhesive goes off so quickly that you don't have time to cut tiles, so the standard way of laying them is to do the easy middle bit first where there are no cuts, and then come back later and do the edges. All of which explains why it now looks as though we have a large bathmat made out of tiles.

Since the tile cement is still wet I am, frustratingly, unable to enter the room to take more photos, but you can see the ones I was able to capture on Flickr.

With most of the floor now laid, to my admittedly amateur eye it still looks like they're running way behind. They have two days left and they still have to tile the shower, finish tiling the floor, grout everywhere, fit the washbasin, toilet, bath and shower heads, refinish the bath so it shines again, and hang the shower doors. Oh and plaster in the hallway, and paint it.

A Day of Frustration and Fright

Fright:
I found out today why all the advertising spaces on the escalator up to Euston from the Victoria line have been blanked off for the last few months.

They've all been replaced with interactive flat-screen display panels - the latest in 21st century advertising. I was subjected to a frightening vision of two dozen panels each containing a frightened-looking child banging on the "glass" from "the other side."

It wasn't until I approached the top of the escalator that these pictures of disturbed and disturbing children dissolved into the message "1 in 8 children in the UK are desperate to get out of poor housing." Not as desperate as I was to get off that escalator I can tell you!

Frustration:
If you ever feel that you've missed out because you don't work in "big business" then please don't. Or at least reflect on what happened to me today. I was asked to come down to London for a 12.30 meeting to revise the risk register prior to resubmission of our proposal for the piece of business I've been working on for the last year. The person calling the meeting knows that we're in the middle of a bathroom refit, but this was "really important." I set the alarm for 5am to catch the 6.05 train from Piccadilly, arriving in Westminster a little after 9. I found myself a hot desk, dealt with a few emails, went to the restaurant for coffee and a bit of networking with a colleague I hadn't seen for about a year, handled a few more emails. So far (apart from the networking) nothing I couldn't have done from home.

About 11.30 the organiser stopped by my desk to inform me that Person A who was supposed to be coming to the meeting was off sick and Person B had been called to another meeting, so the review team was down to him, me, and his boss. He was about to meet with his boss to decide if he still wanted the meeting proper, or whether he'd be happy to go through the register independently and just raise queries. Excuse me but shouldn't you have worked that out before asking me to come down?

Sure enough, at 12.45 he returned. "Thanks for coming down. You can go home now." Jesus. I was mad enough at the inconvenience to myself, but it's not the first time it's happened and you kind of get inured to it. What really pissed me off was that Nikki had had to waste one of her precious leave days to stay at home and look after the bathroom fitters. And on top of that, if the organiser had more backbone he could have insisted that the review be conducted by voice conference. We all had the spreadsheet and we all have phones!

Frustration 2:
A day of very little visible progress in the bathroom. Somehow I expect tradesmen to work more quickly than me, especially when there's two of them, but I think working on my own even I could have painted our new bathroom in a day - and that's exactly what they did today. Just the painting. Looks nice though, doesn't it? As the Dad said though: "wrong colour for round here!" He was suggesting we should have painted the bathroom Manchester United red. I don't think so.

Bathroom refit: Day 6

I was working away all day today so reports of progress reached me over the wires - of skirting board having been fitted, ceiling and walls having a coat of undercoat, downlighters being positioned and later fitted. It was a late start for the guys - we'd agreed that they should do the decorating late on Friday so they had to stop off to collect paint and skirting board supplies - and they left at 4pm. I reckon they were restricted in what they could do until the plaster was fully dried out.

They suggested an interesting 2-4-2 configuration for the 8 downlighters in the main part of the bathroom - here you can see the 4 in the centre of the room and the two above where the wash basin will be. At the other end of the room there'll be two over the toilet.

The other two lights are in the shower enclosure and will have their own switch.

Getting plastered

I was caught on the hop this morning by the plasterers. When I say "on the hop" I actually mean "lying in bed." Luckily Nikki was up to let them in. I wasn't the only one running behind due to the change in clocks last night: Young Mr Bathroom-Fitter was late arriving too, but he only stayed long enough to check the two plasterers had everything they needed.

If he'd been much later they wouldn't have been here to ask. I already described how arcane I find the process of plastering. What also dumbfounded me about these guys was the sheer speed of their work. I looked in after they'd been here half an hour to ask if they needed anything else. No, they were fine, and had already applied a small amount of plaster to the walls. I looked in an hour later and both the ceiling and one wall were already finished!

These two guys worked without a break and with only three cans of diet Pepsi between them for six hours and the end result has to be seen. Perfect walls on every side, except round the shower enclosure which for some reason they'd been told not to skim "because it's being tiled." Huh? I wasn't aware it was standard practice to tile right onto plasterboard, but then what do I know?

They didn't plaster the landing-side of the ex bathroom door either, so I guess they'll be coming back to do that later. The new study walls we deliberately wanted leaving, because that whole room needs replastering and we thought it best to have it all done at the same time. In the words of the song: "who knows what tomorrow brings?"

All grassed up

I never really enjoyed cutting the grass. Years ago, I would occasionally do it for my Mum. First of all with the small manual Webb mower which was damned hard work pushing, and later with a massive old electric mower driven by a 12-volt car battery that weighed a ton. Despite its weight the hard part of using that mower was hanging on to it. It went like the clappers.

It was when mowing the grass one summer when I was about 15 that I discovered I'd developed hay fever. I retired to the lounge, wheezing and coughing, with my eyes and nose streaming and my throat itching. It felt really bad at the time but it's stood me in good stead since as a ready-made excuse to avoid grass cutting for 2 months of the summer.

When I lived in Yorkshire cutting the lawn used to take at least an hour. It wasn't so much the cutting that hacked me off as how often you had to empty the grass box. And what a trek it was to the compost heap.

Now, all that is behind me. Today I picked up my cousin's spare lawnmower (thanks Trish!), brought it home, plugged it in and away we went. 15 minutes later: pristine lawn, wonderful smell of new-mown grass and I'm relaxing on the patio with a cup of tea. Suits me. I could be tempted to make this a regular Saturday thing. Until hay fever season starts at the end of May, naturally.

POETS Day

In the English-speaking world Friday is universally known as POETS day, and for our bathroom fitters it's no different. They were out of here at 11.15. A short day, when all that was done was finish the boarding of the ceiling and the last bit of wall, install power for the underfloor heating, first-fix the plumbing for the bath and fetch the plasterer's supplies.

So no photos today, because apart from looking an awful lot tidier nothing much has changed. The room stands empty awaiting the hand of the master. Plasterers are always masters in my book. They can put a trowel-full of plaster on a wall and have it stay there (when I do it, it falls right off again); they can spread it out so that the surface is completely flat, square and plumb (when I do it, it resembles the surface of a swimming pool); and they can polish it so it looks like glass (when I do it, the trowel digs in and leaves holes everywhere).

Part of me thinks hey - they were here for about two hours. They could have made that time up yesterday and/or Wednesday and then the plasterer could have been busy working his magic all day today! But I can't really get excited about it. They're such nice guys, their work is of such a good standard and their price is unbeatable so I'm adopting a relaxed attitude to it all.

The tiles arrived today too (OK I know I said no photos but I thought you'd like to see them), so our worries that their trip from Portugal would be delayed and work held up were unfounded. They look every bit as nice in their little cardboard packets as they did in the showroom and I can't wait to see them on the floor and in the shower. We've opted not to have the walls tiled for now. We both agree a fully tiled bathroom looks too much like a public toilet and the debate was only ever whether to go for half-tiled walls or simply painted. The latter option gives us scope to change our minds later so that's what we went for.

Here's an attempt to give you a better idea what the colour of the tiles is like. Like a mottled mid-grey.


Now that the fitters have left and the front door is closed at last, I have to say it's noticeably warmer in the bathroom now the hole in the ceiling has been boarded over. The draft from the attic was quite severe. Once the heated towel rail and underfloor heating is installed it's going to be pretty cosy in there.

Bathroom refit: Day 4

A day of delays today. The electrician who didn't turn up yesterday was late again. Turns out he's the other son of the father-and-son duo who've been working here all week. Nice to keep it in the family. Only he was tied up with another job and didn't arrive until about 2pm. This appeared to slow the other guys down. I guess there were things needed doing that could only be done after the sparky had finished.

So progress was slow. Dad concentrated on completing the wall boarding, which included the outside wall. I didn't realise this would involve removing the old soil pipe but when you think about it, it's the most obvious thing to do. It means (a) we get a nice clean new plastic pipe instead of the grotty old cast iron one, and (b) the plasterer has a flat surface to work to, which means the finished job will be much better. They'll cut a hole through the new plaster when it comes time to fit the pan.

Mid-morning I noticed a plume of steam issuing from the boiler vent again. I had once more forgotten to turn the central heating off. Our new boiler effectively doesn't have an "off" position. It has four "zones" corresponding to the previous concept of two on and two off timers. Only what were the "off" zones are now just periods where the required temperature is set lower than during the "on" zones. In our case the daytime off zone is set to 12°C and the nighttime to 7°C. Since these guys regularly leave the front door open, the temperature in the hall drops below 12 (it's been down at 8 twice this week!) and the boiler fires up. So for a great many hours this week we've been paying to heat the street.

Here's the wall boarding at the other end of the room. This is the window under which the bath will go. At the left of the picture you can just see the first-fix plumbing for the wash hand basin, which is what Son was doing while Dad was boarding.

We had a visit from the plasterer this afternoon too, to size the job up. With the delays caused by the absent sparky the job won't be ready for plastering until the end of tomorrow, so the poor plasterer has to come on Sunday. Now I'm worried the plaster won't have dried out properly by the time they come to tile. Further photos and the rest of the week's progress in my Flickr 'bathroom refurbishment' set.

Bathroom refit: Day 3

Not as much visible progress today, mainly because it was all going on inside the bathroom and, for the most part, quite quietly. The major task seemed to be fitting the shower tray, which I suspect took a little longer than expected as (a) the floor joists had to be chiselled away so the tray could sit level and (b) one of said joists was in the way of the waste and had to be cut back.

There's also been a lot of screwing noises (oo-errr missus) from the power screwdrivers and the guys have been wandering in every so often with bits of door frame and to pick up those parts of the shower assembly required for first fix.

The other major task begun today was boarding up the old bathroom door. The frame was removed and new stud-work assembled in the space, which was then boarded over both sides. Here's the new view from the landing. Follow Monday's link to Flickr to see how the ex-door looks from the other side. At present it's only half boarded.

Today also saw the final demise of the jellyfish lightpull as all the original lighting was removed in preparation for the downlighters to be fitted. The electrician never did turn up, so I expect he'll be here tomorrow. All remaining first fixing (both plumbing and electrics) needs to be completed tomorrow as the plasterer is coming Friday.

Here's how the shower enclosure is looking after today. The low profile shower tray is in place - a job that took about four hours! - the first-fix plumbing is in, and the whole enclosure is boarded out ready for plastering. It was a long day for the fitters today, no break for lunch and they were still here when I fetched Nikki home from work, but it's been worth it. I'm no expert but it looks to me like the construction phase is almost complete.

Bathroom refit: Day 2

An 8 o'clock start for the bathroom guys this morning but for the first couple of hours there was only one of them, finishing off the stripping out of the last bathroom wall, removing the last of the flooring and tidying up.

Around 11 o'clock the stud work for the new shower enclosure started to go up. I really appreciated the order of work here, because if the bathroom wall had been taken down first the mess in the study would have been colossal. It took the guys a couple of hours to erect the two walls and board up. Follow yesterday's link to flickr for an updated set of photos. Once the walls were up they disappeared into the bathroom and the sounds of the final wall being taken down could be heard.

After their usual short break for lunch work continued clearing the remains of the wall and then beginning the dry-lining of the other walls.

By the time they knocked off, around 4pm, the new shower space looked like this, with most of the end wall of the bathroom boarded out. The pipes for our old heated towel rail can just be made out rising up from the floor in the foreground. The original bathroom door (visible on the left of this picture) will be closed off and the new improved towel rail fitted against it. What was the toilet door is being retained as the new bathroom door.

Tomorrow, apparently, is "electrician day" - lighting cables need to be rerouted, and power cables for the old immersion heater removed. Some of the cables currently hanging from the ceiling may also run to the sockets in the attic room, and may need to be rerouted.

Bathroom refit: Day 1

The cold weather returned today. Just as work started on ripping the guts out of the bathroom - a job that entails having the front door permanently open so the constant stream of rubble, old fittings and bits of wall can find its way to the skip outside. Brrrr!

Within minutes of our two excellent bathroom fitters arriving, sounds of pummelling and falling tiles could be heard in the next room. With yet more impeccable timing, I was on a voice conference, so spent much of the time with the phone on 'mute'! I didn't see the old toilet pan wend its way to the skip, or the fern being removed from its cosy home in the cistern, but the next time I peered through the toilet door it looked like this.

If I hadn't been able to hear the work in progress, I would have know something was up by the thin film of dust that started to settle on my monitor. At least, it started off as a thin film. Pretty soon I could hardly read what I was writing and the keys began to feel decidedly sticky.

Towards the end of the morning the bath was disconnected and moved into the study and the guys broke for lunch at around 12.30, shortly after the new kit was delivered. I took the chance to have a good poke around. They were moving methodically round the room stripping plasterwork and tiles back to the brick and had reached the far corner of the bathroom. Two walls down, two to go. Through the hole in the ceiling where the toilet wall had been, I could see the attic. There was a strip light in there! Who knew? I'd been groping around up there in the dark, too!

By three o'clock the majority of the stripping out was complete and the guys were scratching their heads in the study working out exactly how they were going to move the wall back to build the shower enclosure. In the end they decided they'd need some more timber, so they called it a day to give themselves time to pick up what they needed before the suppliers closed. It means they'll be all set for an early start tomorrow and the dust and mess will move into the study - there'll be no escape! See Flickr for a full set of today's photos.

Mother's Day

Getting the essential jobs out of the way first is key to being able to relax for us, so here's the study with all the furniture and shelves and unpacked boxes (Yes! Still!) moved away from the bathroom walls ready for work to start tomorrow. Now the rest of the day is our own.

It's Mother's Day here in the UK and we've already had the traditional phone call from Mum thanking us for our card. We don't do flowers or chocolates - she's never wanted that kind of thing - but a card with flowery verses is essential, and getting harder to find by the year. Cards get bigger and more expensive, but inside is either simply "Happy Mother's Day" or a short piece of doggerel that anyone could cobble together in 5 minutes, poet or not. That's definitely not what my Mum expects!

I was busy with something when she rang, so Nikki took the call. Mum only got her name wrong twice during the five-minute call, which is pretty good going even for her. Like I said the other day, her short-term memory is shot, but you'd think after six years she'd have got used to it.

The thing that winds me up the most though, is not her memory. It's the fact she will take anyone's advice ahead of mine. Like I'm still 5 years old or something, and I don't know anything about anything. She's very lucky to have good neighbours on either side who do an awful lot for her. Living in the same house, with the same neighbours, for over 40 years opens up the possibility of such long-term friendships and I'm well aware that *I* am lucky too: that she has such good support. Living 70 miles away is not conducive to popping over to take her bin out, wash her car, or make her bed, so it's fortunate indeed that there are people there who will do those things for her.

I say I'm well aware of it. If I hadn't achieved that sense of awareness under my own steam I would still have got there. She tells me every time we visit. Mother's conversations these days are largely made up of stock phrases which are repeated at random intervals, often more than once during the course of a visit. One of these refers to her closest neighbour. We'll call him Patrick. Whenever his name crops up in conversation (which is frequently), it's inevitably followed with "I don't know what I'd do without him, John. I really don't. He's been marvellous."

We call him Saint Patrick, because he can do no wrong.

Take our last visit as a very simple example. The recent high winds blew down Mum's fence and the week before our visit she'd had it replaced. The joiners left large splinters of wood all over the front garden which she asked me to sweep up. Since the front garden is tarmacced much of what I swept up was those little bits of sharp gravel that wear off old tarmac, mixed with the wood splinters and the odd piece of litter. As part of the local recycling scheme Mum has a green bin for garden waste, but I said the sweepings should go in the grey "general household waste" bin because they were (mainly) not biodegradable. She thought they should go in the green bin, because they came out of the garden.

I've had this kind of argument in the past. They inevitably cause pointless upset and go nowhere. I shrugged, bit back my opinions and got on with sweeping. Cue the obligatory phone call to Saint Patrick. He told her the sweepings should go in the grey bin. Instantly we were instructed to change to the grey bin. She even suggested we should take out the shovel full of grit we'd already dumped in the green bin! How exasperated was I? I'm 50 years old, have experience of recycling schemes in three different areas of the country rather than just one not to mention having been recycling glass and metal since long before it became fashionable, but my experience counts for nothing at the side of the omniscient Saint Patrick. *I* say green bin? No, that can't possibly be right. *He* says green bin? That must be the answer! Aaargh!

It's a lesson for me though. A hard one. These are unwinnable arguments but for years I carried on trying to win them. I became angry. She became angry. Nothing changed. She would go ahead and make the mistake I knew she was going to make, or someone else would give her the same advice I had given, and they would be heeded while my words were ignored. And whatever the outcome, our original conversation (or argument) was forgotten by her, but remembered by me, so it was me left with the bitter memories. That's why it's pointless.

Now, whenever I start down that argumentative path, Nikki gives me a look, or puts her hand on my arm and shakes her head. Don't go there. And I don't. It's the road to nowhere.

Drafty

Very pleased with progress in the garden this morning, but three hours was enough for both of us, so I retired to the study to continue with the first rewrite of my novel, and I'm very pleased to announce that I completed it!

From first to second draft in a little over six months. Although the intention was to tighten up the writing, and I did pare out a lot of superfluous stuff, as it turned out the word count has increased because I revisited some sections quite drastically and also wrote up those parts that needed additional research. What was the name of the main highway between Toronto and Boston (I-90)? The name of a Boston suburb where the refugees were headed? The particular science department at MIT that had the equipment the heroes needed? And so on. All those things are now bottomed and I'm even closer to my target of 100,000 words.

What I found even more surprising: since I wrote the last 4-5 chapters last August I haven't looked at them at all. Coming back to them yesterday, I found them profoundly moving and exciting. Sorry if that sounds pompous, but once again I had that feeling: "Did I write this?" The first few chapters still need work, but most of the final third of the novel where the action really hots up? Well I'm more-or-less happy with it bar a bit of a polish.

This has made me determined that the next rewrite will be the last before I approach a publisher. I guess there will most likely be changes requested during that process (assuming I can find anyone interested!) and I can't predict what they will be, so rather than spend time on further polishing of something that, by the time the third draft is complete will look exactly how *I* want it to look, I'd rather solicit some external feedback on it.

Bathroom preparations

With work on the bathroom starting imminently, we've had a small amount of preparation to do. Firstly (and most importantly as far as Nikki's concerned!) the windows needed cleaning, especially on the reglazed panes which had putty smudges all round the edges.

After we had our last baths for two weeks - and probably our last baths ever, since we're shower people - all bathroom equipment has been removed so it's looking very bare in there at the moment. Don't worry, we have friends nearby where we can shower while work is in progress!

There's also prep work to do in the study, moving things away from the walls that will be rebuilt during the refurbishment, but we'll get around to that tomorrow. Today the sun is shining and we wanted to get the inside jobs done as quickly as possible to make the most of some time in the garden. Autumn leaves are still piled everywhere, the hedge needs trimming and I've a couple of trees to pull up, so without further ado...

Poetry Corner

It seems to be a week for praise and believe me, I'm lappin' it up.

If you've hung around my website at all, you'll know I like to do a bit of writing now and then, and in particular I've written a few poems. Now I've not had any formal training in the art of poetry writing (or any writing come to that). I've read around the subject a little, as I do with most things, but that's about it. It was as much a surprise to me when I started writing poems as to anyone. When something like that comes my way though, I don't question it. I just enjoy it.

And so, apparently, do others. At least, that's what they say to my face :o)

But no matter how much people have praised my poems in the past, no-one has ever called me "a real poet." I don't mean to belittle that past praise in any way because all of it was heartfelt and honestly meant, and all of it was gratefully received. I have often moved myself to tears when writing the poems, especially the ones on particularly painful subjects. Even more often I've moved my readers in the same way, sometimes in my presence. They have cried, they have smiled, they have said "it's lovely, John." They have said "is it for me? You wrote this...for me?" They have said how clever I am. How much they "love my stuff." No-one, least of all anyone in a position to really understand what high praise it is, has ever said they consider me a real poet.

Until today. When I had an email from my friend and coach Colleen, who has been writing a bit of poetry herself. "I'm really not a poet," she wrote, "as I consider you a REAL poet."

Wow. Thanks ceep.

I never had any ambitions to be a "professional" poet - as in someone who might expect to sell one or more, or a collection. I knew it was a hard road to travel. There are loads of amateur poets about and to become sufficiently well known to publish it's expected that you will do the rounds of open mic events, go on poetry courses, join poetry clubs, submit to magazines, etc, etc, none of which interested me at all. I was content to be a good amateur, to enjoy my stuff for what it was.

But then a couple of years back, during Chorlton Arts Festival, we noticed one of the events was a poetry reading evening. I decided: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Couldn't hurt to go along and check out what goes on at these things. I selected three poems to take along - short, medium and long ones, and Nikki and Annie came along for moral support. The venue was a small meeting room adjacent to the local library and as the slow trickle of attendees filtered in the room filled until there were about 30 people there.

It soon became obvious that many of them knew each other, and when the reading started the organiser began calling people out by name. He moved through the audience from front row to back, asking everyone if they would like to read. We were sat in the middle (of both dimensions) so I stood up after about eight others had taken a turn. Having heard the sort of thing they'd read, I chose the longest poem. Not normally nervous on occasions like these (I have presented professionally to audiences of around 1,000) I was surprised how shaky I was - in both hands and voice. The page of text wobbled up and down in front of me and my voice suddenly became devoid of spit or power.

I struggled through it and was rewarded with a decent round of applause, a few smiles and nods. The caller continued his progression towards the back of the room and in total I think there were about 15 readers. Once everyone had had a turn, he decided there was time for a second bite at the cherry before the "main event" (we were graced by the presence of a "real" poet for the evening, and he'd brought along several dozen copies of his latest collection). Moving through the audience for a second time, the organiser this time around steadfastly refused to catch my eye even though I held my hand up several times. His offer of a second reading only applied, it seemed clear, to those within his inner circle.

We left early.

My one, and so far only, experience of an open mic event. Not good. I've been in some pretty clique-y circles before, and this was another example. I don't like that. If the invitation is open to anyone then you should treat everyone even handedly, whether they're in your poetry club or not. The verdict? I'm a real poet, but not according to the Chorlton crowd. :o)

Unexpected praise

Another long day yesterday filled with minor travelling irritations (no power in my coach on the train journey down, so could only use my laptop for an hour; one of the escalators at Euston was being rebuilt, so huge queues to get down to the Tube; trains on the Victoria line were absolutely packed, so it took three goes before I was able to board, for the privilege of being crushed to bits for four stops; no power in my coach on the train journey back, but remembered to turn my screen brightness down, so this time my battery lasted the whole journey, but sadly there was no control to turn down the volume on the woman sitting behind me who talked non-stop the entire journey) so it was a very pleasant surprise to arrive home to an email from one of the bosses at Shiny Media addressed to all the writers at TV Scoop.

"I just wanted to drop you a line and remind you all of just how much you rock," she wrote, before continuing with: "... yours has always been one of my favourite Shiny blogs. You (as a group) are some of our funniest and most talented writers, [and] you have managed to put together a sparky, intelligent, and funny blog enhanced by the fact that you spend half your time disagreeing with each other."

She closed with: "You're beyond fab, and I wanted to make sure you knew it."

What a grand way to end the day! Click here if you want to see what all the fuss is about.

Top, Top, Toppy!

I took delivery of our new Topfield TF5800 PVR yesterday afternoon. Anyone who already knows what a PVR is will need to skip to the first photograph to avoid having the pants bored off them. A Personal Video Recorder (also now starting to be called DVR or Digital Video Recorder) does virtually the same thing as a VHS recorder, only it uses a computer hard disk drive (HDD) instead of a tape. The first such device on the market was a TiVo, but since then more generic PVRs have arrived (and TiVo has been rebadged as Sky+ although you can still get them on eBay).

Because HDDs are random access devices and already optimised for fast reads and writes, this introduces some interesting possibilities. Firstly, you can watch a recording while making another. The HDD can easily cope with simultaneous accesses to different recordings. This also means you can watch a recording before it has finished, a practice known as chase-play. So you come in from work and you don't have time to cook dinner before your favourite soap starts? Kick off a recording, make the dinner, then sit down and start watching whether the recording has finished or not. The first few times you do this, having been used to tape, it's a revelation. But it's one of those things that soon becomes second nature (and another of those things that our kids will take for granted and listen with wonder when we regale them with stories of the days when we used to have to wait for a recording to finish before we could watch it).

When you chase play shows with ad breaks it's not unusual to catch up with real time, so you end up finishing watching at or close to the time the live show finishes. Fast-forward and rewind are much faster than with tape. But perhaps the most significant difference is capacity. Our model has a 250GB HDD, which gives us very roughly 125 hours of recording at broadcast quality.

So now to the Topfield. Here it is newly unpacked. It replaces our old Sony RDR HX-1000. We'd had that less than two years, but since it only has a single analogue tuner and we kicked Sky out when we moved, we had no way of recording digital channels. The Toppy has twin digital tuners allowing us to watch one and record another (as before), record two different channels while watching something else we've previously recorded, or, because of the way digital TV is broadcast, in some cases if we pick the right channels we could be recording two things AND watching two other different things using the picture-in-picture facilities.

In common with most good TV equipment nowadays, the Toppy was simplicity itself to set up. Two minutes to make all the aerial and SCART connections and about ten minutes to go through its automated channel scan and that, basically, was that. The standard EPG (Electronic Program Guide) that it comes with receives seven days' worth of program information over the air and to record any program from the guide takes two clicks of the OK button on the remote. If you try to record too many overlapping programs, a warning message pops up. Since the Toppy runs Linux under the covers, you can rename the recordings (they default to the name of the first program on the recording) and arrange them in folders.

Here's our new stack in close-up. The Topfield is on the right, sitting on top of the Pioneer media box. On the left is our (relatively) new Pioneer AV surround-sound amp. XBox at the bottom. I'm sure I'll be writing more about this new toy in future. We're running it in "vanilla" mode to start with, but there's an active community of developers writing "TAPs" (Topfield Application Programs) that replace or supplement standard features, so we might be trying some of them out soon too!

Nature, red in tooth and claw

I may have mentioned this before but although our new place(*) doesn't have a very large garden, it does have a lot of land behind it that belongs to other people, and that land is filled with trees of various ages and types. As a result we enjoy the presence of a great many birds (mainly magpies it has to be said - at least a dozen of them - with a few woodpigeons), a couple of squirrels and around half a dozen neighbourhood cats.

With all this wildlife going on things can occasionally be a little raucous, especially when the magpies get excited, but I never expected to have a close encounter with a kill.

Our study window overlooks the back garden, and I was sitting at my desk an hour ago with one curtain drawn against the sun when something hit the window with a loud thud. The windows are not that clean so I was surprised a bird had flown into them, but that's what it sounded like. Jumping out of my seat and pulling back the curtain, I was in time to see a flurry of feathers tumble off the edge of the conservatory roof below and land on the neighbour's lawn.

Far from being stunned, this flurry of feathers continued to flurry, and pretty soon resolved itself into a wood pigeon and a sparrowhawk. The hawk must have caught the pigeon in full flight, lost control and hit my window. The pigeon was putting up a game struggle (haha! "game" struggle, geddit?) trying to escape, but the really remarkable thing was the reaction of the magpies. Whether they were attracted by the prospect of an easy lunch, or just ganging up on the hawk for their own mutual protection I don't know, but four or five of them landed on the lawn in a circle around the hawk, who stood with one claw on the pigeon and faced off the magpies with a fabulous display of beakmanship.

After what seemed an age but must only have been a few seconds I kicked myself for not thinking of my camera, but by the time I had it decased, switched on, aimed and focussed the hawk had disappeared, leaving only the woodpigeon struggling in the ditch at the edge of the lawn. It was clearly in distress and I knew it wouldn't last long. The shock of an encounter like this is more often than not enough to finish them off, whether they have suffered any physical injury or not, and sure enough within the space of a few minutes it had ceased to be.

* We've been here 5 months now. I wonder how long it'll be before I stop calling it "the new place"?

Monday Week

Exactly a week to go until the bathroom guys start work and excitement is mounting. I ordered the tiles last week and there's a slight worry that they won't arrive on time. The guy who owns the tile shop had used half his supply to tile his accountant's bathroom so he had to import more to meet our order. They're due to arrive on the 22nd, which I'm hoping will be OK because with work not starting until the 19th I expect the first few days will be taken up with stripping out, moving walls, plastering and first fix. I'm not expecting any tiling to start until the second week, in which case we're covered.

This is our new bathroom sink and pedestal, courtesy of Imperial. It's the Westminster range and after a lot of searching and discussion was pretty much the only design we both liked. We chose it quite early on in the process and were then put off by the fact that the actual basin is quite a lot smaller than the unit - there's a wide "shelf" on each side. So we went around the loop again rechecking all the brochures and websites and did at one point choose something different, but after a few days we'd both independently gone off that second choice and came back to this. I particularly like the shape of the pedestal.

The loo mirrors the pedestal and has an interesting shape to the bowl and seat which is quite quirky. We saw the suite in the flesh at Housing Units when we went for a look round last time Phil & Vicky came to stay and it looks even better IRL than online. Right now I'm waiting for a call back from the bathroom guy to confirm the start date and arrange to pay the balance of the labour and materials charges. Then we're all set. Woohoo!

Weekend to go

This weekend was a "girls' weekend" but one of Natalie's friends had tickets for Crufts on Saturday (Terrier & Hounds day, apparently) so she was off down to Brummigham on Friday and had to be back late Saturday to get ready for a guitar recital today. What a hectic life!

We gave Blythe the option of coming as normal, but on her own; or shifting the weekend back so they could both come together next weekend. She elected to come on her own :o) I think that was a good decision because (a) we had a lot of fun and (b) in another few months Nat will be off to Uni and there'll be just the three of us at weekends any way, so this was like a "dry run" for this coming October.

What I hadn't told either of them was that we were planning to visit my Mum today. It's her birthday tomorrow so we were off to take her present/card and catch up with all the goss. I imagine Nat will be relieved to have "got away with it." My girls don't get to see much of their paternal grandmother and she misses them, but I also remember how bored I used to be when visiting my Gran so I try not to impose a visit on them too often. On the other hand I think it's good occasionally to have to do something out of "duty" - good for the character I mean - and I gave Blythe a day's notice that she'd need to bring some reading material (but not why).

It was a lovely day for a drive today: dry, sunny and fresh. We'd arranged to stop off at my mate Phil's place in Chesterfield to deliver our PVR that he's giving a new home to (we have a new one coming tomorrow! W00t!) , and have a narsecappatee. It was good to break the journey and catch up with him and Vicky, but we had to drag ourselves away to get to Mum's at a reasonable time. We eventually arrived there around 12.30. She was delighted to see Blythe and I told her later that she'd "made an old lady very happy" lol, but I don't think I'll drop a surprise visit on either of the girls again.

Conversations with my Mum are getting harder by the week. Her short-term memory is now so bad that she forgets something you said only ten minutes ago. We can have the same conversation three times in an hour and at the end she'd still have forgotten about it. I often wonder what the point is going into great detail relating all our news, knowing that she'll hardly retain any of it once we've left, but I know she enjoys the company and even the conversation while it's happening, so I persevere. I have to bite down on my irritation with her sometimes too, but that's a topic for a whole other blog!

We left shortly after 4pm to be sure of getting Blythe home at a reasonable time, and as we were driving along Longdendale Nikki suggested a pub meal might be a nice idea, so we stopped at one of our favourite pubs: The Gun Inn at Hollingworth. A pair of melts later we were on our way home replete and arrived just ten minutes too late to catch Annie, who was trying to deliver our newly-chipped XBox. A phone call soon sorted that out though, and within the hour we were marvelling at the stunning quality of its DVD-replay, the ease of file copying and loading games from the new larger (120GB!) hard drive and a host of other mouthwatering features. Since our new PVR doesn't have DVD record or playback facilities, the revamped XBox will be at the heart of the media experience in our living space from now on.

The Reader

It's a number of years since I read a novel at a single sitting. This month's book club choice is The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, and since I'm off work sick today (don't worry, I'm much better and intending to return tomorrow) I settled down in the conservatory this afternoon to make a start on it.

Two hours and fifteen minutes later, I've finished it. I can't remember the last time a book gripped me like this one has (although last month's choice - The Catcher in the Rye - came close), or was so easy to read and yet so fulfilling. It truly deserves the epithet 'page turner' that many books are given these days, yet so few truly deserve.

Schlink's use of language is extraordinary (and I suppose a nod to his translator, Carol Brown Janeway, is also in order). Descriptive without being banal or tedious; evocative without being slushy; thoughtful without being preachy. It's a novel with more than one story to tell; more, even, than the three parts it is divided into. The story of a fifteen-year-old Kid and his surprising, beautiful yet ultimately tortured relationship with Hanna, the 30-something woman he meets accidentally. The story of how he becomes a lawyer, and attends Hanna's trial as a Holocaust war criminal. And the story of how he reaches out to Hanna during her eighteen year incarceration and is denied any but the most ephemeral closure to their relationship, which has marked his entire life one way or another.

"Then I looked at Hanna's handwriting and saw how much energy and struggle the writing had cost her. I was proud of her. At the same time, I was sorry for her, sorry for her delayed and failed life, sorry for the delays and failures of life in general."

I found this one of the most moving passages of the book. The delays and failures of life in general. How that must resonate with any reader over the age of ... what? What age do you need to be to know that life, while it can sometimes provide transcendent joys and satisfactions, is also a story of delays and failures?

And I'm reminded that failure only exists on those occasions where you do not get back up and try again. That no matter your age, or past, or experience, there is always another try. There may be yet more delay, but you only fail when you stop trying.

Proud to be an a**ehole

Harking back to failures of process for a moment and how everyone's job, no matter how boring and trivial, is important in the overall scheme of things, I was reminded of this (very) old joke:

One day the different parts of the body were having an argument to see which should be in charge.

The brain said, "I do all the thinking so I'm the most important and I should be in charge."

The eyes said, "We see everything and let the rest of you know where we are, so we're the most important and we should be in charge."

The hands said, "Without us we wouldn't be able to pick anything up or move anything. So we're the most important and we should be in charge."

The stomach said, "I turn the food we eat into energy for the rest of you. Without me, we'd starve. So I'm the most important and I should be in charge."

The legs said, "Without us we wouldn't be able to move anywhere. So we're the most important and we should be in charge."

Then the arsehole said, "I think I should be in charge."

All the rest of the body parts laughed and snorted. They said, "YOU?!? You don't do anything! You're not important! You can't be in charge."

So the arsehole closed up.

After a few days, the legs were all wobbly, the stomach was all queasy, the hands were all shaky, the eyes were all watery, and the brain was all cloudy.

They all agreed that they couldn't take any more of this and they should put the arsehole in charge.

OK, this is a joke, right? So the (rather predictable) punchline is that the moral of the story is you don't have to be the most important to be in charge, just an arsehole. But I haven't shared that with you to knock managers. I have a different point, which is also made by the story: that every part of the body, just like every part of society, is as important as any other part.

Sure, we can't manage without doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists, engineers and architects. But "society" would also grind to a halt without undertakers, refuse collectors, shop workers, slaughterhousemen and plumbers. A lack of properly trained and supervised cleaners has led to our hospitals being filled with deadly MRSA and C. difficile. When track inspectors don't work properly, trains crash and people die. When that 1,000th cell sample isn't checked properly and someone with cancer is mistakenly given the all-clear, people die. When simple sanitary conditions aren't maintained, infection spreads, confidence is lost in the business, and people lose their livelihoods.

It doesn't matter what your job is, we all rely on you doing it to the best of your ability.

Blood Moon

We spent a delightful evening at Mick & Helen's last night. I guess we could call them our closest friends, because they only live a couple of hundred yards away! During the evening we were lucky to get a fantastic view of the total eclipse. It had already started by the time we walked round there at 8pm, with a noticeable flattening of one edge of the moon, but by 9.30pm a sizeable proportion of the moon had begun to turn red.

At that point we thought we were going to be unlucky as the moon disappeared behind the clouds for an hour or so, but by the time the eclipse was full, around 11.30, the clouds had parted again and we were treated to this view.

The meal was fabulous but the company was even better. It's a perfect set-up: Mick & Helen love to cook, and we love to eat! Annie had made copies of 'Heroes' in DivX format for us, and remembered to bring them round, so I hope I can find a VDU cable somewhere in my bag of goodies so I can connect my laptop up to our media box and we can see the first 16 episodes in glorious 50" plasma. Somehow I don't think there'll be much work done around the house today.

Schoolboy error

Oh dear. Ever the eagle-eyed examiner, Nikki has spotted a problem with our new windows.

Not sure you'll be able to spot it from these details. On the left is the bathroom window.

On the right is the toilet window.

Yep. The glass is the other way up. In the bathroom the fleur-de-lys pattern points right and the swoopy flowers face up. In the toilet the fleur-de-lys points left and the swoopy flowers are more like droopy flowers.

This wouldn't really be a problem if they were staying as separate rooms, but they're not. The whole point of having the top panes reglazed was so they'd look the same when the wall comes down. And they don't.

Doh!

Can I have a nice cup of tea?

This starts life as yet another train blog, but don't worry. It doesn't stay there for long. Only long enough to gain inspiration.

I had to travel to London again today and had just bought my breakfast sandwich and large black coffee from the Virgin train "shop" when the chap behind me placed his order.

"Can I just have a nice cup of tea, please?"

Two things about that you have to admire. The pure Englishness of it. Not just "tea please," but a nice cup of tea. And the naive hope that Virgin Rail can brew a nice cup of tea, when their drinks machines don't dispense boiling water.

There. Right there is my inspiration. I was reminded of a fight I had with the corporate mentality a little over two years ago, when they removed kettles from the kitchen areas throughout the office and we were unable any longer to make tea for ourselves. Their excuse was that there were "just too many industrial accidents" involving kettles. I think what sparked it off was a woman in Bracknell scalding herself.

I'd been used to brewing myself a small one-person pot of tea. It was ideal for me - it filled two mugs, it had its own little tea-cosy and it meant that I didn't have to be up and down to the machine every ten minutes. Most importantly of course, it was real tea, not the execrable machine version. It was drinkable.

So when "my" kettle was taken away, I played up a bit. I pointed out that everyone has a kettle at home, everyone in the workplace was an adult and should be trusted to use it safely, and if they didn't it was their own fault. Naturally, in this increasingly mad, politically correct and litigious world, this argument cut no ice with the facilities management people. If they provided the "kettle facility" they could possibly be liable if someone damaged themselves using it. Not to mention the cost of having the equipment safety checked every year.

It was clear I wasn't going to win the argument that way, so I tried a different tack. One of the arguments for there being "no need" for kettles was that the drinks machines could dispense hot water. In common with the other machine drinks, this was free, so the FM people couldn't see that there was any reduction in facility. But that was exactly the problem. The machines dispensed hot water. Not boiling water. The tea I tried to brew with it was disgusting. I complained, and in an effort to prove the water was hot enough, they reconfigured the drinks machine display to show the temperature of the water being delivered. It was 94°C.

I did my research, and found several reference sites on the web dedicated to making the ideal brew. Without exception they all made it abundantly clear that water at boiling point was essential to brewing a proper cuppa. I complained again, citing references. I think they were starting to get a little hacked off that I wasn't satisfied with their arguments, so as an ameliorating tactic they agreed to increase the temperature of the water from the machine. But the in-built safety or other limitations meant they couldn't get it above 97°C.

Ironically, this is still not hot enough to brew proper tea, but it's too hot to comfortably carry the plastic cups into which the other drinks were dispensed. On top of that, to fill my little teapot required 3.5 hot water dispensings, so I either had to overflow the pot, or not fill it, and whichever approach I took, I occupied the machine at least three times longer than for a regular drink, which meant longer queues.

So what started off as ostensibly a health-and-safety change, but was really about cutting costs, had now resulted in everyone who used the drinks machine being unable safely to carry their drinks, and me spending much more valuable work time brewing tea which was nowhere near as nice as it should be.

But with large companies it's never about maintaining a happy and contented workforce. It's about sweating assets and minimising costs. It's always about profit. And the maximum profit depends on keeping your staff at a level of disgruntlement below that which will cause them to leave, but above that which providing an adequate (but more costly) office environment would allow. So we soldier on, always with this background feeling that things could be better, should be better, but knowing in some fatalistic way that they never will be. And it's not worth changing jobs because it will be just as bad, and possibly even worse, at the next place.