The final cupboard

With the electricians booked in for the following week I decided to dedicate my last official day off work - Friday 15 July - as Cupboard Removal Day.

It didn't take anywhere near a day. What appeared to be a very substantial structure proved to be nothing more than a few bits of wood nailed together. Certainly no match for my trusty crowbar. Within a couple of hours the space was looking like a perfect match for the rest of the kitchen.

Behind the plywood carcase, several years of ancient damp wallpaper hung limply from the walls. Blown plaster fell off in chunks. And on the left of the space, the cupboard had offered sanctuary to a run of burglar alarm signal cable, which was the main reason for the demolition taking two hours rather than 45 minutes. I had to unpick it carefully from each shelf, saw it out of the bottom shelf, and avoid breaking any of its fragile core.

Demolition also revealed the strange light switch that had been sited inside the cupboard and for which we have never been able to discern a purpose. My decision to leave it dangling awaiting the services of a qualified electrician (read: someone with a multimeter) later turned out to be the right one, as the electrician discovered it was still live. It isolates the security light over the back door (whose bulb, long blown, has never been replaced).

Diamond geezer

Fresh from the completion of the stair refurb, we were keen to get them carpeted as soon as. The garish red-and-white stripes which we've lived with for 4+ years seemed even less appealing now they were surrounded on all sides by that lovely new oak.

After the fiasco of the front bedroom carpet last year we decided to keep it local, and set off this afternoon for a jaunt to Diamond Millennium carpets which, as we soon discovered, is no longer situated in the rather seedy looking shed opposite Chorlton Park, but has moved to much more salubrious accommodation closer to the cemetery (and, in this incarnation, has employed a sign writer who knows how to spell 'millennium').

We couldn't have been in the shop more than ten minutes before we happened across a remnant in the colour we were looking for, and were assured by the friendly and helpful owner that it would be more than big enough. This soon turned into one of those "too good to be true" moments, as we scoured the showroom for something that fitted our needs more closely. Surely it can't be as easy as this? Half an hour of looking, deep contemplation and talking around the subject later, we finally decided that at that price, if we didn't like it once it was fitted, we'd rip it out and buy another! Yes, the deal was THAT good.

Fitting has been arranged for Friday.

Oil spillage

No, I'm not going to add to the thousands of blogwords written about the accident in the Gulf. We're talking spillage on a much smaller scale here - the oil that's been leaking out of my car since it was about a year old, the sad revelation that you can't even trust the tradespeople you think you can trust, and the unlooked for benefits that can accompany an enforced change of tradesperson.

When I first noticed I was having to top up the oil quite frequently, I mentioned it to my mechanic on my next service visit. I forgot to ask him about it when I picked the car up, and it was a couple of months before it became obvious that it was still using oil. Even so, the loss rate wasn't enough to nudge me into making a special visit to the garage so it was another year before I had the opportunity to mention it to him again. And this time, I remembered to check with him whether he'd fixed it.

"You don't have a leak," he insisted. "Modern engines do burn oil, you just need to keep it topped up."

Being among the 99% of the population who don't understand the first thing about "modern engines" I didn't question this, but carried on adding a pint of oil every 8-10 weeks from that day - probably around the start of 2006 - until earlier this year when the closure of my regular garage forced me to move to another mechanic. Closer, but slightly more expensive.

And it's only about a week ago that it occurred to me I haven't had to top up the oil since. That service was back in February and ordinarily I'd have gone through at least two pints of oil by now. So yesterday, I dipped my stick out of curiosity. The oil level was only one notch below full. In other words, there HAD been a leak after all, my original guy couldn't be arsed to fix it, but the new guy spotted it and put it right without even mentioning it to me, or charging me any extra.

A study in false economy. That first garage may have appeared cheaper, but over the years he cost me around 300 quid in replacement oil that I could easily have avoided.

Mmmmm... leather

A hectic day today with lots of comings and goings. First off, it was another morning on the picket line, so I dropped Nikki off at work early and took up my placard shortly after 7am. The morning passed pretty much the same as Wednesday, except the sky was clearer and we were treated to a beautiful sunrise over the emerging steel skeleton of the new Manchester Police Headquarters that's being built across the road from our office.

After packing up at 10, I enjoyed what is becoming the traditional post-picket Art College breakfast and drove home, arriving in plenty of time to greet Annie and Jamie. They arrived as arranged to shift our old sofas, which had found a new home in Annie's flat. A quick whiz round with the vac and all was ready to take delivery of our new sofas. Rather than give us an approximate delivery time, DFS had told me we were the 10th drop of 12, in a working window of 8am to 4pm. According to my rough calculations this translated into an arrival time of 2.30 for the delivery men. They turned up at... 2.30. Yes. 2.30 exactly. Funny how some things work out exactly as planned when others often don't.
In contrast an extremely late bus delivered Nat to the front door just as the second sofa was coming in. Well, half of it anyway. It had to be split to get through the door, so we brewed a cuppa while the men reassembled it, and then sat on our new pouffes drinking in both the tea and the wonderful smell of the leather until it was time to set off Yorkshirewards to pick up Blythe.

What I was really there for

My heart wasn't in that drinks reception at the awards ceremony last night. I'm not a huge one for small talk with strangers. I drained my Peroni as fast as I deemed polite, bid a professional farewell to Mr Commended with whom I'd struck up that brief conversation, and left.

As I walked out through reception, the real reason for me being there was made plain. The universal reason, I mean. The Serendipity.

For there at reception, a small wheeled travelling bag at her feet, stood a young lady holding a single sheet of A4 and wearing a worried expression. The security man at the reception desk called out, "does anyone know where Handforth is?"

And I, of course, do.

What's more, I know how hard it is to reach Handforth from Oxford Road by public transport. "How much would a taxi cost from here?" enquired plod. I reckoned on about thirty quid, given that my regular journey from home to Piccadilly was around a tenner. Young Lady turned her deepening worried expression on me. "I 'ave come from ze airport," she announced in a charming French accent. "Ze bus driver said it was ze right one for 'Andforth."

What choice did I have? Beyond seeking out the bus driver and beating him to a bloody pulp, I mean. I offered her a lift. It was the least I could do. Some small recompense for being dumped 11 miles north of her real destination by a bus driver who couldn't have given the faintest toss where she needed to be. A way of showing her that not all British men are ignorant oafs.

The young lady - I never did ask her name - put aside any worries she may have fleetingly had about accepting lifts from strangers and picked up her suitcase. The plod on reception tried to reassure her. "He's alright," he said, "he's come from the BBC." Which clearly is no reassurance whatsoever, as I was only visiting.

The journey to the Pinewood hotel in Handforth passed pleasantly enough, with me pointing out local landmarks en route and her explaining that she was from Lille, worked for Tate & Lyle, and was here inspecting food ingredients (or something). I thought it best not to make any quips about EU food regulations. You know. Cucumbers, bananas, that sort of thing. As we drove down the Kingsway a plane overflew us on its final approach and I pointed out how close she had been to Handforth while still at the airport. How we laughed. Who says the French have no sense of irony? No-one. That's the Americans.

"You 'ave no idea 'ow you 'ave 'elped me," she enthused as we pulled up at reception. The right one this time. I smiled. No worries, my dear. It's all good for my karma.

Perfect Saturday

Three hours in the garden. What a fabulous day. But one of those days where the job you intended to do can't really be started until you do another job, and that second job has a third job that needs clearing up first too.

So we cleared away a broken old bench that had collapsed over winter under the weight of a pile of raggedy old pots (and because it was made of chipboard - not the most weatherproof of materials); edged the grass (and as a consequence made a new path to the compost heap), moved the water barrel 4 inches to the left to accommodate the bench we were moving from under the conservatory, threw out all the dead potted plants, moved two other benches so we can start on the border tomorrow and prepared one of the under-bench areas to be sown with grass seed tomorrow.

Feel right satisfied with that. While we were gardening we noticed our neighbour-but-one was busy building a tree house for his new ready-made daughters who arrived a few months ago. What an impressive construction it is. Already, that is, and it's not much more than half finished. As we were chatting he pointed out a square "window" in the gable end which he'd asked his wife to make a stained glass window for. But she told him it's too much detailed work for a play house. Nikki and I had one of those gestalt moments: two minds with a single thought. Carolyn has already made a piece of stained glass that would be perfect for the job. It lived in our downstairs toilet window until the scallies chiselled it out last March. Since then it's been living in the conservatory waiting for us to decide what's best to do with it. And here was our answer.

Sadly I don't have a photo of it in situ that does it justice, so here it is shortly after the break-in, with SOCO's dab dust all over it. Well, would you believe it, the window is already an almost perfect fit for the tree house. With a small rebate and a bit of beading, it will sit beautifully in the gable and cast its glorious blue and orange light over the girls' play for years to come. And it was made by Mummy, so what better resting place for it?

Now we're both showered and rested, we're off to watch a movie. So far, perfect Saturday. It's mac and cheese for tea too, and Nikki's baking a cake. I tell ya, it don't get much better than this.

Holiday!

What a fabulous start to the first holiday of the year. A beautiful sunny day, nothing much on the schedule, a very lazy start - coffee over the puters, leisurely breakfast, a bit of planning for our trip to Wales, then Nikki took Paul for a walk to Chorlton while I busied myself with a web site project that's been waiting for spare time for a few months.

Got a phone call from Nikki around 3pm to enquire whether I'd had any lunch and since the answer was no, we repaired to the Metropolitan for a very decadent late lunch and a couple of pints. I had the Tuscan bean and vegetable pie with home-made chips and peas. Delicious.

Home again for another session on the puters before setting off at 7.30pm to visit the Buzz Club. Chorlton's famous comedy club, which closed in 2004, had recently reopened and once we learned it was on while Paul was here, a visit was a must. Good job we went tonight as it turned out, because the club is closing again and once more tonight was "the last night at the Buzz club." It's been said before but I think the organiser has been disappointed with the turnout this time round, so I think it might really be the final curtain.

We were treated to eight comedy turns. They were a bit of a mixed bag to be honest but overall it was a good night. By a mile the best act of the night was Lovdev Barpaga from Birmingham. His deadpan delivery nailed every single line of his original and funny material, even when he forgot some of it and had to read from his notes! Great stuff. I hope he goes far.

A Fantastic Find

I keep remembering things that happened while I was taking a break from blogging. Towards the end of the outlaws' visit, we made a brief sojourn to the local craft shop so that Shirley could stock up on all those patterns that aren't available over there. While that was going on, I sneaked off to Borders to check out the books and DVDs.

First stop: the bargain 3-for-2 table (I'm such a cheapskate) where I made the find of the decade. Book 2 of the THIRD (and, according to the cover notes and strapline, last) Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Book 2? I hadn't even known Book 1 was out. I'm clearly not spending enough time in book shops.

Twenty years ago, the first and second Covenant trilogies were among my all-time favourites. I devoured them avidly, reading and re-reading the entire series as each new edition was published. I know there were many naysayers around who thought Donaldson's world a cheap imitation of Middle Earth, but I was never one of them. In my view, there's only so many fantasy creatures to go around, so it was entirely sensible that The Land had a people who lived with horses, and giants, and magicians, and a single, powerful, evil overlord - in Donaldson's case, Lord Foul. His narrative style was sufficiently different, his hero even more tentative than Frodo, to make me dismiss suggestions of plagiarism as mere jealousy. I loved the Chronicles, then and now.

Finding that after a gap of twenty years, Donaldson has picked up the story of Linden Avery and returned to the Land centuries after her last visit, gave me a thrill of expectation I haven't experienced for a long, long time. Picking up a copy of book 2 - Fatal Revenant - I almost ran to the fantasy section and soon found a pristine copy of the first book - The Runes of the Earth. On my return home Wikipedia revealed that the Last Chronicles are planned as a tetralogy, with book three expected in 2010 and book four in 2013. That's a long wait, but I know it'll be worth it, and meanwhile I have over a thousand pages to pore over with geeky delight. The only question now is: should I dive right in, or bow to tradition and reread the other six books first?

Abigail's Party

Dress rehearsal for the Players' latest production tonight, so I thought it would be fun for Paul to come along and get snap happy at the same time as I was taking "the production photos." Boy was I glad he agreed.

With new flats in use for the first time, and everyone and their auntie having been "raped" (the Director's phrase) for seventies gear, the set looked really spiffy, and the production as a whole proved to be every bit as hilarious as the BBC One original thirty years ago. Indeed, in keeping with my regular reference to that era on this blog, the reason for staging Abigail's Party was that 2008 marks the thirtieth anniversary of its seminal appearance on the telly.

Without a doubt, the funniest moment for me was when "Ange" (played by Charlotte King) got up to dance with "Lawrence" (played by James Kerr). This girl's comic timing is impeccable, and she totally inhabited the character of Ange. The start of the dance was a pant-wettingly funny moment.

After taking over 200 pix of the event, I flicked over to review some of them before leaving the hall. My camera declared "no valid picture to display." Huh? Unable to work out what was wrong Paul and I returned home, where I discovered the 200+ pictures had been replaced with a single 9MB file with an unpronouncable name, and which Windows refused to move or delete from the memory card. Some sort of corruption had occurred, resulting in the total deletion of everything I had taken. I had to reformat the card from scratch.

Hence why I was so pleased Paul had been there. If not for him, we would have had NO photo record of this cracking production. Thanks, mate! (As a bonus, two of his pix were later published in the local free rag, which gave the production a glowing review)

Only thing is, now I'm worrying when my 2GB memory card will sick up on me again :(

All Miked up

I've had many experiences that prove "it's a small world" and this afternoon was another such. I spent the day in Sheffield and left the office around 3.30pm to catch the early train home.

This is a train that is regularly standing at the station 15-20 minutes before its departure time, so I was waiting on the platform for the doors to be opened when a man walked past me and looked up and down the track as if expecting a different train to be there. As he glanced to left and right I caught sight of him in profile and immediately thought I recognised him, but it wasn't until he turned right around and faced in my direction that I could be sure.

I'd worked with him over twenty years ago in VME support and hadn't seen him since, but it was definitely him. "How's it going, Mike?" I asked casually.

He looked over towards me. There was a moment or two's hesitation and then he broke into a smile of recognition. "Hello!" he said, grinning broadly. "How are you?" We shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, and struck up a conversation. After about five minutes he said, "John Beresford, isn't it." To be fair, I've changed a lot more in those twenty years than he has.

If I was any good at complex mathematics I could, I expect, calculate the probability of meeting someone at random at any given public transport terminus in the UK on any given afternoon. I don't think it would be very high, but no matter how likely it would prove to be it still seems strange when it happens.

Since he too was waiting for the Manchester train we boarded together and spent the hour-long journey catching up. Is it just an accident, or is "fate" sending me these people who have become disillusioned with the computing industry and opted for jobs with less stress? It wasn't long ago that I'd heard news of the guy who had retrained as a long-distance lorry driver and now here was another example of someone who'd turned his back on the frantic pace of life as an IT consultant and was enjoying himself immensely by working as ... a car delivery agent.

Ever wondered how that particular car you ordered from the dealer, who told you it was in the Oxted branch, gets delivered to your local dealership? Someone like Mike drives it there, that's how. Self-employed and working only those hours or days he wants to, he phones his agency and they tell him where to go to pick up a car, and where to deliver it. And then, sometimes, where to go for the next one, and where to drive that. In between, he's on his own, so Mike had pretty much committed the entire rail and bus network of the UK to memory, but also carried with him a random sample of OS maps, a flask of tea, and a supply of fruit.

He was as happy as Larry. A relatively lonely existence it's true, and long hours (he often doesn't get home until midnight), but on the plus side he gets to drive a lot of brand new very fancy motors, sees the country from the open road (poop! poop!) and enjoys a lot of healthy exercise walking between depots and train/bus stations.

We exchanged anecdotes about people we'd worked with in the past that one or other of us had recent news of, shared memories of those we knew who had passed on, and generally caught up. A more pleasant way to pass a train journey I can't imagine, and certainly preferable to having my head buried in my book for an hour. I don't suppose I'll ever see him again but I'm glad I did. It's good to be reminded that there is life outside of IT.