Door a done deal

No photo yet, because I haven't fitted the new handles, but the painting plan was completed today on schedule. To the new schedule that is. I decided to give it an extra day for side 1 to dry, both to harden it off more and because we went off to the party on Saturday and I didn't want to be doing painting before going.

So I flipped it over yesterday, and it took its final coat on side 2 today. Very nice it looks too.

Meant to mention as well something amusing I heard in the news last week regarding the petrol prices. There was a summit, apparently, to discuss whether or not OPEC should step up oil production in an effort to bring prices down, and it was reported that the Australian PM had said if they wouldn't comply we should "take a blowtorch to OPEC." The Radio 4 commentator said he thought that was an inflammatory remark.

Ho Ho Ho.

Now we are 50

Yesterday we celebrated the 50th birthday of the last of my mates to attain that age of distinction, at his parents' place somewhere in the quiet countryside of South Notts. A garden filled with gazebos, chairs, tables, food, games, fun, family, but most of all friends and friendship.

You have to love the Gee family. Mum and Dad are an oasis of elegant refinement and good manners in a world increasingly full of yobbishness and selfish behaviour. A reminder of how good things were in a bygone age where everyone was civil to each other, offered a helping hand and a kind word, and did their bit for the community. Their good example is carried like a torch by their offspring, who each strive in their own way to increase the joy and fun of life without being at all pious or po-faced. Just a brilliant crowd who love a laugh, and love to share that laughter.

And laugh we did. Particularly at the gunga-sized version of Jenga, which was played almost non-stop all afternoon by various groups varying in age from single figures to us lot as seen here, all stood round examining it with knowledgeable looks as if we're a bunch of architects examining Westminster Abbey.

The buffet was excellent and the afternoon passed remarkably quickly, punctuated by more games of Jenga and watching Phil open his pressies, many of which had been selected for their compliance with a "50" theme. Or to complement his forthcoming holiday. You know the kind of thing that's just right for someone approaching his second childhood: arm bands for swimming; a bucket and spade; peashooters and catapults.

Plans to decamp to the pub had been shelved in favour of staying in the garden and ordering in fish & chips, which duly arrived around 7pm in three enormous boxes. I've never eaten F&C with 40 people before, but it was a fine experience and one I'd repeat at any time!

As the sunset and the chill factor of the evening increased, a garden heater was brought out and set up under the largest gazebo. Nobody wanted the day to end, but inevitably it did, as taxis were ordered and goodbyes were said by increasing numbers of guests. We held out as long as we could, but the end the cold and the time got to us and we accepted the offer of a lift in one of the taxis heading our way. A brilliant day all round, but most of all because it's finally put an end to Phil's ability to take the piss out of our advanced ages. Now, we are 50!

Dynamic Thinker

Why do I always wake up on Saturday at exactly the same time as I wake up on a weekday, even though the alarm is not on? Just for once I'd love to be able to lie in like I did when I was a kid. Luxuriate in the comfort and relaxation instead of having to be up and at 'em.

All good blogging things come via Diane, so here's a quickfire personality test based on the work of Jung. They promise it only takes five minutes, but I pondered the answers for a little bit longer. Still less than 10 minutes though, and interesting questions. It makes me out to be a Dynamic Thinker, which from the description at the end of that link is pretty much spot on. There's a link on that page for you to take your own test, should you wish.

Life goes on

Couldn't get back to sleep last night after the shocking news, so we sat drinking (de-caf) coffee in the study waiting for the shock to pass. The lights stayed on over the road until long after we went back to bed at 1am. Both of them have large families and judging by the number of cars parked in the road, they had all rallied round.

Stopped off at Asda on the way home from taking Nikki to work this morning for a sympathy card. Silly, meaningless gesture in a way, but you can't not, if you know what I mean. It didn't feel right, taking it round first thing and in any case I figured they'd probably still be in bed. I left it until lunchtime before popping round. The easy thing to do would have been to slip it quietly through the letterbox, but I knew that wasn't an option. Knew I had to grit my teeth and face Linda, having no words that could help her but saying them anyway.

Pete's brother opened the door. Pretty much the whole family seemed to still be there, making tea and swapping memories of Pete. A small forest of sympathy cards had already sprung up on the kitchen counter and with a wry smile I noticed that it wouldn't have mattered which of Asda's extensive collection I chose, it would still have been a duplicate.

I spoke only briefly to Linda. She was getting ready to go and choose a coffin, something which for obvious reasons she would rather not have had to do. I didn't stay long. Didn't want to intrude. Just long enough to pay my respects; offer the usual "if you need anything you only have to ask" that she must have already heard a hundred times.

It seems so ironic that they have only just finished doing up the house. Not really had much of a chance to enjoy it. But they say if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. I expect there were quite a few visitors to that house in the past who have harboured a little jealousy of Pete and Linda. Lovely new house; two lovely kids; lots of parties. None of them would offer to trade places with her now.

It's 10 o'clock, here is the news

We retired early tonight, both being knackered, to watch the news in bed. Then we heard some news we weren't expecting.

The doorbell rang. It's never a good sign when that happens and you're already in bed. Our first thought was that it was the neighbour. We had torrential rain here tonight and entered the bedroom to find the floor soaking wet again. Trouble is, even though we've had OUR roof replaced, HIS roof is still shelling tiles like there's no tomorrow, so the bits are still being washed into the gully, blocking the drain and leading to a repeat of this situation, which will undoubtedly require us to go through this again. So slipping into my dressing-gown and plodding wearily downstairs, I expected to find him on the doorstep wondering why HIS bedroom was under water.

I was wrong. It was the guys from down the road, enquiring whether we could feed their cat when they go away, and also bringing totally unexpected, shocking and very sad news. Our neighbour Pete, who lives directly opposite, died earlier today at work. Sat down to eat his lunch and had a fatal heart attack.

It's one of those situations you can't really grasp at first. You say inane things like "I only spoke to him last week," as if that should have been enough to prevent his death. Or that you might have - should have - spotted something that would have given you a clue of his impending demise. But we don't always get a warning shot. Sometimes it's as sudden as a click of the fingers and you won't ever get the chance to share a beer or a joke with him again. And then you think "Christ, he was nearly two years younger than me." I've found I've been thinking more about death anyway, since I turned 50, so this isn't going to help. Not in a morbid way, but more a sort of fatalistic realisation that I've almost certainly got less time left than I've had already, and the more time passes, the more true that becomes.

But for Pete, there's no time. So I guess the lesson is: make the most of what you've got.

Doors - a plan emerges

This morning, now the paint has dried, the need for an additional step has appeared. Applying a coat of paint has revealed several additional blemishes that weren't apparent when the door was in its original state. The darkness of the stain hid them. So I need to go over it again with the filler and sander, and apply the second coat of undercoat on top of this.

With the door on a trestle, only being able to work on one side, and needing (according to the tin) 16 hours to dry a coat of paint, this means the plan of attack now looks like this (assuming I can keep up the pace):
Today: fill and sand newly exposed marks, undercoat #2 on side 1
24/06: flip door over. Sand and apply undercoat #1 to side 2
25/06: fill newly exposed marks, sand and apply undercoat #2
26/06: apply finish coat #1
27/06: apply finish coat #2
28/06: flip door over. Apply finish coat #1 to side 1
29/06: apply finish coat #2
30/06: fit new hinges and handles

Gives me three days contingency before the plasterer arrives, in case any of the marks are still visible when the finish coats begin - I can backtrack and rework. Not that I'm expecting the door to look perfect, or like new, when it's finished. I want it to look like an original, painted door. But one that's been looked after.

Doors

As there's another ten days before the plasterer comes, I thought I may as well make a start on the door. The doors in this house are original, and therefore around a hundred years old, but the previous owners, who had a liking for natural rather than painted wood, dipped and stripped them.

We have seven interior doors in total that look something like this. Now I'm not exactly averse to a bit of natural wood myself. Trouble is being so old, these doors have been banged about a bit. Cracks here, knocks there, bits of the moulding missing, joints gaping. On top of that, the stripping isn't exactly first class. Chunks of old filler remain, giving the doors a neglected look, and as if all that wasn't bad enough it's not a totally natural finish the last owners went for. No, they preferred to add an unusual blue stain to everything. It doesn't look blue when it's on. I only know it's blue because I found the tin. To look at, once applied, you'd simply think the doors are dirty.

So we've been putting up with these dirty doors for over a year and a half. Even the new bathroom and the new study retained their old doors (well, the study door is still propped up against the wall on the landing - I never refitted it after the carpet went down). The idea was that refurbishing/painting the doors was a project in its own right, but so far that's meant none of them are finished. I didn't want to make that mistake again plus, like I said, I have time to kill in the middle of this project, so...

The problems with the doors range from large splits, through small cracks, to dings and holes. Here are some examples:







The plan is to pin the worst splits (none of the problems will involve any advanced joinery skills!), fill the cracks, sand down and give the doors a couple of coats of undercoat to cover the minor blemishes, followed by a couple of coats of satin finish gloss. I bought some cheap replacement handles yesterday too. Sadly the original Edwardian ones are too badly dinged and messed up to keep. These cheapo brass ones will see us through until we see something we really like.

So after filling the cracks in one side, flipping the door over, pinning the split, filling, sanding an applying one coat of undercoat, the door looks like this. Already a huge improvement on how it looked before, and there's a way to go yet.

People

Sometimes, people can move you to tears with their compassion and their generosity. Then there are those other times where they make you want to weep for an altogether different reason. Their selfishness, ignorance, and arrogance.

I had to go out today. A dream weekend for me is one where I pull up in front of the house on a Friday night and don't have to go out again until Monday morning. Or at the earliest, Sunday night. But this weekend I discovered the nails I'd bought for putting the floorboards back down again were way too big, I was on the verge of running out of filler, and we hadn't bought any snacks with this week's shopping so Friday night had already been a traumatic, snack-free zone and I couldn't face Saturday night being the same. Gritting my teeth, I set off out the door to a series of irksome encounters that proved over and over again how selfish people can be.

It started innocuously enough. The roads around Whalley Range and Chorlton were busy with Saturday afternoon traffic and, as always, heavily parked. Being the patient, considerate chap I am, I spent a lot of time waiting beside a parked car for the oncoming vehicle to come through. I was always taught that it was manners to acknowledge such courtesy with a small wave of the hand, but one after another I received no such acknowledgement. The drivers didn't even nod vaguely in my direction. Or look. Time after time there was no hint of recognition that I had put myself out and waited for them, rather than barging through and forcing them to stop. During the whole journey I didn't receive a single wave.

First stop B&Q, for those smaller nails and that filler. Clearly the Chorlton branch didn't expect to be busy on a Saturday afternoon, as they had only one till operating. One till with a queue of six people. I selected my goods and returned to the till, where the queue had dwindled to four. On the other side of the store a guy shouted over that he was opening another till, whereupon a couple who had been approaching the first till veered off to make use of that one. Not a glance at those of us already queuing. No hint that they might let anyone at the end of our queue precede them in their desperate hurry to pay. As it happened, it made no difference to me. Of the four people in front of me two proved to be together, so by the time I'd have arrived at the newly opened till I would still have been second in the queue. But, you know, it's the principle. The British are supposed to be a nation of queuers and intrinsically understand the rules. Even that bastion of civilisation is being chipped away by the me generation. In more hot-blooded countries people have been killed for queue jumping.

Out in the car park the space I'd parked in had become a drive-through. As I opened the car and deposited my bag on the back seat, another car rounded the corner of the building. He had a choice of a dozen or more spaces in the row in front of me and I'll let you guess which one he chose. Even though he could see I was preparing to leave.

Next stop Morrison's, for the snacks. As I walked along the snack aisle I saw something incongruous among the crisps, Doritos, bombay mix and Twiglets. A joint of beef. Someone had clearly changed their mind, and rather than walk the vast distance of four aisles to return the beef to the chiller cabinet, they had simply dumped it on the nearest shelf. How long would it sit there before being found by a member of staff? And having found it, would they return it to the beef counter? Its sell-by date intact, but having reached room temperature for perhaps several hours, this will be, for someone, one of those cold purchases that inexplicably goes bad long before its due date. Or worse, leads to a case of food poisoning. All because some ignorant sod couldn't be bothered to put it back where they found it.

Finally, leaving Morrison's, I had to back out of my parking space into the main exit lane. A few yards back, an elderly lady waited with her indicator flashing to take my space once I'd vacated it. Did Chorlton's finest shoppers wait patiently behind her for the few seconds it would take me to complete my manoeuvre? On this day of almost complete selfishness and ignorance, I think you can work out the answer. No, they pulled past her, forcing the incoming traffic to stop, and making it extremely difficult for me to see whether or not it was clear to reverse. But they didn't worry about any of that. What's important is what they want. To get out. To get home. There's no-one else who also wants to get out and home. Or at least if there is, they're not as important. They're OTHER people. The ones we don't think about. The ones we don't even look at.

Friday Five

1. Last party you went to?
Ian's 50th. His local had asked him what he wanted and he said "Armarda" (a local band) so they arranged it, and we all had pride of place on the platform in the main room. Great night.

2. Do you pee in the shower?
What a strange question. Of course. Doesn't everybody? ;o)

3. Have you ever fired a gun?
Yes. Started with an air rifle when I was 14, shooting targets and cans in the back garden. When I went up to Uni I spotted a shooting club and thought it would be fun. They used .22 rifles, but after one session I decided I couldn't get on with all the strapping and paraphernalia they made us use. I didn't go back.

4. Where do you call home?
Whalley Range, Manchester. It's the third time I've lived here and this time (I hope) is for keeps. Or at least as long as either of us are fit and healthy enough to live in a large(ish) house and keep it up.

5. What's your favourite board game?
The one I've played most often would have to be Monopoly, but I used to enjoy Cluedo too. We went through a spate with Trivial Pursuit (around the same time everyone else did) but it was never a favourite. As a kid, I loved Ludo and Snakes and Ladders too. I was a bit of a board game nerd in my twenties, and bought loads of interesting-looking new games like Kensington, 2001, and one I can't remember the name of that had stackable pieces which could move one square for each level of the stack. None of them ever really took off in a big way and I gave up trying to find someone to play with after a few years. Sad but true :(

The 60-year-old Baby

Baby has been in the news this week. She'll be 60 on Saturday. Why am I excited? Well Baby, more properly known as the Small Scale Experimental Machine, was the world's first stored program computer, and so is the logical ancestor of every single computer on the planet, including the one you're using to read this.

Ten years ago, for Baby's 50th anniversary, a bunch of enthusiasts led by the men who originally worked on the project built a replica of the machine using all original parts. It's now on permanent display at MOSI. At one of our last-ever Engineering Conferences, one of the project members gave us an entertaining talk about the rebuild, the fun they'd had and the lengths they'd gone to to find the original parts to use. When Baby was first assembled, money was tight (when was it ever NOT tight for British science?) and they scrounged bits from all over, including buttons from Spitfire cockpits to use on the console. Naturally in 1998 these were pretty hard to come by! They managed it though. If you get chance, go and see Baby. It is a WORKING replica, and it's quite a challenge to think of a program you can write in only 32 instructions - the limit of Baby's memory space.

There's another interesting link that stems from this project. The next machine to be built in Manchester, developing the architectures and ideas used in Baby, was the Manchester Mark I. Two of the Mark I team - mathematicians Conway Berners-Lee and Mary Lee Woods - would later marry, and their son Tim Berners-Lee would go on to invent the World Wide Web.

I listened to the Radio 4 coverage of the anniversary today, on which the presenter mentioned that Baby didn't use transistors because they'd only just been invented and were very unreliable. Instead, the scientists used valves - much more common and reliable in those days. I was amused that he then had to go on to explain what valves were! Makes me feel old, realising that there are now more people in the world that have never heard of valves than have.

Clever photo meme

Ooh I *love* this. From tvor's blog (and she got it from somewhere, so the thread stretches on) a photo meme using Flickr...

The Rules:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker).

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favourite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favourite colour?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favourite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favourite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name. (or just your own name if you've not got a flickr account)

Save the photo after you've created it and then load it into Blogger in the usual way (you'll need to resize it some). Here's mine:

All systems stop

Our plumber arrived this morning to take off the old radiators. A simple enough job, you might think, but I've been fooled by such thoughts before. There's always a frozen joint or a corroded bit of pipe to trap the unwary, and the last time I tried to do this for myself we had to put up with a weeping crack for weeks. I vowed there and then to leave such things to the professionals, so here he was.

Removed in a jiffy (to reveal some truly hideous 1970s "pine effect" wallpaper) I felt comfortable calling the plasterer to fix a date. Had I been more of a project manager, I could have dovetailed these two jobs nicely together. But we know the score on that one, so I'd done things serially. As a result the plasterer has now entered a busy period. He can't fit us in until July 4th, so the whole project has moved back three weeks. Still, I can't approach home projects with the same level of planning (and stress!) associated with work projects. They don't, except in rare circumstances, have deadlines, so we'll take the three weeks delay and use it to do something else :o)

Rain stops work

After yesterday's DIY success, today's scheduled task was decidedly more mundane: applying woodstain to the patio doors to complete the ambient patio-and-conservatory look of burnished mahogany.

The Lords of the Cumulonimbus had other ideas though, and as I stepped out onto the patio in my painting duds with stirrer in hand, a few drops fell splashily onto my ever-baldening pate. I stepped back inside sharpish. Never let it be said that I'm a determined and weather-defying wielder of a well-loaded brush. No, the slightest excuse is enough for me, and even though the rain passed over in a few minutes the sun that followed it was sufficiently strong for me to declare the task void for the day.

I busied myself instead with a few more chapters of Rebecca - the book club book for June - and followed this up with chopping the chicken and veg for Nikki as she prepared a chilli chicken dinner for the four of us. And then, as it was Father's Day today, I indulged myself with the director's cut of Blade Runner, which neither of the girls had seen before as far as I could tell.

This has long been at the top of my list of favourite films, but for some reason I watched it today with a more critical eye than usual. The story is set in 2019 and the closer we come to that date, the more far-fetched the image of "futuristic Los Angeles" becomes. I've written before on the dangers of predicting the future. I guess when Blade Runner was made (1982), 2019 sounded sufficiently far into the future to be credible. Now it's not much more than ten years away, flying street cars and genetic designers creating snakes and owls (not to mention humans) from scratch seems laughable. We're only just on the verge of creating the very first lifeform from man-made DNA, but it'll be a bacterium of some sort, not an owl. And off-world colonies? We were closer to that in the 1970s than we are now. Note to self: if I ever write any hard science fiction, make sure it's set at least a hundred years in the future. At least I'll be dead by the time it's proven wrong.

The old film still manages to move me at the end though, with Rutger Hauer's impeccably-delivered line: "I've ... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like ... tears ... in the rain. Time to die." It's worth watching just for that.

Wired!

Having (finally!) worked out the correct wiring sequence for the new sockets, today was the day to put it into action.

I pulled back the second spur cable I'd laid last week and connected it between the two new sockets. This meant I could fully wire up the right-hand socket as at this point neither its incoming nor outgoing cables were connected to the mains. With everything ready for the final connections, I cut the power to the downstairs ring (having first ensured the channel to the first new socket was wide enough to take two cables before I left myself with no power to drill a wider channel, and boiled the kettle for a pot of tea).

Deciding which of the two cables leading to the original socket was the one I needed to pull back required some assistance from Nikki - to see which one wobbled when tugged - but having selected the right one, disconnecting it from its old position and wiring it up to the first of my new sockets was a doddle. I took time out from the job to feel smug and have a cup of tea before tackling the final connection: from the second new socket back to the original socket whose incoming connection I'd just "borrowed."

Knowing that no job is EVER as simple as it appears, I should have saved my smug feelings for later, because I was now faced with two problems.
(1) the channel to the old socket was even tighter than the one I'd been worried about before, and pulling out one of its cables hadn't really helped at all.
(2) the floorboard I'd lifted to gain access to this socket was just slightly more than an arm's length away from the wall, and hence quite awkward to work with.
Try as I might, I couldn't get the new cable up into the channel from underneath, and I couldn't push the gash piece of cable I'd been using as a pull-through down from the socket to the underfloor void. Even knocking out all the plaster from beneath the socket didn't help. There was something behind the skirting board blocking the channel.

I had another cuppa while I pondered the problem and then hit upon the obvious solution: Nature's toolkit. In the shape of a wire coat-hanger. Untwisted and straightened out, it shot down the channel like a rat down a drainpipe. With the hook of the coat-hanger hooked over the grommet and the twisted end bent over to take a piece of strong twine, I tied the coat-hanger to the new incoming cable and pulled it all back. With my arm jammed under the floor up to my shoulder to give a bit of gentle assistance from below, the cable snaked slowly up through the constricted channel and popped out into the box. Until it appeared I hadn't even realised I'd been holding my breath.

The old socket was swiftly wired back up and with only the briefest of frissons I flicked the power back on. The phone beeped, the radio came on and the cooker flashed 00:00. All was well. And this time, my smugness didn't fade.

A day of quiet satisfaction

One of those days when things just feel right. It has its own slow, measured beat and whatever you do, things turn out well.

I started the day helping Natalie move out of halls. It only seems like last week since I was carrying stuff in for her and here I was carrying it out. Only - as is always the way - there was much more to bring out than there had been to take in. I can't believe she's already completed her first year at Uni. Time slips away from you when you're not watching. Another era begins in a few weeks when she gets the keys to her new digs. Somewhere - hopefully - that will be "home" for a couple of years. Alongside the two other homes she already has. Three homes is more than enough for anyone, I reckon.

By early afternoon I'd finished the design document I'd been working on. Ahead of schedule, so I could revel in one of those lazy Friday afternoons when you can savour the approach of the weekend and pretend you don't have a care in the world.

And then, as I listened to the measure tones of Carolyn Quinn on the PM show, came the best news of all. That Ireland had voted NO to the EU Lisbon Treaty (aka a Constitution By The Back Door). Well done to the Micks and Paddys. One of the few countries to actually give its populace a chance to express an opinion and they got it bang on. Brown and Blair should forever hang their heads in shame for not allowing us the referendum they promised in their manifesto pledge (going back on manifesto commitments should be a criminal offence) but in the end Ireland has done our work for us. Hopefully that'll be an end to it, although I suspect there'll be a lot of wriggling and weasel words from Brussels to get through yet. Apparently some of the institutions and procedures that the Treaty calls for have already been implemented ahead of ratification. Typical European disdain for due process - steaming ahead with it anyway because a handful of Eurocrats think they know what's best for us. These should all be dismantled now, but do you really think they will be? The French are not exactly well known for sticking to the letter of the law.

Environ...mental

In the news recently - a pensioner prosecuted (and fined) for putting a tea bag in her regular bin, instead of with the garden waste.

This madness isn't restricted to the home. Here in my office we've had our bins taken away. Another "good corporate citizen" initiative that looks good while achieving very little, and making everyday life just that little bit harder. We now have to march halfway across the office to the "recycling point" and decide which of two bins to put our rubbish in - recyclable material or landfill. So off I stroll with my little parcel of lunch detritus. Two apple cores, two Babybel cheese skins (purple wax) and a banana skin. All into landfill. Yet the majority of it could be composted, so where's the "green" in that? And after the above incident with the tea bag we're told we shouldn't throw food waste into landfill because it gives off methane (a Very Bad Greenhouse Gas, children), so where's the "green" in THAT?

The bins are clearly marked, but on the evidence to date people are clearly confused as to what's recyclable and what isn't. Even with the help of the little pictures on the bin lids (God help us…it's like being back in primary school), folk are still tossing their recyclable plastic cups from the drinks machine into the landfill bin.

Now I know this might sound elitist and snobby, but the people who work here are supposed to be of above average intelligence. We only recruit graduates, and everyone is busy designing high-powered systems for use by central and local government and key financial institutions. And yet, even with the aid of pictures, some of these geniuses still can't work out whether a plastic cup should go left, or right.

I give up and return to my desk. Via the gents, since having carried my parcel over to the bins my hands are rather damp and sticky. Still it could be worse. I could be the one sifting the contents of the bins into the right piles for different recycling plants. Or searching through the landfill bin for misplaced cups. Someone MUST be doing this, right? They can't simply be chucking the bags into a skip. Can they?

Sorry?

Been a while since I saw any licence plates worth commenting on, and then in the traditional manner of buses, two came along at once.

The first on my visit to Slough this week: V60 RRY. Only it was spaced with the V out on its own and from a distance it read: V SORRY. Wonder what the owner was sorry about?

The second I spotted in the office car park on my way out: M30 HMY, again spaced out - somewhat illegally - as M3 OH MY (me oh my), which although mildly amusing did strike me as a bit pointless (don't they all?), even if it was attached to a BMW M3.

It's called a what?

Our recent trip to the Lakes with mates (travelogue still waiting to be written up. I know, I know) held a mystery. Walking along the beach at Seascale, we saw a large number of these either drifting about in, or resting beside, rock pools. The photo gives no clue as to size, but it's about the same as a small clementine.

Ritchie speculated that it might be a sea urchin skeleton, but despite having similar markings I thought it was the wrong shape for that. So I saved one, intending to research it later. This isn't the one I saved. Sadly that one went pop when I bent over to collect another memento of our visit. I'm a bit of a magpie when walking on beaches. Trying to find a replacement for that first specimen was a task, as many of them had been pecked to pieces by marauding seagulls.

In the end, and quite out of the blue, it was Natalie who discovered what the mysterious creature was. With a breathless phone call, and in the midst of much laughter, she told me. It's a sea potato.

The ultimate irony of that will be lost on most of you but trust me: it's too funny.

Feeling congested

So it looks as though Manchester will be getting a congestion charge scheme after all. Not until 2012 or thereabouts, but with the amount of bribery subsidy on offer from the government, it's looking likely. The ten local councils all have to vote on it too, but since 7 out of 10 have already declared themselves in favour, there's no hope there either.

No word yet on what the scheme will mean for residents, although a local pundit on the radio today suggested that only 30% of the local population would end up paying. By this I think he meant many people will be able to "avoid" the charge by using public transport (which until they extend the tram system both South and East won't be an option for either of us, and unless they install guards on every tram to protect commuters carrying laptops from marauding hoodies I wouldn't use even if the routes were in place) or travelling outside the charge hours (7.00 to 9.30 in the morning and 4.30 to 6.30 in the evening - again not really an option for us).

We live inside the M60 orbital, so presumably leaving this area in the morning and heading out of town won't incur a charge, but if I were to be working at home and giving Nikki a lift to work, I suspect I'd incur a £2 fee per day simply for returning home from Northenden, and if I'm going into the office too, I'll pick up a charge when I leave the orbital and head into town from the other side. Sheesh.

An opposition pundit pointed out that drivers already raise £45 billion of revenue a year in one way or another, and this is just another tax on the poor motorist. With the prospect of a change in government in a couple of years' time, maybe this will all be scrapped. Or maybe by the time it's implemented everyone will be so hacked off with the cost of driving there'll be a mass non-payment protest like there was with the poll tax. A lad(*) can dream.

*Use of the word 'lad' not meant to imply age restriction. No warranty implied or given. Interpretation subject to status. Terms and conditions apply.

A day for DIY #2

Forecast fine for today so I leapt into action after morning coffee to apply a coat of woodstain to the conservatory.

Despite the previous owner having told us it should be done every year, I don't think he ever did it. Either that or he used some naff hummus-muncher's compound that's kind to the environment but doesn't last five minutes. Whatever the reason, the woodwork looked decidedly grey after only 18 months, so I took my brush firmly in hand and my swizzle stick in the other (for stirring, you understand) and off I went.

Three hours or so later, the edifice was glowing a deep mahogany brown and I was glowing a slightly less attractive shade of red since the sun had reached and passed its zenith and the day was more than a little warm.

By way of a break, and because it was slightly cooler indoors than out, I then took my courage in both hands and attempted to refit The Brackets. This was not a cool job. Either physically or emotionally. But after much cursing, and an interim abortive selection of yet another wrong fixing (even though supposedly designed especially for medium weight tasks in a traditional brick wall) I did prevail.

Just with The Brackets though. By the time I got through with them, I didn't trust my temper with the Actual Pole. Not to mention The Finials which, being glass screwed into brass, tend to fall apart at the slightest provocation. No. Not today. Calm, calm, calm.

A day for DIY

I could have called this post "string theory," as I spent much of the morning working out how to string together the new sockets in the (new) lounge. [Aside: I confuse myself with the name of this room in its interim state. I guess it's still "the dining room" at the moment, since it hasn't changed function yet, and we're still lounging in the old lounge, but it's also occasionally referred to as the new lounge, which is also correct in its own way, since we can't use it as a dining room while it's in the process of being refurbished]

After an inspiring suggestion from Annie I realised it would be quite simple to incorporate them into the ground floor ring rather than spur them off from existing sockets, but this suggestion came too late to avoid me laying two lots of cables across the room (using the sub-floor space as described earlier) where only one would have been needed had I thought of it earlier. Still it's a much better solution all round, so the next time I'm in there I'll be pulling one of those cables back and connecting it between the two new sockets.

I also made a start on my third attempt to erect Nikki's curtain pole. There has been an abortive second attempt using a fixing that proved useless. Its uselessness was not apparent until after I'd tightened it up in the hole though, whereupon extracting it necessitated the removal of a large section of wall along with it. Many expletives were expleted. Explicitly. Today I began the process of filling the hole back up again prior to attempting to refix the brackets with more suitable fixings.

I love old houses, but I do NOT love the walls that come with them, with their crumbling plaster of unknown depth, and extremely hard bricks that cause drill bits to draw childish patterns in the plaster as they skate across their surface.

Friday Five

1. What's your weather?
Overcast. Forecast is rain for this morning, brightening up in the afternoon. I'm not usually bothered, but today I'd planned to give the conservatory a coat of woodstain, so I'm holding off for this afternoon. Doesn't LOOK much like rain at the moment thoughbut.

2. Where are you on your way to?
Downstairs to get another coffee (you might have guessed I'm writing this on Saturday morning - does that count as a Friday Five? LOL).

3. Are you good with directions?
Yes. As long as I know where I'm directing someone too, naturally.

4. Do you know your neighbours?
Haven't we had this one before? I know 13 out of 15 of the closest neighbours and socialise with 6 of them on a regular basis (the ones that like to socialise).

5. What do you smell?
The coffee I just fetched. The fresh morning air coming in through the study window. And, when I go downstairs, that funny soil smell I told you about before (but getting fainter now).

First fix fire

Our fitters came today to rip out the 1950's monstrosity and prepare the chimney breast for plastering, and to install the gas. I may have mentioned this before, but the surveyor had told me these Edwardian houses with suspended floors had little "hatches" in the floor so tradespeople could crawl about underneath to do their work without spoiling the line of the floorboards.

Very enterprising, even if it did give me a visual of a small boy climbing up a chimney.

He'd hunted for the hatch and concluded that it must have been under the stairs before the downstairs khazi was fitted, but after he left I discovered it at the far end of the kitchen. True to his word the fitter disappeared in a subterranean direction. This turned out quite serendipitous, as it meant he had to crawl past the point where the old boiler was installed. And where there's a boiler, there's gas. So he had a ready-made supply to tap into, and "all" he had to do was run the pipe along the rest of the kitchen, through the hall, and elbow into the new lounge. Simple. I wouldn't have done it though.

Meanwhile his lad was ripping out and making good, leaving a fireplace looking something like this:

The bags of rubble are for back-filling, which ensures the heat from the fire doesn't disappear into next door. The whole job only took a couple of hours (ripping out alone would probably have taken me a whole weekend) but left the house with an unmistakable smell of old soil. Couldn't work out if this was coming from the underfloor area, stirred up by all the crawling about, or from all the fine soot that had been knocked out of the hearth.

This evening we were treated to a visit from our friend Christine who lives in Winnipeg. We met up with her for a drink in the club and she brought along a couple of friends - the parents of Andy Whyment who plays Kirk in Coronation Street - who proceeded to regale us with behind-the-scenes tales from the studios and also from Soapstar Superstar, which Andy famously appeared in a couple of years ago alongside Richard Fleeshman.

An eventful trip to the smoke

Normally my train journeys to the smoke are very mundane. Read the paper on the way down, do the crossword on the way back, or sit with my laptop open working, writing, or playing cards. Either way, I'm in a world of my own and that, for the most part, is how I like it.

Today was a little different.

On the way down, I was joined at my table by a pair of golden boys - businessmen with their trademark cropped grey hair, loud ties and stripey shirts, who proceeded to spend the rest of the journey jousting with each other to see how many buzz-phrases they could cram in to the smallest sentence. I wish I'd had my Buzzword Bingo card with me, cos I'd have scored a full house in no time. We had downsizing, going through the process, utilising, pushing the envelope, empowerment, game plans and leveraging galore. If I'd been offering extra points for combination play I'd have won the lottery.

Anyway that's not the main point of my story. What really made this a journey to remember was the return trip, when I was again joined at my table by two people. Young women this time, and they had a third friend who elected to sit across the aisle from the first two rather than squeeze in around the table.

I kept my head buried in the crossword to start with, looking up occasionally to answer questions on the location of the loo and the train shop. And did they sell drinks. And when would we be getting into Manchester. And did I do this trip often.

When they returned from the shop with three small bottles of coke and proceeded to extract a litre of Bacardi from their handbag (can you have a collective handbag?) I had a gestalt realisation that I wasn't going to be finishing the crossword this time round. Sure enough their conversation became ever louder and more bawdy as the trip progressed, interspersed with the odd "sorry" from the girl on my right - who I later learned was Chris - as she kept nudging me with her elbow. Chris it was who first failed to work out how to lock the toilet door (there are instructions posted on the inside, but they must be fairly incomprehensible to most folk, as not a trip goes by without someone pressing the toilet alarm instead of the "unlock" button), and was walked in on in the middle of ... err ... proceedings by a young man, causing an explosion of giggles from all three. During the course of the journey one of her mates also failed to decipher the mystery of the lock, and was also walked in on by another, different, young man.

The three of them were off to sample the delights of the Greater Manchester conurbation, in the shape of three of Bolton's finest lads they'd hooked up with via t'Interweb. This coincidence having given us a common frame of reference, the remaining hour of the journey passed in shared conversation, which eventually incorporated the other two occupants of our section of carriage - a Mum with two (very) young children in tow and a single woman who initially appeared tempted by their offer to seek a fourth mate from Bolton if only she would accompany them on their sojourn to Moon Under Water. Name of establishment not an instruction for submarine exposure activities, lest there be any doubt.

By the end of the journey the six of us, and just about anyone else who happened past, were all behaving as if we'd known each other all our lives. Stories had been shared, jokes exchanged, as well as promises to let us all know how they got on with the modern equivalent of a blind date. We parted at Piccadilly with hugs and smiles and wishes of good luck, and I was left marvelling at how a normally boring trip had been transformed by the liberal splashing of a bit of Bacardi and bonhomie.

Here be workers

Busy day here at Chez Digger. After our recent break-in I decided our alarm system needed a couple of minor upgrades - a PIR motion detector in the hall (together with an alarm panel upstairs so we can activate/deactivate without setting it off!), and a shock sensor on the window used for said break-in.

We had the security firm install a couple of infra-red-activated lights too, down the side of the house where it's dark, there's plenty of tree cover, and it's way too easy for someone involved in nefarious activities to lurk undetected. If they try it now they'll be blasted with several hundred watts of arc light.

While the alarm man was crawling around in the attic finding a power supply for these lights, the freezer man arrived. You'll remember it was playing up before we went off to the Lakes. It took him about a minute and a half on his initial visit to discover the problem - the heater element had burned out, meaning the auto defrost function wasn't working. The consequent frost build-up forced the poor compressor to work overtime and still fail to keep the temperature down. This meant (a) he had to order a part and (b) we'd have to defrost the freezer (which we did on Saturday).

So his task for today was to remove the burned out element and fit the new one. A tough job apparently, as the element has to be carefully "threaded" through the fins of the freezing unit. Clever stuff this - the heater comes on once a day to blast off any frost build-up on the freezing element - which then drips down the back onto the compressor and evaporates.

"This is the hardest part of my job," said Mr Freezer Man, "these are really difficult to fit. Luckily they're extremely reliable, so I don't have to do this very often."
"There's a certain irony," I rejoined, "in you telling me how reliable they are while you're fitting a replacement."

BBQ 2008

Sure enough, the weather god pissed on us today. If we'd held the barbie yesterday, as normal, we'd have enjoyed glorious sunshine with enough fluffy white cloud cover to avoid any serious sunburn. Today, the only thing we were in danger of was rust.

As a result of the weather only around half as many people turned up, so the food was quite heavily over-catered. And, ironically, none of it was barbecued. Thank heavens for our hostess's large oven. At least the kids had their hot dogs, so all was right with their world.

The quiz quizzed and the rain passed over just in time for a half-hearted three-legged race, but the day had a dampness to it that went beyond the rain. Tomorrow being a work day, many people started drifting away around 8pm, and as usual once a party loses its critical mass it turns into just another bunch of people sitting around drinking.

Even the karaoke wasn't up to much this year. Last year we were singing until 3am. Today, with only two-and-a-half good singers and no-one else much interested, we limped along with it for a desultory hour or so and then gave it up.

The end of an era? I don't think so. We've decided to "book" the barbecue weekend in advance next year so everyone can plan around it, and it'll be back to its normal Saturday slot.