| At bloody last! |
[Aug. 5th, 2009|11:18 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  pleased | ] |
I am no longer a learner driver! :-)
After about 180 hours of lessons (added up, just over a week of solid driving), four failed and two canceled tests, I've finally done it. This morning I passed with four minor faults (one of which was going a bit too slowly along a tight country lane, especially along one bit with houses almost right up against the road where I thought I might have missed a 30mph sign and decided to risk the minor rather than get a serious for speeding).
Not a lot else to say really, I've got an hour or so before I go to pick up Ewan, so I'm going to chill out for a bit, and maybe ponder what sort of takeaway I'm going to celebrate with this evening.
Oh, and I've managed to post on here again - hello everyone, I'll try to remember LJ a bit more often in future. |
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| Not much, but I'm back :-) |
[Feb. 2nd, 2009|11:50 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | pleased | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Rush - Finding My Way (very loud, the way it needs to be played :-)) | ] |
Assignments written up today: 1.5
Target for this week: 6
Inches of snow outside: about 1 currently, it's been snowing and thawing all morning, looks like lots of black ice later. :-(
Current likelihood of a two hour driving lesson on Wednesday morning: I'd guess at 50% tops, but we'll see.
Varieties of plant I have to start germinating this week: 5 (one sweet pepper, one chilli pepper, one melon, and two different tomatoes)
Number of strawberry plants ordered via the Gardener's World Magazine special offer: 20
Number of strawberry plants that will fit in the planters I bought: 16 (but I've got a spare pot that can take the overflow)
Days since I last posted on LJ: far too many, sorry. |
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| moving, day 1 of 3 |
[Dec. 15th, 2008|12:57 pm] |
Now would appear to be the calm before the storm, most things are organised, I'm just backing up data to a new USB hard disk so one copy can go with us and one copy with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) robthegingerone.
Movers are about to arrive, I'm having a quick sit down and a smoke whilst digesting my lunch (steak and onion sandwiches, to use up the last bits in the fridge), and this is highly likely to be the last post from either of us from 18 Oxford St. With any luck we should be back online in Norwich on Wednesday, but we'll see how we do. |
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| It Lives! |
[Dec. 2nd, 2008|08:28 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  annoyed | ] |
Not dead, just busy.
I was supposed to have a driving test this morning, but an inch of snow on the test centre car park (with a layer of black ice underneath it), only the main roads gritted at all, and a Met Office severe weather warning with a specific note about dangerous driving conditions, mean that I paid £3.60 a minute for my 10 minutes of driving today before my instructor decided that discretion was the better part of valour and took over the wheel (not due to anything I'd done, just because he felt the conditions were worse than he was prepared to trust anyone else in with his car).
So, I still haven't passed a test, but I haven't failed one either (we waited around at the test centre for an examiner to turn up, and when he did it took all of a second or so for him to decide that tests were off this morning). |
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| New Camera, new pictures |
[Nov. 7th, 2008|07:15 pm] |
Last week I got a bit more birthday money than I'd expected, and so was able to raise my sights somewhat when it came to getting a new camera - I'd been thinking about a Fuji finepix S5600 (5MP, 10x optical zoom, lots of controls and opportunities to add extra bits and pieces), but ended up looking on eBay until I found an S9600 instead (similar, but 9MP and more functionality).
It has arrived, and it is very, very good. I've even started to take pictures using something other than completely automatic settings (albeit mostly just remembering which of several almost automatic modes to put the camera in). Having the new camera (and finally reading a book on digital photography that I've had hanging around for years), I've also taken a look back through my archive of old pictures, and found some from March 2006 that I'd never got around to editing. I did a bit of tweaking on four of them, and posted (very small versions of) them up on Facebook - here, to be specific. |
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| Danology 101 |
[Oct. 7th, 2008|10:04 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Booker T. & The Mg's - Green Onions | ] |
Stolen from daddi_cade
Let others know a little more about yourself.
Re-post this as your name followed by "-ology"
( cut for brevity ) |
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| An encounter in Portsmouth |
[Oct. 1st, 2008|11:26 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  thoughtful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Clash - English Civil War | ] |
There's a lot of stuff I have to write up about last week (not least of which is my survey report on an old wooden yacht in need of a total refit), but I thought I'd start with one, fairly small incident, as it was somewhat alarming at the time and annoying since then.
On the Friday evening I'd finished my course, decided that I was in no fit state to go to a tutorial on the Saturday (plus I'd done most of what I'd wanted to do at the tutorial during the week anyway), and was at something of a loose end after grabbing a bite to eat and dropping my stuff off at the. On my journey from Fratton station to my hotel earlier in the week I'd spotted an interesting-looking (i.e. somewhat shabby and full of skaters/crusties/rockers/etc) pub - The Fawcett Inn, and noticed that they were advertising a punk/reggae evening on Friday night. So, I decided I'd have a wander and pop in for an hour or two to chill out.
I'd not got far on my journey, wandering along the road with a smoke in one hand and a bottle of coke in the other (as usual I was dressed in black, but not wearing my leather trenchcoat or my leather hat, which are normally the things that provoke the more bigoted and irrational members of society into action). The road I was wandering along was quiet and mainly residential, with a few small hotels and B&Bs. I was about half way along it when two chavs on derestricted 50cc scooters buzzed past, and one of them decided it would be fun to kick out at me and shout as he went past me, causing me to jump (I'm not sure how close he was to making contact, in the end his foot went past a couple of feet from where I ended up). Having got some sort of reaction him and his mate stopped at the end of the road, turned around and made as if to come back at me. After taking avoiding action I'd been unsure of their intentions, and so had turned to face them and held my ground.
So, I was in something of a tricky situation. Two on one, and cavalry against infantry. Having said that, the two pillocks on scooters were unarmed, and I estimated that one Dan was approximately the same mass as one chav and his scooter put together, so there was definite potential to do some damage if they were unwise enough to try to run me down. Also, I noticed that there was a 4 foot high brick wall next to me, so if absolutely necessary I had an escape route to somewhere they couldn't follow on their bikes. Not all bad then.
Figuring that the one thing that was guaranteed to have them after me was to turn my back and leg it (not to mention that I'm just not built for speed), I held my ground, opened my stance to give me more options if I had to react quickly, and changed my grip on my coke bottle so that from a distance it might look like I had a glass bottle in my hand that I intended to use as a weapon (I figured I might as well try anything I could to dissuade them). They postured and posed for 30 seconds or so, started to ride towards me on the wrong side of the road (with CV transmission screaming away), and when I didn't move after they'd got half way towards me they pulled a fast U-turn and sped off towards the sea front. It would appear that the prospect of taking on somebody who was actually expecting a fight wasn't as appealing as attempting to knock down unsuspecting pedestrians.
Rather shocked, I continued my journey, glancing around somewhat nervously every time I heard the buzz of a scooter (which is quite a lot in Portsmouth, the place is full of them). I was so shaken up I actually had two pints of Old Speckled Hen, probably the most I've had to drink in 7 or 8 years. I actually had quite a good night in the end, chatted to quite a few of the locals, and had a kebab on my way back to the hotel (which was actually quite pleasant, although the chilli sauce was a tad potent). |
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| On my way |
[Sep. 21st, 2008|04:05 pm] |
Just about managed to get packed and leave the house in time to get to Newcastle for the 13:25 train. I had wondered about getting this train all the way to Southampton and then going across to Portsmouth, or changing at Leeds and going via London. I stood all the way to York, and despite getting a seat when they added a 4-car Voyager there I decided that going via London might be less crowded.
Not so, I actually chose to miss my scheduled connection as it was totally rammed. I popped out of the station for a smoke, then grabbed a Whopper meal from Burger King (I know, my foodie credentials have just disappeared), before getting on the next train to London in plenty of time to get a table seat. :-)
Currently I'm taking advantage of the free wireless broadband available on National Express East Coast trains, and I'm pleased at how easy it was to connect to and how fast it is (not great, but perfectly usable). I should get to king's cross at about 6pm, and with any luck should get to my hotel in Southsea around 9pm or not too long afterwards. |
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| Help me, I'm melting! |
[Sep. 20th, 2008|04:42 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  drained | ] |
I've just been on a reasonably long and fruitless walk into Westoe in search of somewhere to buy a decent pair of size 13 boots (I can find somewhere that does boots, just not in my size), and now that I've returned home I've got rivers of sweat pouring off me and soaking my t-shirt.
Somehow, I'd suspect that there might just be a thunderstorm here later, and it might well be quite an impressive one.
Been sorting out my journey to Portsmouth tomorrow - I can travel down through London to avoid most of the engineering works (and grab a quick smoke and some food not bought on a train in the middle) and still come back via Birmingham. :-) |
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| Vampire/Werewolf GMs please note |
[Sep. 18th, 2008|09:59 pm] |
It would appear that it is possible for normal humans to wield fully automatic machine guns single-handed with a reasonable degree of accuracy, so why can't my character do it? |
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| One hell of a journey |
[Sep. 14th, 2008|10:37 pm] |
11:25am Kiss katherinedeane goodbye (Ewan being totally absorbed by his new Fireman Sam DVD) and head down to the Metro station.
11:30am Realise as I arrive at the station that the Metro isn't running to timetable and I've just missed one.
11:35am Whilst I'm stood on the platform, an empty vodka bottle sails over the station wall and lands on the edge of the platform, about 10 feet from where I'm stood (fortunately none of the broken glass came anywhere near me, but I was the nearest person to it by a long way). I move closer to the platform wall, figuring that it's almost impossible to get a bottle to land there from the likely throwing position around the back of the station where the local chavs go to drink their vodka and lambrini. A couple more missiles of an indeterminate nature hit the far platform before our Metro arrives.
12:05pm Buy my ticket,a coffee, and a bottle of coke, and get on my train. Discover that for the next four and a half hours I shall be on a train with no power sockets (old locomotive-hauled train with Mk 3 carriages - Arriva Cross Country livery on the outside, but green/blue interior that makes me think they might be elderly Midland Mainline carriages brought out of retirement at fairly short notice). I have a table to myself for most of the journey, a small blessing, but only get an hour or so of music from my laptop.
about 2:00pm Shortly after leaving Leeds station there was a loud 'thunk' as something small and heavy (my guess would be a piece of ballast stone) hit the roof of our carriage somewhere near me. Fortunately it appeared that no serious damage was done, but I begin to feel distinctly picked upon today.
5:00pm I get off the train in Brum and meet up with atsugari_san and jcbjcbjcb for coffee and a chat. The normal route through Leeds takes about three and a half hours, but our geriatric locomotive and a route that involved diversions between Sheffield and Chesterfield, Chesterfield and Derby (via Long Eaton), and Burton Upon Trent and Brum (via Lichfield and Sutton Coldfield), had conspired to add an hour to that. Had a very good chat and a good cup of hot chocolate, and went off too get my next train with a bag full of nice things from M&S to eat on the way.
6:10pm Get on the train to Bristol. This one is a Voyager with power sockets, but is packed to the gunwales with people. I stand, and let a great many people past me. More diversions due to engineering work - we leave Brum through King's Norton, rather than the usual route alongside the canal through Fiveways, University, and Selly Oak.
7:10pm First stop, Cheltenham Spa. I get a seat, but it's reserved from Newport - that's right people, we're going from Birmingham to Bristol, via Wales, again due to engineering work.Nevertheless, I plug in and attempt to distract myself with a Chris Cornell solo acoustic gig, and Alice in Chains Unplugged. This works, sort of.
8:40pm I get off the train, stop outside the station for a smoke, then wander across the road to my hotel. Find out that they have wireless (albeit at £10 a night), and a smoking room (at this point I was tempted to see if they'd got any rocking horse shit, as it looked like my luck was in big time).
I have retired to my room, and shortly I shall retire to bed. Luckily I don't have to make a particularly early start tomorrow, so I should be able survive all the travel - certainly at the moment I'm very happy with how well my knees are holding up. Tomorrow I get to be a boat geek. :-) |
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| When Wasps Attack! |
[Sep. 2nd, 2008|12:16 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | drained | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Chris Cornell - Peace Love And Understanding | ] |
Failed my driving test again.
Got a good partial explanation though - I seem to be incredibly attractive towards wasps, and there's a nest somewhere in the bushes by the test centre car park, so I began my test by being swarmed by the buggers (well two or three who wanted to get very friendly), and one of them got into the car without us realising, so we had to stop just outside the test centre and remove him. Up until that point I'd been doing a pretty good job of holding my nerve, but after 10 minutes of repeated Wasp attacks (they'd started on me as soon as I got out of the car to have a fag before my test), there was rather more adrenalin in my system than I'd have preferred, and consequentially I got a bit flustered and made too many mistakes (I got three serious faults, one of which I'd have wanted to argue about if it'd been the only reason I failed - I went through a junction on amber, but it stayed on amber all the way across and I don't think I could have braked smoothly for it from 40mph+ (I can't remember exactly what speed I was doing at that point, but the limit was 50 and I'd been trying to get there or there about).
Anyway, in general (as with all of my tests so far) I gave the examiner at pretty good ride, by no means as smooth as it could be, but not bad. It's just a pity that a couple of little things let me down. I'll have a look later and book another test, but at the moment I'm too knackered to think straight. I may well sort out a more structured build-up to my next test, as I'd gone 3 days without driving before today. I think I'll try to book a two hour lesson for the day before the test, to get my head into the right place - it's what I did before my first test, and that's the one I've been most relaxed on (which is definitely the key point - when I'm relaxed, driving is easy, when I'm stressed it all starts to fall apart). Before the wasps took their toll, I was probably the most relaxed that I've been before a test, and I thought that I'd got a handle on the test nerves that I'd suffered from before, which is good, as is not having my previous test as my 'last test' - that was beginning to weigh heavily on my mind.
I'll get there eventually, preferably next time. :-) |
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| Catching Up |
[Aug. 24th, 2008|02:28 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | pleased | ] |
| [ | music |
| | none, Ewan's asleep next door | ] |
I've still not written about last weekend, thanks to a really nasty cold that I'm only just getting over.
This week we (well mainly katherinedeane, if I'm honest) have been sorting through our study, in an attempt to stop it being a room full of boxes of random stuff. Good progress has been made - we have a large box of electronics that need to go to the recycling centre, half a dozen black bags full of old paperwork to go out with the next lot of recycling, an enormous number of books to drop off at the local charity shop, and all of our books and CDs are now arranged logically, so we can actually see what we've got. :-)
we've also found lots and lots of stuff from a very long time ago (I had one bag of paperwork that'd remained packed since I left Cardiff in May 1998, and there were a couple of boxes that hadn't been opened since I moved in with katherinedeane in 2002). I've discovered real letters written to me by people back in the 1990s, before we were all online constantly, the running order for a 'seduction tape' in what appears to be manicman's handwriting, and just now a CD full of pictures from a canal boat holiday we took back in 2000. They may well appear online somewhere in the near future.
Our tomato plants are doing ok - they've not set many more fruit but what we've got is swelling nicely. The French beans and the butternut squash are alive, but not doing very well (they were really cheap as they were nearly dead when I bought them, so I didn't expect much to be honest), and whilst the chilli plant and the sweet pepper are doing fairly well, I think I'll have to bring them in soon and finish them off on the windowsill. |
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| Bed/floor for the night in Bristol? |
[Aug. 6th, 2008|04:32 pm] |
Bit of a favour to ask here chaps and chapesses:
On Sunday the 14th of September I shall be arriving in Bristol, as on the Monday I've got a training event to attend - two hours in the morning being shown around a wooden pilot cutter that's currently being built, a lunch, and an afternoon of discussion on the subject of woods and adhesives for boatbuilding. Riveting stuff eh? (Actually for me it is, which is why I'm prepared to travel to the other end of the country to do it.)
Anyway, would anyone in/around Bristol be prepared to enjoy an evening of my company on the 14th, in return for a bed, or at least a warm, dry place to unroll my sleeping bag? |
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| Back in the saddle |
[Aug. 5th, 2008|11:38 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Motorhead - Born to Raise Hell | ] |
Had my first driving lesson since my last test this morning.
It went pretty well, especially considering it's a fortnight since I was last behind the wheel. Tomorrow's lesson is at 07:55, and at some point today I need to rearrange my next test for a week or so later than it currently is. |
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| Gardening |
[Jul. 28th, 2008|11:36 pm] |
Online seed and plant catalogues are very dangerous things, I'm quite glad I've started getting back into gardening so late in the season, as it means my ambitions are tempered somewhat. As it is, I've ordered a 48 plant selection box of hardy autumn oriental salad and stir-fry vegetables that's due to arrive in late August, so I've got a few weeks to come up with some sort of containers to grow them in (I'm thinking of using large plastic storage boxes to make small beds, each with 4-6 plants). If we're still here in the new year, I'm very, very tempted by the idea of getting a peach tree and an apple tree, as I've found a variety of each suitable for growing in relatively small (2 foot diameter) containers, and a couple of Blackberry plants to train along the back wall of the yard (as they apparently do well against a north-facing wall).
The plants we put in on Saturday are all doing well - the French beans in particular are looking a lot healthier.
I was going to write more, but became distracted -see my next post for why. |
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| Gardening |
[Jul. 26th, 2008|10:34 pm] |
This morning, I had to get up reasonably early and look after Ewan while katherinedeane and atsugari_san went shopping for four hours (they had said two hours, so I suppose I should be glad of only a 100% overrun). They did come back with lots and lots of clothes, mostly for atsugari_san.
After lunch, everyone else made the first of two trips to B&Q to get a paddling pool (£3 for a 1m diameter one that was a perfect size for him and his toys), and then we pottered about in the Garden. Katherine planted a large trough with herbs for the kitchen windowsill, and used another trough to replant our three unkillable orchids (they survived three months of constant neglect before I moved them to somewhere where I'd remember to water them). Ewan happily splashed around in the pool with his hands, but wasn't impressed with the idea of actually getting into it, even when we'd added a couple of kettles of boiling water to take the chill off it. He also spent quite a lot of time painting with his new set of paints (a present from atsugari_san).
Feeling that we were on something of a roll, we made a second trip to B&Q, where I bought two very fragrant Lavender plants, two reasonably large tomato plants ('Totem' IIRC), a Habanero Chilli, a sweet pepper, a butternut squash, and two dwarf French Beans (the last three plants reduced to 50p each, bonus). All of these (bar the tomatoes, which were in big pots to begin with), have now been potted up by Katherine, moved into position by me (in the sunniest corner of the yard, underneath the kitchen window), and given a good water. Hopefully soon I can add in a few pots with radishes, lettuce, and carrots (for picking very young), but that'll require a trip out for more compost. This is very much a spur of the moment vegetable garden, but I think it should produce at least some results (though I'll admit I've left it a bit late in the year, so I'll be hoping for a mild autumn), and hopefully it should get me back into the swing of growing things. If/when we move I'd really like a greenhouse (or a small polytunnel, I'm not fussy), a smallish veg patch (three or four decent-sized raised beds would do me fine), and some space around the edges for trained fruit trees and soft fruits. If we're still here next spring, I expect we might well have two or three times the number of pots, perhaps more (we've got plenty of space left, and a very sunny yard).
I'm now knackered and intend on going to bed shortly. :-) |
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| Stuff |
[Jul. 16th, 2008|03:06 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  content | ] |
Today I had a really good driving lesson, and seemed to have sorted most of the faults identified on my driving test, at least for that hour. I've got another lesson tomorrow at 9:30am (followed by the dentist at 10:50am :-(), and we might go for a drive in robthegingerone's car later on, after sorting out short term insurance like I did when I used atsugari_san's car.
If we don't it's because we'll be concentrating on our project from yesterday - stripping all the remaining upstairs doors of their paint, repainting them, and putting on new door furniture. It's gone a hell of a lot faster than the last time I tried stripping a door, mainly because we've given up trying to do things the modern way, taken them out into the back yard, and attacked them with a blowtorch and scraper. This works. One of them needs some new trim on one side (fortunately the side facing into the room, so it doesn't matter that it probably won't match the rest), and all of them need a good going over with a tub of filler, but overall they're coming up quite nicely.
Finally, a Nigel Slater recipe from the Guardian website that I want to try:
( Honey polenta cake with elderflower and gooseberries ) |
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