<<Return to My Diary

June
30 - Up around 8:30am. .walked. . spent most of the day working in the back garden mowing the lawn, trimming hedges, etc. As usual I spent an absurd amount of time cutting up all the cuttings into small compostable pieces. HAD to call it quits around 4pm because my hands were so tired I could no longer operate the secateurs. . walked . . drank a cup of red wine while cooking up a carrot, potatoes, peas, onions, tin of steal and kidney in gravy, stew. Ate a couple of bowls full with four pieces of bread and butter. . TVd . . BB called briefly. . TVd the whole evening away actually very happy not to turn the PC on at all today.
29 - Up around 9am. .walked. . PCd . .JK popped in for chats and a cuppa . .

PCd but sick of it. I'm utterly utterly burned out and SICK of sitting at the PC labouring over these damned videos. Today was pretty much a tipping point. If I never touched a PC ever again, that would be just fine the way I'm feeling with it all. :o(
28 - Up around 9am. .walked.
27 - Up around 9am. .PCd over coffee and cigarettes and actually ended up working out the chapter breaks for the Paddys DVD. . walked in a hint of drizzle . . PCd. and several hours later had the cover done and the finished DVD ready to recompile as long play. Set it running somewhere around 2pm. . ate ham and mayo sandwiches with crisps and some unpleasantly 'gone soft' biscuits (because I'd forgotten I'd put a Mr Kipling tart in the biscuit barrel!). . lay down to nap at getting on for 4pm only to have two wrong number phone messages, one sales call and then a collection plastic sack pushed through the letter box, which had Sally getting all loud! So much for napping! :o( Gave up and got back up around 5pm. . TVd until around 7pm when the PC finally finished the recompile. Burned a couple of discs and printed the covers. It's good to get that one out of the way. That's the last of the 'dedicated to one group' discs done I think. Just all the odds and ends to cobble together into a few discs now. 'Just'?!!!!!!!! Ugggh! I'm sick and tired of it all. :o(
26 - Up around 9am. .walked. Felt increasingly fed up and 'down' as the day wore on . . PCd working on editing the Paddy's Whiskers DVD chunk. . ate corned beef and mayo with crisps . . napped until the alarm around 6:30pm. Woke still feeling down and tired. . set the PC running to compile the finalised 'chunk'. . TVd. . cooked and ate a small tin of Mum donated salmon with chips. . . touched base with BB . . PC finally finished compiling around midnight! . TVd/PCd briefly until bed around 2am.
25 - Up around 10am!!. . walked late . . .PCd a bit of this and did a little maintenance on my overflowing hard drives and committed some of the stuff to JUST the external hard drive, to give me enough space to keep going for a while. . ate mayo and corned beef sandwiches with two bags of crisps. . JK called to touch base . .burned copies of discs . . napped. . Woken by an old lady phoning to say how appreciative she was of my 'Pebbles on The Beach' DVds which she'd borrowed to watch from JK! That was awkward - from asleep, to trying to hold a 'sressful' conversation with someone I don't know, in seconds! . .walked and carried on out to JKs for chats, coffee and to let him have a bunch of the latest discs to watch. . back home by around midnight. . touched base with BB . . ate kipling apple tarts and bowls of cornflakes. . TVd until bed around 3am.
24 - Woken by Sally around 8:20am . .PCd and set it recoding the Tone Valley Jazz disc into long play .. walked . .Sis1 called into Mums to visit, so popped up for chats and coffee as the machine continued to process!. .eventually back to find it STILL processing!! Eventually after around four hours it was done. Ran Mums DVD lens cleaner through the second PC but to no avail! Guess that drive is done for. :o( . ate bacon sandwiches. . napped but only for a short time until woken by Sis1 calling . . Mum and Sis1 popped in for cofee and chats and inevitably to watch some video . . walked and popped in Mums to return her DVD lens cleaner. Carried on out the nasty back roads way to eventually walk the woods. . .TVd . .touched base with BB . . ate a pork pie, grated cheese and salad and then three Mr kipling tarts. . TVd/PCd until bed around 4am. as
23 - Woken by Sally around 8:20am . .walked . . received mail from the trawler dude wanting the footage . . burned discs and delivered them . . ate a banana and then napped. . .worked on the Tone Valley Jazz Band dvd. . all I ate all day was a tin of baked beans with four pieces of bread a butter and a banana!
22 - Woken by Sally around 8:20am . .walked . PCd some more on the trawler vid - at length!. .eventually called it quits on it and uploaded it to YouTube. Fired off an e-mail to the 'trawler race website' saying it was there if they were interested.

cooked and ate chicken chunks with bread and butter
21 - Up around 8am . .walked and carried on down town to the harbour for the trawler race. Good grief - it was only around 10am by the time I got there but the harbourside pubs were already heaving with people massed outside drinking, and everyone everywhere seemed to be walking around drinking from cans! . . uh oh! Something weird going on with the camcorder!! Never had THAT error message repeatedly before!? Putting in a fresh tape seemed to correct it so maybe the tape was sticking somehow?

back via the butcher for four 50p beefburgers again. I can see that maybe becoming a habit . .cooked and ate the burgers. .PCd, transferring the trawler race video to the pc . . .napped . . PCd the night away working on the poor footage (but probably mostly the awkward music samples) until around 4am!
20 - Up around 9:15am! . .PCd a bit of this over coffee and cigarettes . .walked late. .burned discs. .popped up to photocopy covers and drop off the phone wire at Mums. She wasn't in so I just left it hanging on the handrail by the door. . cut my hair with my new hair trimmer for the first time. Ohwww, myyyyyyy, godddd! I can't believe how easy that was and how well it worked. I should have invested in a new one years ago. That's the best haircut I've had in a lonnnng time. It remains to be seen how long it'll work that well and the blades remain sharp, but I guess I only have to get something like four haircuts out of them to have them pay for themselves? Not sure - it's been so long since I had a professional haircut, I'm not sure how much they charge these days! MUST be around a fiver or more. . .drank wine and cooked fried potatoes, onion and sausages. . TVd. . touched base with BB . .TVd/PCd until early. ds
19 - Woken somewhere around 8:50am by what I think was the two loud bangs to announce the lifeboat was going out. Either that or more noise from the workmen in the neighbours garden. .walked. The lifeboat was still in dock so it wasn't that which woke me! . . PCd all day on the 'Border Morris/Heather and Gorse' DVD. .removing the PC setup (modem) from the living room seems to have somehow inexplicably slightly increased the connection speed of my main PC!??. . Mum called at some point to say she'd had news some old cousin of hers had died. I've no idea who it was really . . ate ham sandwiches, crisps and a small packet of Mum donated Maltesers around 5pm while having a look at a test burn of the DVD. . predictably, despite being SO late, I just couldn't stay awake and HAD to go lay down for a bit! Ignored several phone calls and half snoozed until the alarm at 7:30pm . . VERY tired. Skipped the evening walk yet again. . soon ended up back on the PC trying to design a cover for the DVD. . JK called to touch base . . Doing those damned covers (with Paint Shop Pro 7) is SUCH a fiddly time consuming process! Found this one particularly difficult for some reason. Had to 'make up' a large proportion of the main cover image taken from a video frame screen capture, top AND bottom,(everything below the ladies feet / everything above the shop canopies) to be able to get it to fit the square of the CD case in a useable way. . BB called in the middle of things only for me to bite her head off and say 'NOT NOW!' and I'd call her back later. . eventually called it quits, printed a couple out and then recompiled and burned the 'finished' DVD while touching base with BB. . ate defrosted microwaved sausage rolls while 'proof' watching the DVD before eventually to bed after 2am.
18 - Woke around 8:45am. .walked . . PCd and eventually polished off the DVD cover for the Swashbuckle DVD. .balanced my accounts (at length!) for the first time in a couple of months and caught up with bills and paperwork. . left Sally at home around 2pm and headed down town to spend some money!. .strange traffic chaos nearing town. Turned out, there'd been an accident! An old woman pedestrian had apparantly been hit by a HUGE truck carrying tons of chippings! The casualty had apparantly long since been rushed to hospital, but a small-ish pool of blood was visible on the road! :o( It HAD to be serious, the way the police had cordoned off the entire area (despite it being the hub of all roads leading anywhere! Utter traffic chaos!) 'preserving the accident scene', presumably until they knew whether or not she was going to survive? All very nasty. Felt as though I really should have taken a camera out and recorded some of the scenes, but somehow it just didn't feel right to do so under the circumstances. .drew some money out and then toured all the charity shops but found nothing of interest. Bought myself some new camcorder tapes (£7), a new hair trimmer (£20), some 'real' beefburgers and a bone for Sally in the butcher, and then finally a £30 Phillips DVD player in Woolworths (but only because the cheap £20 one I had intended to buy, was only in-stock in pink!!!! PINK!!!!??? Ridiculous. No way could I live with such a thing in my house - unless it'd been even cheaper of course! It's bad enough having to have silver.). . on the way back home, a couple of vans were parked in the car park of the telephone exchange place and the small security door was fastened wide open. Aha - maybe at last I can actually get to talk to someone (I've lost count of the number of times I've rang that doorbell but got no response). At length someone DID appear (I could SO easily have just walked right in) and gave their permission for me to have a rummage in the metal, 'pallet' type container outside which appears to contain all their throw out wire and bits and pieces. Found a small coil of heavy duty (telegraph pole type) telephone wire which will hopefully be long enough to replace Mums old splitting washing line (which appears to be made of the same type of stuff and which she swears by and doesn't want to have to do without) . . cooked and ate four real burgers in buttered Mum donated bread rolls around 4:30pm. .You know - it really has reached the point where I live in fear of eating during the day!! As soon as I eat, I get that weird woozy feeling in my head and just HAVE to sleep. :o( . . napped late until the alarm around 7:30pm . . skipped the evening walk (nasty wind and rain) . . touched base with Mum just to put my mind at ease that she was still alive and not knocked down! . .dismantled and removed the PC #2 setup from the living room and hooked up the new DVD player and then ended up running all my discs through it to see how they looked, and to see if they failed like on Mums (in particular, the 'Run Rabbit Run' clip). They didn't! (Only one I was playing briefly hickuped at one point.) I reckon, that pretty much suggests it is Mums player getting tired rather than any problem with the actual discs I've been burning?

ate a couple of corned beef and lettuce rolls . . PCd a bit of this and then somehow ended up surfing the local newspaper site until finally to bed around 3:30am, only to then toss and turn until well past 4am before sleep. ds
17 - Woke around 9am. . walked . . PCd the Swashbuckle set . . did dishwashing and laundry chores during lengthy processing. .. . set a LP disc re-code going around 3pm. . ate corned beef and mayo sandwiches with crisps . . walked the woods and beach . . tvd until the disc re-code was completed at somwhere round 9pm!!. . burned and popped one up Mums. Ended up getting bogged down in watching a couple of tracks on different DVDs to see how her machine freezes and stutters with them!!! God knows what's causing it. Does everyone who plays them have such problems?!!!! If so - I'll feel a real fool! Mum HAD bought herself a DVD lens cleaner as I'd siggested she could, so I ran that through but to no particular avail. :o( . . touched base with BB . . watched a good portion of the Swashbuckle disc (on the PC) to make sure it didn't jitter 'too' much, being long play as it is. It'll do - after all, they don't move around too much. . . ate cornflakes before bed around 2am. s
16 - Woke around 9:30am. . .walked. . PCd and did laundry . . polished off the discs for Shillito . . walked up the post office to photocopy DVD covers and mail the discs . .ate ham and mayo sandwiches with crisps and the other half of the mum donated chocolate log. s
15 - Woke

PC in the living room failed to play the DVDs!! Ended up actually failing to read the discs at all!! I have a horrible feeling that drive has gone bad.

and half of a mum donated chocolate log. . to bed around 2am.
14 - Woken
13 - Woken by the noise from a workman installing a handrail I think, in a nearby garden

12 - Woken by Sally around 9:10am. .walked late . . left Sally at home and drove in the car to the work place of the guy (father of the drummer I think) who I'd promised the 'MIU' data discs to, to drop off all the DVDs and discs. . Found the place (thanks to looking it up on Google maps last night) and even a nearby parking space without any hassle at all. Awww no! I don't believe it! The place was shut, from today for a week! Would you believe it! I'm denied the little bit of pleasure I would have gained, by seeing the suprised face of the guy I was going to give them to! Bugger. :o( Ended up risking damaging them and just pushed the whole package through the letter box, to drop to the ground amongst the other mail and suffer whatever fate they do. :o( Oh well . . That 'aggravated' my inexplicably persisting, downward heading mood. . returned home to find the 'car tax due' renewal forms in the mail! Well - I guess this really IS crunch/decision time for the car!!!! Am I going to keep it going (at least until the MOT (inevitable failure) in a couple of months) or am I going to scrap it now?! :o( Blimey I feel SO down at the moment - and I can't help but think it has a lot to do with my CONSTANT awareness of my perilous financial position!! :o( EVERY SINGLE THING I do is done with referrence to how much it costs. I even keep putting off having a shower because of the cost of the gas to heat the water! This CONSTANT penny pinching can really grind you down after a while - particularly when exposed to 'normal' life in town, where people have money and just pop in for a cup of coffee or a breakfast somewhere etc etc. . drank a tea cup of red wine and then cooked and ate four sausages in buttered bread rolls . .ended up just sat on the sofa, watching much of the 'Reach For The Sky' film, which was on YET again!. . napped until just before the alarm set for 6pm. . .walked. Passed the cricket club which had up Polling Station notices. Damn - I'm so behind with my paperwork and out of touch with what day it is! Today was the local 'poll' of what residents feel about the port regeneration works which are going on. There appears to be a feeling in some quarters (probably me included) that it's all just being done to line the pockets of some rich developers, etc. The poll had been called (despite resistance and counter 'spin') to find out what the residents REALLY think about certain aspects of it. I wanted to vote. . called in the polling station on the way back with Sally and attempted to cast my vote. Turned out I couldn't because my house wasn't on their voting register!?? . . rushed home, sorted through my pile of unattended papers and established that MY offical polling station was inexplicably all the way down town and not the nearer one!? Aggravating. Had to head straight back out all the way down town to make my vote before the polls closed. It's probably quite normal (I can't recall from previous votings), and I WAS assured so, but it seemed extremely strange to me that the actual 'X's on the forms had to be marked in pencil! . . PCd a bit of this . . touched base with BB . .ate a banana and a couple of kipling apple tarts . . PCd/TVd until daylight before bed.
11 - Woken by Sally around 9am. .walked in the heat . . bit the bullet and decided to head out in the car to do a bunch of shopping for the first time in absolutely ages, largely prompted by now needing more expensive printer ink - again!! . .usual nightmarish hassle of getting in queues of slow moving traffic on 'the one road' out of town - aggravated in the blazing hot sun, by having to put the car heater on, to bleed off some of the heat from the engine because of the faulty cooling system/fan temperature sensor! Like being in a sauna! . . drove to the pet store and filled a trolley with mountains of dog food. To my shock and extreme embarrassment, at the check-out when attempting to pay, my credit/debit card was refused!!!!!????? Eventually figured out it was because the damn thing had simply expired - and because I'm so behind with my bills and paperwork at home, I hadn't yet dug out, signed, and put the new one in my wallet! WHAT a foooool! Luckily had 'some' cash in my pocket, so I put a put a big sack of PAL back on the shelf and just bought all I could afford! . . With absolutely no choice, I headed all the way straight back home, with only the tiniest fraction done, of what I'd intended! Damn. What a waste of petrol money! :o(. . .angrily sorted through all my papers and eventually found my new debit card and swapped it in to my wallet. . stopped for a quick coffee in the garden and a chance to cool down a bit, before heading back out in the mobile sauna (car) to try and do it all over again!! :o( . .hard to imagine it could - but things got worse. Allegedly there had been an accident somewhere, and THE road out of town was pretty much a car park. Sat and fumed (even sometimes with the engine/heater off) for the best part of an hour or so. Hellish.

. . did a BIG shop in the out of town supermarket and bought a little petrol on the way home . . unloaded everything (no mean feat with a 100' garden!) and then ate ham, lettuce and tomato rolls with crisps . . nappped . . walked late . .

requested to remove the 'Cowtown Festival Teddy Bear' video clips from YouTube!!!! :o(

. . touched base briefly with BB . . PCd/burned/printed and eventually succeeded in knocking up copies of the 'MIU live on the harbourside' DVD complete with printed sleeves. Six in total - one for each of the band members as a 'souvenir' kinda (and another copy for me to keep for posterity of course). I've no idea what they'll make of them really - but in my mind, I reckon it'd be a great childhood-keepsake kinda thing, to put in an 'old photos' type box somewhere. For me - the pleasurable part of all this work. Being able to give something like that back. It's THIS bit of the process which I've had in the back of my mind and been aiming for, all along. MIU is just the first, IF I can put in all the work involved. Trouble with it is, a full watchable DVD is a VERY different thing to all the little stand alone clips I've been working on for the YouTube uploads. I'll actually have to revisit the lot and re-do everything to create DVDs as I intend!!!! . .ate bowls of corn flakes in the early hours . . eventually to bed around 3am or later.
10 - Woke around 9am. .walked . .

worked on a TV watchable DVD version of the 'MIU' harbourside performance until well gone 2am.
9 - Back up around 7:30am after probably a total of two hours sleep if that!. .walked. . pcd . .ate ham, lettuce tomato rolls . . .napped. . walked . . PCd touched base with BB . .PCd until around 1am . .ate cheese, onion and ham sandwiches . . to bed around 2am only to have trouble sleeping and toss and turn for over an hour
8 - Woke around 8:30am. .walked. Some 'radio controlled military vehicle' group was all set up in BGdns ready to be giving displays of their models later in the day. Damn. That would have made for yet another neat little video - but I just can't face having to walk all the way back later, and frankly I just haven't the time or hard-disc storage capacity for yet more!! . .PCd and copied some files to the external drive just to enable me to continue and put yesterdays footage onto the PC. I'm SO short of space!!! Definitely need another drive - or several! :o( . Mum called in with food donations etc. Took a bit of a break from the 'video factory' and let Mum watch the unedited footage from yesterday and some other stuff. . PCd the 'official opening' video. . ate Mum donated ham rolls, crisps and spring onions followed by some chocolate. . napped. . skipped the evening walk and got TOTALLY immersed (excuse the pun) in the 'rain' video. Lots of work - but I like that one. :o) I'm not sure I know what's going on with me at the moment - and don't really know how to describe what I'm doing with these videos (is it 'art'? documentary? just plain stupid?), but all I DO know is that I'm more 'in to' doing them than I have been anything else for the longest time, if ever! TOTALLY engrossed in them to the exclusion of EVERYTHING else! I eat if and when I can fit it in - I resist going to the bathroom for as long as I can, until there is a need for running a long computer process, and then go, so as not to waste a second! The garden looks like a jungle, the cupboards are almost all bare, I haven't balanced my accounts for weeks, haven't returned phone calls or replied to e-mails, can't find the time to type my journal, NEVER get enough sleep, etc, etc, etc. I've time for NOTHING else, and there just aren't enough hours in the day!!!!!!!!!!! . . . . touched base with BB . .almost no sleep!!
7 - Woke..walked . .PCd . . left Sally at home and walked to have a look at the 'Cowtown' carnival

Pork roll £3:50!!!

eventually gave up waiting for the procession to return and end, and just headed home. . PCd and knocked off the quick procession video. JK called to touch base . touched base with BB. . .ate microwaved stewed steak with four pieces of bread and butter. . to bed after 1am.
5/6 - Just a blurr of woke/walked/maybe ate a bit/ touched base with BB briefly and then PCd for all the rest of the time!
4 - Woken up at 8:30am by the sound of some alarm or other going off . . ..
3 - Woken by Sally around 8:45am!! . .watched a couple of vids and then PCd a bit of this . .walked . . spent the whole day on the PC yet again! Bitten off more than I can chew. I'm pretty sick of it all now. :o( . . did dish washing chores in between compiling files etc. . cooked and ate a ham ring and chips . . walked . . touched base with BB . . PCd until the early hours again, gradually whittling it all down, but oh SO agonisingly slowly! I calculate even if I kept up this pace (which is impossible), it'd take another week or so to be anywhere near tying things up - and THEN there's the 'what the hell do I put on what DVDs' thing to figure out!!!! s
2 - Woke around 9:45am . .walked and stopped off at the local store for dog meal to keep us going for a bit. Figured I'd buy the local paper just to see if there was any mention of the end of the festival etc. , what with having seen that professional looking lady photographer taking photos all evening. There WAS a whole page devoted to the festival, but all the pictures and much of the commentary was about the crab catching competion on the one day I'd HAD to have a day off and didn't go down! lol . . Oooooer! I've been 'mentioned in dispatches'. The festival organiser was quoted as saying "The thing we were quite delighted with is that a great chunk of the festival is on YouTube thanks to Terry Jones.". :o)

. PCd . . touched base with Mum . . Mum popped in to see the latest and the fireworks videos . . ate Mum donated sausage rolls . .PCd . . napped until the alarm at 6:30pm. .raining. Skipped the evening walk. . PCd working on the fiddly time consuming Car show video . . touched base with BB. .grabbed Mum donated ham rolls after midnight during the finished video compile. Just to process that one video with all the photos and fades took around half an hour - and then that again for the smaller wmv file for uploading to Youtube - and then around fifteen minutes for the upload!!! Sheesh! :o( Still - not a bad result I reckon (although I missed taking one photo somehow!?). . carried on working and threw together the rest of the useable footage of the Majorettes into two videos, just to get that one tied up and out of the way. I never want to have to look at another majorette!. . eventually to bed around 4am.
1 - Woke . .walked in the heat. . PCd. Wow - that all worked out pretty good. I got those fireworks GOooooood! Very pleased. :o)
^Top