Bed.. hmm….

I woke up this morning feeling nice and warm in bed. Hmm.. why isn’t the radio playing as usual? What’s the time? Eeek!

As you no doubt have realised by now, I’d overslept and not because the radio alarm hadn’t gone off either, I’d slept right through that and woken up about an hour later than normal. Oh Well.

Anyway, it was a case of a quick splash and dash to get ready before donning my waterproofs and cycling through the lovely rain to work.

On a positive point today, my cold seems to have pretty well gone other than a slight tickle in the throat. Of course, it could just be regrouping ready for an attack on my bronchial tubes, but I hope not. All those A-Z vitamins and orange juice seem to have done the trick.

Blurgh!

The dreaded cold lurgy’s got me!

So far it’s half a sore throat with lots of mucus, a fuzzy head and slight shivery feeling.

Maybe I should drop off at Tescos tonight and buy some Limsip.

Oh-well.

Sunday, sunday.

Last night’s house warming was good. Got home at about 1:30am.

Unfortunately, I woke up at 7:30am as I would on a normal work day, and couldn’t get back to sleep. Oh well.

I dozed and watched telly a bit then noticed it had started raining and it was too late to wash the car. So, I rummaged through the video draw and pulled out “Labyrinth” and watched it, fast forwarding through David Bowie’s cringe inducing dance routines.

So, it was lunchtime, talked to my parents on the phone as usual, made some doorstep chicken roll sandwiches and ate them.

Why is there so little to watch on telly on a raining Sunday afternoon?

More rummaging and other videos were watched, finished off by “Contact” with an intermission for Scrapheap Challenge. So, at least there’s one decent programme.

The Channel 4 “100 Greatest Films” programme is reasonably entertaining, though a little content-less.

Back to work tomorrow morning, I suppose.

Hey-ho!

A weekend of excitement and really wild things! (Or maybe not.)

Plans for the weekend:-

  • Get my hair cut.
  • Go to a house warming party for one of the postgrads who’s just bought a house.
  • Go to Sainsbury’s
  • Pay gas, telephone and credit card bill.
  • Wash the car and hopefully get the waxing done before it gets dark this time.

As you can see, it’s going to be a whole bundle of fun. Actually, the house warming might be fun if it doesn’t turn into a party full of shop talk.

Seeing as I’m not in a very optimistic mood today this doesn’t bode well, however. Oh well.

Car insurance, who needs it?!

This morning the documents for my new car insurance arrived. I suddenly remembered that I’d forgotten about a claim I’d made which had been recovered in full from the other party in June last year.

So, mindful of this I phoned up the company (Bell Direct) this evening and told them the complete details, namely:-

I was driving southbound on the M1 near Nottingham in the middle lane, passing traffic on my left doing about 75mph. A white mid-80’s Mazda 323 goes past me in the “fast” lane about 10 mph faster than I was going. When the car had got about 10 yards in front of me I notice that it’s slowly drifting into the central reservation, over the rumble bars and finally, after about 10 seconds or so into the barrier.

The car then swirved across the road, over corrected, swirved again and fell on its side. At this point I had already started slowing down. However, seeing that the car is about to hit the central reservation again, a lot harder and whilst spinning, I know it’s going to slow a lot faster than I can and it will be bouncing across towards me. After seeing the whole newtonian physics of the situation and simulating it in my head I put my foot on the accelerator and headed for where the car was about to not be. (It’s amazing how slowly events happen during a situation like this.)

Anyway, by the time I was level with the car, it had just hit the barrier with the driver’s roof pillar and was starting to bounce back towards me at high speed, spinning rapidly.. it must have past behind my vehicle missing by inches.

Anyway, bits of the spinning vehicle or stones thrown up by it hit my car causing a large number of stone chips and one small dent with a paint gauge on the rear driver’s side door. Cost of the repair, £850.

Anyway.. Bell Direct thank me for the information and then after putting me on hold for about a minute tell me that the premium would be increased by £71 because “statistically, people who have had a no-fault claim are likely to have a fault claim within 3 years!”

I told them where to go.. they told me where to send their welcome pack.

I then tried to call Direct Line insurance to renew my current insurance, but I got a very kurt response as soon as I got connected, “Our systems are down for an upgrade, call back in a few hours. *click*” Very nice and polite, I must say.

Update:

I’ve managed to get through to Direct Line and have renewed my policy. All I have to do now is send back the stuff to Bell Direct.

Ho-hum.

Bike Story.

Well, apparently, the bike shop had the brake/gear levers in yesterday.. but he couldn’t fit them ‘cos he didn’t have any fitters.

Today I took it in.. it’s there now, being repaired and pampered as we speak.

I do hope he hasn’t found anything more he can say is broken and needs to charge me for. The problem with the gear changer was exaserbated by the bike shop not replacing the cable which meant I couldn’t even soldier on with a partly working gear train and had to get a replacement.

I’m not going to that bike shop again.

Bike update.

Well, my bike now has a working set of gear levers! Yippee!

However, (a) they need adjusting as they don’t change up properly (change up twice and down once to go up a gear) but the adjuster is already at its limit in the directoion it needs adjusting. (b) The adjusted brakes at the back are binding badly and, again, the adjuster’s at the end of its adjustment. (c) I have no chain guard as the bracket on my bike is “the wrong type” due to the bike having been manufactured over 10 years ago (even though I bought it “new” less than 2 years ago). This means that Raleigh will need to send a new bracket but can’t guarantee delivery in less than 6 months! (I’m wondering why the bike shop couldn’t have just drilled a hole on the guard in the right place for the current bracket.) The old guard is too broken to be replaced back onto the bike.

Aaaaargh!

Busy week

Social occasions are like busses. You wait a long time and nothing comes along and then a whole lot all come at once.

Last Thursday Alec turned up and we went out to Brown’s in Oxford and had a rather nice meal. After getting home we watched “Walking with Beasts” which I had taped earlier in the evening and chatted.

Friday morning off went Alec to take his motor bike to get it serviced and off I went to work.

Work was ok. I managed a quick snooze in the evening seminar, which got me up and ready for the evening’s entertainment. Off to Reading, met Howard, Grim and Holly and then went off to a sort of Mexican restaurant.. very nice food. Followed by a very nice film.. Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone. Not having read the book probably helped the enjoyment, though the Star Wars: Episode II trailer and the John Williams music (which had shades of Empire Strikes Back) kept bringing Star Wars to mind.. especially the bit where Harry get’s his father’s lightsabre^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hinvisibility cloak. Oh, and the dark side of the magic.

Anyway, I got home and to bed by 2am.

Saturday morning, up at 7:45am out the door and off to Liverpool. Despite the M5 being closed forcing all the traffic around the M42 and there being a motorbike show at the NEC the traffic was fine and I got there by 11:15am. Lindsey plied me with tea. 1:30pm off to the Hunt household to pick up the family Hunt and take them to the church. It seems that the young australian girls wanted to travel in my car and not Lindsey’s Metro.. oh well. 🙂

Little Samuel’s christening went fine with lots of song and fun as usual with the Hunt clan. There was a sighting of a Clive Dolphin too.

Anyway, back to Mel’s place.. lots of sarnies and things and a post-christening party. Jim Finnis and his new girlfriend, Katrin, turned up. Katrin’s really nice and pretty too.. oh, and as Stephanie pointed out, shorter than even her.

After that party was another.. Lindsey and Steve’s flat warming. The result.. food was transferred from one party to the other, as were most of the people.

Bed at 2am again.

Sunday morning was spent drinking tea, nattering and visiting the Hunt abode. Visited Southport, went back to Lindsey’s and snoozed a bit whilst chatting to Lindsey.. then it was time to go home.

The M6 was far more full this time.. 50-60mph all the way. Got home at 8pm and flopped into bed.

Thankfully, Monday was quiet. 🙂

Happy birthday car!

It’s a happy first birthday for my car.

In that year it’s had roof ridge tiles blown into it, huge stones thrown at it by quarry lorries and the turbo decided it didn’t want to play anymore. And that’s on top of the scratch on the rear quarter near the fuel filler it had upon delivery.

Anyway, all the damage has been fixed and it’s looking nice and sparkley on the drive.. well other than the areas I missed rubbing the wax off last Sunday. It was dark by the time I got around to that so there is an excuse.

Anyway, yesterday was a second day I had off work due to the dodgy tummy. I felt a lot better in the morning, but had had so little sleep as to make it pointless to go into work. After taking the bike to get the brake/gear levers changed and found they hadn’t arrived.. so went back home, back to bed and the next I knew it was midday.

This morning I popped into the bike shop on the way to work, just in case.. still no parts, so I cycled headlong into a sub-zero gale with only 3 gears. Typically, the lowest gear was way too low and so the legs were going two to the dozen and the next gear up was too high so that it was too difficult to push the bike through the gale. By the time I got to work my ears were so cold that they ached on the inside. Not fun.

Blurgh!

I woke up this morning at 03:03am this morning feeling thirsty, hot, slightly shivery and with a churning stomach.

Seeing as I couldn’t get get back to sleep, I continued to read “Snowcrash” which Alec nicely lent to me the weekend before last as I hadn’t read it yet.

Well, I got back to sleep at about half 5.

I got up at my normal time of 7:30am and got ready. I didn’t really feel up to much.. my brain was stuffed with cotton wool and my stomach still felt churny. Anyway, as planned, I took my bike to the bike shop for the replacement brake levers/gear lever system. As I had expected, the parts hadn’t arrived, so I’ve got to take it back tomorrow.

Anyway, I cycled home, put the bike away and went back to bed. I woke up again at 11am.

I’ve spent the day not feeling up to much with my stomach still churning. At least I’m not feeling nauseous.

I’ll see how I feel tomorrow before deciding if I go to work.