1 - Up around 8am . . walked mostly between drizzle/rain showers. Damn I'm achey and stiff!! :o( . .PCd this . . called the furniture store about my outstanding headboard. They eventually called me back after having spoken with the warehouse to tell me it was down for delivery on Friday - although who can tell when?! . . PCd the site re-vamp ALL day, despite a persistant and nasty headache!!!!! . .ate half a large pork pie, lettuce, tomatoes, crisps and chocolate . .napped . . walked . .PCd yet more. . touched base with BB . . ate bowls of corn flakes . . PCd until early, at which point I figured I'd made enough progress to put much of the site back on line. It's taken ages and as yet I haven't actually re-written any of the out of date content! Spent all this time and effort just re-jigging how it is structured. It should be far more 'modular' now, and easier to 'cut a branch off' if I ever want to, without it all tumbling down. Penalty for that was, it HAS made it bigger with muliple file duplications (which I SO hate!) . touched base with BB while files were uploading . . PCd more and ended up on a live chat with the Telsweb web host until gone 3am, trying to get to the bottom of why the 'FTP/stats' haven't been working for a few days. Apparantly they've moved that side of things to a new server! Well how was I supposed to know if they didn't tell me?! Grrr. as
2 - Up real late around 9:30am . .walked and carried on walking down town to do a quick tour of the charity shops. Sally received 'ooohs and ahhhs' and treats in them all! lol . . PCd and carried on messing around with the site updates - and in particular my webcam page, which I reallly don't know why, but I was determined to get back up and running - and now I've succeeded, I'll probably seldom go on it! lol . .ate corned beef sandwiches with crisps and then some chocolate. .napped until around 7pm!! . . Mum called to touch base. . walked and stopped off at Mums to pick up a bundle of peanut butter jar tops. They should work as coasters under the castors of my new bed. They run SO freely on those varnished floorboards, it's dangerous! On several occasions just getting into bed, I've found myself, bed and all, sailing acoss the room towards the bay windows!!! Scary. Big drop. Embarassing way to die. . PCd . . . Bb called . . PCd more and finally had a go at adding a Paypal 'donate' page to the site. Can't imagine anyone will want to but I can live in hope. Trouble is, as far as I can tell, I can't actually send money to myself with it (I have tried!), so until someone actually does, and then e-mails me to let me know, I can't be sure it actually works. Oh well. Any offers? I've a good £20k to re-coup! lolol Ok - back to reality. .PCd until well past 5am again!!
3 - Back up after less than four hours sleep!! . . walked . . PCd. Re-installed the TV card I took out when I replaced the hard drive, and then messed around playing with CCTV/camcorder webcam options. Amused me to do a high zoom on the church in the distance. 'Just' possible to make out the time on the chuch clock and check it out against the datestamp on the image. lol Little things please little minds. . tidied up the PC room a little before eating Mum donated salmon sandwiches with crisps and some chocolate . . managed to resist the desire to sleep and mowed and strimmed the lawns before brushing up all the fallen Autumnal debris from all the trees laying around all over the place . .dragged the big extension lead down from the garage to plug in so I could use the drill up there. Eventually managed to hang the working fluorescent strip light I'd salvaged from the skip up the road (now sadly gone), on one of the cast iron garage roof supports pretty much nicely overhead the workbench, and hooked it up to a piece of flex and a plug for the extension lead sockets. That'll do nicely for the time being . . walked and back in the dark. .worked in the garage using my new light, and had a go at seeing if I could get at least one of the other ones I'd salvaged, workable using the 'starter' thingy I'd found in one of Dad's jars in Mums garage. Sadly it still wouldn't work. Oh well - one out of three isn't bad. . A couple of nearby resident 'youths' walked down the lane in the pitch black as I was working in the garage (all too noticeable thanks to the clear garage windows and bright fluorescent light). As they walked past, one of them was chanting 'wa**er, wa**er'!!?? You tell me? Was that directed at me, or was it just part of some childish conversation they were having between themselves? I'm SO paranoid about such things these days that my judgement can be questioned. However - 'I' have no doubt that it WAS meant for me. Not for any particular reason (I've certainly had no run-ins or hassle from anyone down here - yet!), but just because that is what brainless young twits seem to need to do these days to feel as though they 'are someone', from what I've experienced. Anyway - needless to say, that had a pretty instant and damaging effect on my state of mind (much greater than I care to describe here! :o( ). All too much like travelling back in time! Indeed - while messing around reconstructing my website of late, I made the mistake of clicking back at my diary archive, to make sure the links worked and just out of interest to see what I was up to this time last year. Big mistake. Nasty. :o( Suffice it to say, the prozac of earlier this year is now definitely completely out of my system - and I'm having a 'much harder time of it' as a result. . PCd experimenting with my wireless CCTV camera as a webcam, and seeing if I could pick up anyone elses in the vicinity (which isn't SUCH a crazy notion as it sounds. All these wireless things you can buy seem to work on only four possible channels, so in theory if anyone nearby had one running, I should be able to pick it up - especially when you consider my elevated position looking out over so many houses. Works both ways of course!). There was maybe just a 'hint' of a signal here and there if I waved the aerial around in different direction, but nothing viewable. . BB called . .TVd . .ate bowls of corn flakes . . to bed after midnight. s
4 - Up around 9am . . wow - my aching knees and back seem to be in a bad way!! :o( Annadin, coffee and cigarettes for breakfast in the back garden . . walked late in a T shirt and sunglasses - not bad for October. :o) A big ship was moored in a slightly unusual position, pretty close by in the bay, so I felt obliged to take a few shots to add to my ahoy pics page. I really could completely fill my webspace with such shots. Always something different to see out there every minute of every day. People wanting a sea view IS understandable. I complain about having to walk such a distance twice a day (I'm really getting worried about my constantly aching knees!), but looking at those pictures, I'd really miss it if I didn't. .received an ansaphone message from the bed people stating that the headboard WOULD be with me tomorrow between 8 and 1. . PCd the pictures (the panoramics I took were useless - makes the ship look all broken and bent - like the Napoli when they were trying to split it! lol) and this, with the camcorder on, acting as a webcam as I did so. Added a couple of captures to my 'old webcam shots' page. . .ate salmon and mayo sandwiches, crisps and chocolate. . napped until around 7pm! . . walked in the dark. The police helicopter, police and coastguard rescue teams were out and about looking for someone. 'That' time of year I guess. . a
5 -
Up with the alarm at 6:30am to give me enough
time to walk Sally and then be at home waiting for my headboard
delivery . . walked. A little chilly but a beautiful morning with
the promise of a sunny day. The big ship in the bay, has snuk
away in the night. Back home just as the church clocks in the
distance (I can hear two from my house - one each in different
directions - and I really like the oldy-worldy feel, hearing them
gives) were striking eight o'clock. .sat on the front step in the
sun for coffee and cigarettes before, determined not to waste the
day just sitting around waiting, did a bunch of chores. Washed
all the dishes, did laundry, vacuuming, tidied up etc, etc.
Eventually the lorry driver called and said they'd be here in ten
minutes. They pretty much were and yayyy - at 10:50am my
headboard was finally delivered. . put it together pretty quick
and got the bedroom back straight. To be honest, I have to say
I'm a bit disappointed in the thing. Yes, it does give the 'look'
I thought I was after, but oh my god, it's made SO cheap! The
brass ball things on the tops of the posts are just sat there not
actually held on at all, and will rattle all loose when you get
on the bed!!! So - I guess I'm gonna have to ram those back on
after wrapping some cellotape or some such around the top of the
posts some time. Stupid little irritation! Worse than that - the
metal bars that actually hold the thing to the bed are made of
such thin flimsy bits of almost flat steel, that they flex SO
much, there is no way you could dream of actually sitting up in
bed leaning on the headboard - and it'll even wobble back and
forth just turning over in bed!!! Cheap (not inexpensive)
rubbish! Guess I'll have to be on the lookout for some small bits
of box-section steel in the nearby skips, and have a go at making
up more sturdy replacements some time. So - it 'looks' ok I
think. Just isn't as practical as it should be! :o( . . cooked
and ate four small burgers in bread rolls for lunch . . accepted
a couple of parcels for a neighbour a couple of doors away who
wasn't in . . napped until around 5pm . .the neighbour called in
to pick up the parcels. . walked the long walk through the woods
. . PCd and finally got round to copying my music collection onto
my external drive and then popped round and loaned it to my next
door neighbour, as I'd promised I would absolutely ages ago . .
BB called . . ate ham rolls with crisps . . to bed around
midnight. s6 - Up at 8am . . walked and back via town. Picked up a cheap and nasty (but useful for the time being) white plastic towel ring for the bathroom for £1 in a charity shop . .pottered around and managed to remove all the old phone line extension wires that had been tacked around door frames and along skirtings and under carpet edges. Should be able to re-use the wire when I start putting in sockets downstairs. :o) . . Mum called in with the paper and food donations and to see the bedroom. Chats and coffee etc until around 2pm . . ate Mum donated ham rolls with crisps and some chocolate . . napped until around 6pm. Woke feeling yucky . . walked . . PCd surfing a bit and then TVd briefly . . ate a couple of Mr Kipling slices . . PCd more and ended up chatting to BB on the PC until gone 4am!!!! s
7 - Woken by Sally failing to get up on the bed around 9am (it's a lot higher than she's used and she needs a bit of a run up) . . walked . . worked under the floor and had a go at instaling the two bulkhead lights I've had laying around for a while. Somehow it just seemed to be 'one of those days' and nothing went right. Another 'five minute job' took all day + !! Even discovered that behind the lightswitch in the hallway for the outside light, the wires were all bare and the main live was actually snapped and only 'just' touching the switch terminal, so I had to do a sudden detour and sort all that out!!! Broke one of the bulkhead light mounts, although it's still useable. To cut a very VERY long and arduous story short, I succeeded in getting a lightswitch and the two bulkheads all working (one in the space under the hall and stairs - one under the living room) and also got a useable double power socket wired up under there - most of the work done by torchlight (until the batteries all ran out in both torches)!!!!. The 'cost' for succeeding in getting that done, was temporarily 'losing' use of half of the very few sockets I have on the ground floor!! The radial circuit for the power sockets was SUCH a spaghetti of thick wires into a junction box, I couldn't easily stuff them all back in and connect them up, given the temporary alterations I'd made to put in the power socket beneath the floor! Damn!!! Only one useable single power socket in the whole living room at the moment!! I guess the pressure is on now to get serious with doing the downstairs wiring. Damn, damn, damn! . .worked through non stop until around 6:30pm before having to call it a day . . showered off the layers of grime, paused for a quick coffee in the garden and then walked, feeling oh SO exhausted. Briefly stopped off at the store on the way home . . finally around 9pm I ate! Ate Mum donated pork rolls and Mr Kipling slices . . BB touched base . . TVd until bed at 11pm.
8 - Woke earlier then up around 7:45am . . walked in a hurry. I need to get back under that floor and sort out what I'm gonna do. Either make temporary hook ups to bring those sockets back into use, or start the destructive work in the living room to put in brand new ones. Ugggh. :o( . .PCd briefly before getting back to the agony under the floor. .
ended up doing a bit of a short cut temporary
botch to the wiring hookups, and had the brainwave of actually
connecting one bit up by just putting a plug on the end and
plugging it into the new double power socket I put under the
floor! Weird but actually not unsafe I reckon - as a temporary
measure. Anyway, that got me out of having to immediately get
bogged down with a lot of work and destruction of the living
room. All pretty much sorted by midday. . messed around lots
under the floor measuring up and trying to plan what sockets and
other types of boxes I am going to be able put in the living
room. As is my habit, it's gonna be a bunch - for powering and
hooking up/interconnecting everything! . . tidied up the mess of
tools I'd gotten in and then finally took a few photos for here.
Clockwise - the first taken from somewhere under the kitchen
looking down the slope towards one of my bulkhead lights below
the front doorish. The tiny access hatch under the stairs is
about half way down to the left. Second pic is of me sitting
there to give scale. Third pic is the unsupported hole in the
wall I opened up, to give access to the under-the-living-room
area. It's a hell of a squeeze, but I can 'just' do it. Measure a
brick and work it out. It's a SMALL hole to get through! That
hole can 'just' be seen in pic1, down by the light on the right.
I punched through under the living room doorway to minimise the
weight above. Last pic is a three photo pan of part of the big
space under the living room. There is a similar, slightly smaller
area under the kitchen diner I have NOT messed with much yet,
because of the unsafe access hole left by workmen in the past. .
. I need a rest - and some daylight! . . cleaned myself up and
then ate a Mum donated large pork pie with crisps and chocolate .
. napped. . woken around 7pm by the phone - wrong number, no
Brian here. .walked late. Once again it was a remarkably quiet,
warm, pleasant evening. Sat under the roof in BGdns for a while .
.sat out in the back garden under the pergola with the floodlight
on for an hour or more, inevitably thinking through all the work
I have to do everywhere . . Bb called . . TVd and eventually
called BB back . . ate bowls of corn flakes . . to bed around
1am. s9 - Woken by Sally clattering across the floor just before 8am . . walked in what turned into a heavy drizzle and got wet . . PCd this briefly . . dragged all the living room TV stuff away from the bay wall enough to get in behind, and had a good look at the wallpaper. I'm absolutely determined NOT to do a full redecoration of the living room yet, like I have done the bedrooms, but I MUST start thinking about doing the re-wiring. My hope is, I 'may' be able to peel back bits of the heavily embossed wallpaper where I need to, get the sockets done and simply re-instate the original paper as a temporary measure. . ooh, ooooh. Incredibly I succeeded in removing the two short drops of paper in the middle of the bay beneath the windows, intact (albeit with a lot of old flaky paint and debris still stuck to the back of the paper)! Go for it! Measured up, checking my makeshift floor-plan of the joist positions under the floor which I'd jotted down yesterday, and set about hacking out the wall to take two double and one single socket boxes and the channels to run the plastic conduit down under the floor. Much hard work and dust on everything, and many trips under the floor and back, but by late afternoon I'd actually succeeded in rough plastering the whole lot in place! Yayyyyyy! That went well. A touch of filler and sanding down, and in theory, it 'may' be possible to stick the original paper back in place for the time being - although I DO plan to put in some other sockets nearby, so I'm in no hurry to do that. (As usual, involuntarily, in the back of my mind is ALWAYS the thought - could I sell it like this, tomorrow!) At last I have some conduit leading into the under floor space. I can start thinking about removing/tidying up the temporary trailing TV aerial wires that come in through the window surround. Excellent. VERY pleased with the days work. So pleased, before clearing away all the tools, I even took the disc cutter, lump hammer and chisel down under the floor and modified the hole in the brickwork I'd made. As per the photo below - I cut off the bottom two protruding bricks on the left of the hole, opening it up just a little more. Given the nature and position of what is above, I intend to cement up the two missing half bricks on the right at some point in the future (and may actually leave it at that, rather than have the nightmare of putting in a lintel). I'm not sure why (perhaps 'because it is there') but if it weren't for the huge amount of work I have all around this house, I'd be sorely tempted to waste my time building some feature brick arches under that floor, and except for the arches, paint the rest of the walls white! That'd looks SO neat!! lolol These houses (ALL houses) SO should have been built with a cellar - although I've been given to understand from neighbours that not far below the surface is actually bedrock. The ground surface under the floor is rough concrete under the layers of dust and debris (and one ancient, dried/mumified rat!!! Eeeeew!!!) , so sadly there is no practical possibility of digging out. Real shame that. . filled a couple of carrier bags with debris from under the floor and loaded the wheelie bin up as heavy as I dared. Amongst the debris down there was an old newspaper. It's in pretty poor shape, all falling apart, but considering it's been just sat on the ground down there, it does prove it is 'fairly' dry if I wanted to store stuff down there. It's the Daily Mirror dated Saturday March 18, 1967! Almost as old as I am! The headline - 'Eight Killer Snakes Stolen In Zoo Raid'. Harold Wilson was PM at the time according to another article. Also on the front page - 'Two Stones Accused Of Drug Offences' - (Mick Jagger and Keith Richards). . finally ate - defrosted chicken (how long has THAT been in the freezer?!!!) with chips and a mug of red wine around 8:30pm . . BB called . . TVd eating chocolate until bed around midnight, content with the day. sd
10 - Up around 7:15am . . hung around a bit and then walked a touch later than I could have done, in order for the shops to be open by the time I got down town. Toured a few of the charity shops and spotted a cheap, white laminated chipboard, three drawer chest in one of them (actually the same one I scored my bedside lamps). Rather than miss an opportunity through indecision again, without hesitation I handed over a £10 note and quickly headed home to drop off Sally, get the car out and pop back down and pick it up.
With the car out, I stopped off at Mums on
the way home and picked up a few bulky things I'd left dumped in
her garage (spool of heavy duty aerial wire, part roll of damp
proof membrane, etc) - and to give her the opportunity to share
in the 'excitement' of my purchase! lol It really IS a cheap and
nasty chest of drawers, that would benefit from dismantling and
gluing during the rebuild, but for a tenner I'm not complaining.
It'll do ok until I get something better. Finally - somewhere to
put my socks etc, rather than have them all stacked up on that
silly 'shoe shelf' in the bottom of the wardrobe. :o) It seems
real slow progress having to 'rebuild my home' like this, and try
and amass enough 'stuff' (within the constraints of my meager
budget) to be comfortably functional again, but I really am doing
ok I reckon. (God - HOW I could have used SO much of all that
furniture and other stuff I was forced to dump when I moved!
Bitter. :o( ). ALL the bedrooms feel like a pretty nice place to
be now - and with those first few socket boxes roughed into the
living room wall, with a bit (lot!) of work, I should be able to
start hooking things up and getting TV sockets working etc, and
back to 'where I was in Bristol' kinda. :o) I dunno - still all
seems agonisingly slow, although I WAS in my house in Bristol for
twenty odd years. Haven't even been here for a year yet, so maybe
I'm doing ok. . . pondered in the front garden much, trying to
figure things out and eventually dragged the ladder out the front
and measured up around the top of the bay window. Retreated to
the garage and cut and glued together a couple of large lumps of
timber from the piece I salvaged from the skip down the road. I'm
gonna have a go at making up a mount for my CCTV camera! Not sure
how that'll go down with the neighbours - but I still possess the
thing, just gathering dust in a cupboard, so I may as well think
about putting it up. I DO miss having the ability, while watching
TV at night, to see who's about outside. Dare I admit it - I'm
still pretty 'frightened' most of the time! On countless
occasions while out walking Sally, a car pulling up in a strange
way will see me all 'ready for an attack'. The same if I have to
pass a group of kids/youths. Someone walking down the opposite
side of the street in the dark last night said good evening to
me, and used my name!!!!!! Hadn't a clue who it was!! That shook
me up - but on reflection, I think it may have been the son of a
neighbor of my mothers. Blah, blah, blah . . left the wood gluing
in the vice and TVd while eating corned beef sandwiches, crisps
and chocolate biscuits. . napped all afternoon until gone 6pm!! .
. .walked. Came home carrying the small broken, wooden, paint
spattered stool that has been laying under a hedge for the past
few days. If I ever get the time, a repair and coat of paint
should see it being useful to me . . 
sat in the
front garden with coffee and cigarettes. Another pleasant,
'warm', quiet evening. PCd this . . BB called . . PCd more of
this until spending ages reading what bits I could of that old
newspaper from under the floor - although just doing so is seeing
the thing fall to bits in my hands, but forgiveable since
evidence strongly suggests the paper was in fact the wrapping for
some chips! Really is fascinating looking back like that. Only
two TV channels for part of the day. Some of the adverts seem to
be the most telling of how things have changed. I just can't
resist using up some of my webspace by putting a random selection
of them here (photos because my scanner is still in 'storage'.
That's gonna make this page cumbersome!). . I think I need me a
'Dandy Chair'!!!! lolololol :o). s11 - Up around 8am . .walked the woods . . dragged the ladder back through the house and had a serious go at making up a wooden mount for the CCTV camera. Took ALL day, measuring this and that up the ladder over and over again, and then retreating to the garage to cut and carve the timber block to fit the awkward recesses at the top of the window beneath the overhanging roof lip. Incredibly time consuming! By around 6pm I had the post mounted and slapped a quick protective undercoat of paint on it. It's gonna be rather noticeable! It won't surprise me if I get some 'grief' from neighbours over this when I finally actually put the camera up there!! We'll see. I'm determined to put it up though. Pointless having it gathering dust - and I kinda regard it as the only thing to show for all the agony I went through back in Bristol. 'Sort of' paid for by the compensation Lee Boyce had to pay me when I was assaulted. .A bit of PVA/filler (I've run out - of plaster too) and more coats of paint before I dare to actually put it up. . walked . . ate corned beef sandwiches and more bread and butter with an old tin of oxtail soup, crisps and chocolate . . touched base with BB. . TVd until bed around 10:30pm. a
12 - Up around 7:15am . .PCd this with coffee and cigarettes . .walked. Sally spotted a couple of arguing squirrels in a small tree and ended up stood immediately beneath them watching intently. One of the squirrels did a death defying leap into the branches of another tree and managed to scamper away. The second tried a similarly risky move, but it missed it's target and fell to the floor, RIGHT in front of Sally!!! Uh oh!! There was a sudden frantic chase as the squirrel tried to get away and Sally tried to catch it. I was pretty powerless to intervene and stood motionless awaiting the likely unpleasant outcome. Incredibly at one point in its panic, the squirrel ended up climbing up and around my right leg before leaping off and eventually making the safety of the nearby tree!!!!!! Wow. That doesn't happen every day - having a squirrel on your leg! lol . .stopped in at the builders merchant on the way home for yet more PVA and filler (£14.35). .
dragged the ladder back through the house and
mounted the CCTV camera on the wooden mount I'd fashioned. Spent
ages trying to tack the cable around the windows and down the
outside wall to the air brick by the satellite dishes. Opened up
the air brick slightly by drilling out and removing one of the
cross pieces, and routed the cable into the underfloor space and
up through one of my new socket boxes to the TV
within half an
hour he'd called and said I could have it. Jumped in the car and
drove straight round and picked it up. Called in at Mum's on the
way home to gloat and let her have a look and be part of the
'excitement/satisfaction' of the aquisition. lol Turns out, it is
almost identical to the furniture Mum has in her bedroom (glass
panel inside the base of the top 'drawer', for putting your
coffee cup on, etc). . back home a while later, Mum called to say
she'd dug out her old receipt from several years ago, and back
then those bedside cabinets had cost well in excess of £100
each. Gloat, gloat. :o) WHAT a shame he only had the one. Still -
it works quite nicely next to the single bed in the back bedroom.
Cool. . used the disc cutter up the ladder and ground off some
rough areas on the front wall of the house before getting some
paint over those bits, and where I've brought the CCTV cable down
the wall. . One of the first things I did when I moved in here
was to tear down all the ivy from around the front door. It'd
damaged the paintwork, was threatening brickwork (even found
traces of the routes under the floor of the house!), and had even
grown through a piece of the roof over the door causing water to
get into the porch woodwork causing even more damage! Attempted a
bit of a botch-job 'repair' to the broken part of the roof over
the front door. The porch roof covering itself (sheet metal?
Galvanised steel?) is actually mostly in pretty good shape, apart
from the small broken edge piece where the ivy forced its way
through. Botched it all up with some neat PVA/filler mix, and
will have to paint over that at some point. . carried on working
and finally got round to attempting to remove the rest of the
paint from the house wall near the front door, which the ivy
hadn't already torn off. No way could you just paint over such a
mess. Took forever trying to scrape that paint off. Wore away the
metal of a large part of my wall paper scraper!!! Bloody hard
work. Worked on that wall for the rest of the day, apart from a
brief break to put another coat of paint on the walls I'd painted
earlier!! Eventually left it with quite a bit more to do! .
.cemented up a rough patch on next doors side and then used the
remainder of the cement to 'mould a form' around the inside of
the drain in the back garden. I'd found traces of damp under the
floor of the house in that corner, and close examination of the
drain revealed a large crack in the render, immediately below
where all the pipes from the kitchen empty in. Pretty sure that
meant that at least thirty per cent of all the water discharged
from the kitchen was finding its way straight into the earth
rather than going down the drain - hence the damp under the
kitchen floor. Time will tell. . late afternoon Mum popped down
with a letter for me she'd received. My MOT reminder! Uggh. :o( .
. walked. Down in BGdns, sat on the side of the path in a most
bizarre way, I discovered a Lidl carrier bag with 'stuff' in
it!?? Turned out to be a pair of shoes, some clothes and some
school books with the name Beverley Brown on!!! No sign of the
owner was anywhere to be seen, nor had other dog walkers seen
anyone. Utterly bizarre. Couldn't just leave something like that
laying around, so I ended up carrying it home! Went through the
phone book and had a go at calling almost every 'Brown' in town,
but to no avail. Eventually gave up and, not really knowing what
to do with it all (and feeling very uncomfortable about having a
young girls 'stuff' in my possession - and with hindsight,
starting to really worry about what may have become of the girl
(was she laying dead in the bushes near where I'd found the
bag?!!), not least of all because if something HAD happened to
her, I would now be suspect number one!), I called the police and
reported my find. Ten minutes and a few seconds on hold before
eventually getting through to a call handler! Basically there was
little she could do (she'd had no reports of Beverley being
missing) and if I handed the stuff in to the local police station
(not open until tomorrow!) it'd probably just sit on a shelf
until it was disposed of, so I agreed I'd drop it in at the local
college tomorrow. Hassle! . . ate corned beef/mayo sandwiches
with cheese and tomatoes and crisps and chocolate . . BB called .
.TVd with a badly aching back . . . to bed around 11:30pm. a
She agreed and within an hour we were all
heading for the hill. . nearing the 'off road' path, we passed a
guy with a bird of prey (Harris hawk?) on his arm, just returning
to his car. He'd been up on the hill flying the bird. Beautiful
creature. As is so often the case around these parts, he seemed
quite friendly and chatty. He was in some club or other, and he
and various others are occasionaly employed by land owners to use
the birds to cull rabbit populations etc. . .walked the hill. I
think Mum was suitably impressed with the view. Sat up at my
usual vantage point for quite a while with the sun beating down
on our backs. Very warm and pleasant. Who'd have thought it was
October! Eventually back via a tour of the churchyard. . . put
another coat of paint on the walls. . . ate corned beef rolls,
crisps and chocolate raisins . . napped around 5pm. Good grief -
woke after 9pm, with Sally asleep on the floor next to me!!! Poor
dog. She hasn't had her walk or her food and probably thinks it's
night time now and she just isn't getting any! . . .walked in the
cold around 11pm . . ate baked beans, and grated cheese after
midnight. . PCd until the early hours. Oh WOW!!! WHAT a suprise!
Someone has made a £10 'donation' to my website! Amazing.
Actually, aside from anything else, at least I know that page
actually works now. Well I'll be damned. The first penny I've
ever made out of the internet! lol Neat - although - boy do I
feel guilty about it!? I really need to find the time to carry on
re-instating and updating my site. I'd had this crazy idea about
that donate page. Something along the lines of suggesting that
anyone interested could offer a sum of money to 'cover expenses',
while being able to suggest what I should actually do with it -
so they'd then be able to read my account of what occurred when I
set off and did what I was bid. Does that make sense? Intriguing
- no? s
while sorting
through some of my PC stuff the other day, I bumped into a long
extension lead I'd made up once, for hooking the TV/PC together
in the living room in Bristol, together with a small collection
of useful sockets and such. It'd occurred to me, if I cut the
extension lead in half and fitted a couple of the sockets to the
cut ends, I could maybe use the two pieces to plug into each end
of the TV aerial cable I'd routed in from the living to the PC
room, and that would provide a feed for the camcorder to the PC.
The bottom line being, if it worked, I could 'webcam' while in
the living room (or in fact the kitchen by doing the same sort of
thing and plugging all the leads together!). A pointless waste of
time, but having had the idea, I felt obliged to see if it was
possible. Made the modifications to the cable, set the camcorder
up on the tripod in the corner of the room, and hey presto. It
worked perfectly. lol :o) With the experiment successfully done,
I figured it was time to 'celebrate' my birthday in my own time
honoured way. Actually of course, I've never found the instance
of my birth to be in any way a cause for any 'celebration'
whatsoever, but I DO mark it - in my own way! Basically, I'll
have a smoke and a drink and probably a bunch of chocolate, but
key above all else is that I will seek to be, ON MY OWN with my
thoughts (and the TV of course)! Self indulgent avoidant - and on
this particular day of the year, kinda justifyably so, because
it's MY birthday. Funny really. Not really any much different to
any other day of the year, with the exception that, able to
justify it in that way, I feel less 'guilty' about being how I am
on this day. I'm not quite as bad with it as I used to be. In
times gone by, I'd pretend to be out if someone called at the
door, and I'd definitely not answer the phone and have to go
through the false niceties of expressing thanks that someone had
rung up to say happy birthday, etc! (Nevertheless, not even
receiving a card in the mail from anyone this year, struck even
me as being a sad reflection of a life gone s/bad). All a bit
difficult to explain. The possibility of being able to webcam my
'celebrations' made me laugh - LOTS! lololol So I did - for
several hours, although of course the picture must have hardly
changed. lololol Any surfer bumping into that image must have
thought 'what a SAD b*****d! Terry NoMates!' (or worse of course)
before immediately closing his browser and moving on. lololol :o)
In the event, as is usually the case when I webcam, as far as I
can tell, no one surfed by, while it was on anyway. lolololol
Even just having the webcam on, made a 'difference' to my
'aloneness', so I had to put in a couple more hours of sitting
and thinking and watching TV etc, after having turned it off
around midnight! lolol . touched base with BB. . TVd, listened to
music, guitarred, smoked and drank the evening away in a
pleasantly satisfactory manner. . ate bowls of muesli before
eventually to bed around 2am. asd
It seemed to work ok, had all the tools, and
even had the instruction manual to enable me to quickly study the
detail about emptying and filters etc. For that money I decided I
HAD to give it a go. (Someone had written on the £25 price
ticket - "On sale at Amazon £64.99" which I
have no reason to disbelieve although I haven't checked.) If it
just keeps working for a year, I reckon it would pay for itself
in savings on bags for my existing one, the way I get through
them with all the dog hair and DIY dust! I didn't have the cash
and they wouldn't take a card or cheque so having made sure my
name was on it, I jumped back in the car and headed for my local
post office to withdraw some cash. (There was an advert on the
wall of the shop for a single bed with storage under - 'free to
collect'! I resisted. I DO want to eventually replace that
metal-frame single bed I was given with a 'proper' one, but not
right now. There's no hurry I think. They seem to be quite often
given away like that - and especially around here so it seems.
Bet I regret that. It just felt like I had too much going on
right now as it was!). . straight back to the charity shop and
payed for and picked up the vaccuum. On THIS occasion, someone
ELSE had cause to regret their hesitation. While I'd been gone
getting the cash, someone had come into the store attempting to
buy the vaccuum they'd previously seen in the window! Ha. :o) . .
put in the best part of an hour reading the instructions and
partly dismantling the vaccuum to remove all the old dust and
debris from the filters, etc, etc, so that it would be working as
well as it could before I tried it out to see if I'd wasted my
money! Eventually nervously tried it out on half of the dog hair
covered carpet tiles near the front door. OH - MY - GOD!
Incredible! With just a few runs back and forth, all the hair was
effortlessly gone from the carpet, and was visibly swirling
around in the vacuum - together with a worryingly large amount of
the pile from the carpet tiles! Amazing. Absolutely amazing. All
these years I've battled on with a cylinder type vaccuum
(probably because my mother has always had and prefers such a
type) without knowing how far more efficient an upright would
have been for me!! I STILL have a problem with the concept of
having to push the entire machine back and forth rather than just
the end of a hose - but the results you get from a driven
brush are so, SO much better, it's in a
whole different league. What a relief. That was money WELL spent.
. Mum popped in briefly to see my new aquisition and have a bit
of a go, and marvel at its effectiveness. . carried on vacuuming
once Mum had gone, and in pretty short time, had de-haired most
of the house! Emptied the thing several times - which would have
been at least a couple of bags used up and thrown away with the
old vaccuum. I have NEVER had such clean carpets before in my
life - and for such little effort in comparison to using the
other one! Brilliant thing. Almost a pleasure to use, when you
can actually see that you've used it, after you have! How sad am
I - 'getting off' on a vaccuum!! lololol . half way across
vaccuuming the sun room (the last room in the house to do), I
suddenly realised it wasn't working as well. Oh no. OH NO!!! The
driven brush had stopped rotating. It'd broken already! Bugger!
:o( A quick check of the manual and an unscrew with a screwdriver
confirmed it was simply a broken rubber drive belt. The rubber
was all perished. A quick check of the internet revealed they
were perfectly available, a consumable, so just one of those
things I guess. To be honest, that 'hickup' didn't really put me
off the thing. If it never worked again, it was almost worth the
£25 just to have the chance to see what a vaccuum should really
be capable of doing! I'd have probably never bought an upright
one in my life if not for that one, and now I have, I know THAT
is the type I need. . decided to walk to the local hardware store
(who sell vaccuum bags) on the offchance they may have
replacement belts. Stopped off briefly at Mums on the way past,
and was able to have a quick look ate her central heating
controller. She'd adjusted it for the clock change, but ever
since, the heating apparantly hadn't been working right. Read her
manual and quickly found she'd set it up wrong becasue of the
twenty four hour clock display, and it was all 12 hours round the
wrong way! Quickly sorted. . damn. The store was shut. Closed for
a family bereavement. Bloody inconvenient of them! lol I hate
wasting my time walking somewhere for nothing like that. . ate a
Mum donated pastry slice with crisps and chocolate. . managed to
resist the need to sleep and ended up back out with Sally and
heading back down town in search of anywhere that may have vacuum
cleaner drive belts in stock - because I want one NOW. Headed
straight for the electrical showroom that has a small corner at
the back of the shop with a few bits and pieces displayed, where
I'd bought a (expensive!) pack of cleaner bags a little while
ago. Yayyy. Sure enough, they had a pack on the wall of two
replacement drive belts for £2.99. Excellent! It's such a tiny
town down here, but it really does seem to be quite self
sufficient almost. Had a quick look in another charity shop or
two specifically looking for lamp shades, but nothing caught my
eye. If I didn't have so much to do on my plate already, it
really would be worth having a go at buying a cheap one in a
charity shop irrespective of the pattern, just for the underlying
metal frame, and then having a go at making up my own cover for
it with some material also from a charity shop . . back home and
with little ado, successfully fitted one of the drive belts and
was back finishing off the vacuuming of the sun room. .I can't
believe how clean my carpets are! Cleaner than when I moved in!
Brilliant! . . screwed an old metal key clasp to the pergola,
filled the metal bird feeder Mum had given me with crushed
peanuts, and hung it on the clasp. Now THAT should be crow and
magpie proof. The metal clasp stops the thing from easily being
lifted off by intelligent raiders, allows me to easily remove it
for filling, and the construction of the metal feeder also should
stop it from being pulled apart and opened up like the cheap one
was. We'll see. . . walked. . . PCd this (5.5Mbps and an IP location of
Crawley.). . TVd and ate
bowls of cornflakes before to bed around midnight. s