a view through my own eyes

Our DVD player has not been itself recently. It had taken to skipping bits of disks, sitting looping and just generally being useless.

Sadly it was out of warranty and since it was’t a twenty quid supermarket special I was loathe to just get rid of it. Particularly since it provides the 5.1 surround sound as well.

So last night taking its life into my own hands I decided to take a look at it with the assistance of my feline friends in the conservatory which is the best lit room in the house for this sort of stuff.

It was built like a Chinese puzzle box as bizarrely you don’t need to remove any screws to get the lid off – it just clicks and slides when you know how. Which I didn’t until it did at which point nine screws were sitting in a saucer…

Anyhow a blow out of any dust, a tiny drop of lens cleaner on the laser lens and the oh so delicate ribbon cables released and reseated appears to have done the job.

Phew.

My only regret is that at the time it did not occur to me to get the camera out and take some pictures as Perdita was very helpfull indeed, well curious anyway.

Freecycle is cool. Possess things that you want to get shot of? Cannot be bothered to eBay stuff? Don’t want to just bin stuff? Just use the power of email.

FreeCycle can be the answer but at the same time it really frustrates me, which is not the fault of Freecycle – just the people who use it.

It’s like this, say I want to get shot of a chicken:

Offered: seven legged chicken
In good condition, ideal for fried chicken start ups.
Must be collected from Littlebourne this week after 6pm Mon-Fri.

Which I think is reasonable, clear, concise and accurate.

Then the replies come in:

Oooh great I could do with that as I could make an excellent boat out of it for my kids

or

Does the chicken have plenty of wings? It’s just that I have a thing about three legged tables.

or

I could really use it to stand the dialysis unit on for my daughter who only has four days to live.

or

That would make an excellent meal for the starving in Africa.

You get the idea.

Once I have finally decided who to bestow the item to, I usually send an email as follows:

Hi,

The seven legged chicken that you are interested is awaiting your collection.

Its available from Littlebourne after 6pm Monday to Friday next week.

Then the buggering around starts:

I can’t do after 6pm, what about after 7:13pm as that way the stars are in the ascendence.

Which I generally ignore and say that is fine, then:

Ah OK thats good, I will check with my partner to ensure that the van is roadworthy on Saturday.

followed by:

OK partner says that 4am Sunday morning is fine.

And this sort of crap goes on and on and on. Usualy to the extent that I just want to take the stuff to the local tip myself as it will actually be less effort.

So whilst in many ways I really like Freecycle as it is a great way to get rid of stuff it is due to the people that use it also a pain in the arse. I really do not care if my chocolate teapot is going to feed the starving orphans or whether my moon on a sick will make an old man smile. As to be honest I suspect that most people who come out with this rubbish are lying their arses off. So the simple system I use is offer it to the first person who replies and if they muck me about offer it to the next person.

Yes I have been Freecycling this week and have more stuff to put on there. Doing too much stuff at once invariably leads to a mailbox and a temperment explosion, but then I learnt that when I put loads of stuff up just before we moved house.

When we moved into the new house we were impressed that the previous owners took all the light fittings and replaced them with ceiling roses, the latter they were legally obligued to do if doing the former. To be honest we were not that fussed as the fittings were not that nice. They also took all of the wall lights and left cables hanging out of the walls. Which to be honest was less impressive.

A few weeks ago mrspao and I set for about the only shop I can always find something to buy with the credit card – John Lewis, in search of light fittings. So after some umming and erring we ordered ceiling lights and wall lights, I say ordered as not everything was in stock. A few days later the lights were delivered to work. Note that wall fitting lights from John Lewis are around £15 each – not a tremendous amount and if we had gone to say B&Q they would probably be a reasonable amount cheaper.

The lights have sat in the back bedroom for the best part of two months, so this weekend I decided (or did mrspao – I really cannot tell) to put the wall lights up.

The one in the lounge was no problem at all as there was a reasonable sized hole in the wall where the wires emerged to embed the connector blocks so the light fits flush.

When it came to the conservatory however the cables came out of the wall and there is no cavity. So taking a closer look with the aid of a chair I discovered that the cavity had been filled and painted over to make it look pretty, which is kind of reasonable except that there are still cables hanging out of the wall.

Lacking a masonry chisel and deciding that the SDS Hammer Drill with masonry bit would be a bit like a sniper using a cruise missle I settled for an old screwdriver and a hammer to remove some excess plaster. Removing enough plaster for the connectors I was dissapointed to note that there did not appear to be an earth wire, pondering for a short while I decided that unless spiderman came round and started scaling the walls things should be OK – not right – but kind of OK. So I fitted the first light.

Then to the other end of the wall I repeated the bashing the wall with a hammer and screwdriver and noticed that just tucked in the wall was an earth wire! How odd. So I finished opening up the cavity to make room for the connector and fitted the light.

So back to the first light, using the principle that there was an earth for one in the lounge and one of the two in the conservatory there should be an earth for the other light. I took the fitting down, and started bashing the wall round the cavity – to find embedded in the wall in a mess of plaster; the earth wire.

What makes me boggle about all this is:
1. why take the wall fittings? They are cheap enough that its not worth getting an electrician in to take them down, fill the cavities and paint over them. Yes we know that they used an electrician as they said they had trouble getting one. It may have been cheaper to leave them!
2. since cables were sticking out of the wall it would be obvious to fit wall lights, why did they bother to fill the cavities?
3. why oh why did they deliberately wind one earth cable tight in the wall and then plaster over it?

It just seems such an utterly dumb thing to do.

The thing that gets me though is that Part P allows me to change light fittings, but if it had only been the one fitting in the conservatory I would not have known about the earth cable as it was buried in the wall and plastered over, how would I have been covered for insurance purposes if the place had burnt down?

Stupid bastards.

I was back at the dentists waiting for the hygienist to scrape all the tartar off and make my teeth nice and shiny again.

Anyway in the waiting room was a lady in her 60s at a guess, expensive clothing, big diamonds and a hideously expensive handbag. She was nonchalantly flicking through the Daily Mail and then lowered the paper and announced:

My husband bought a clay pigeon trap at the weekend.

Understandably I said nothing primarily because I had no idea what a possible appropriate response would be, so instead did my best to look utterly unimpressed.

She raised the paper and continued to flick through it for a few more minutes. Again she lowered her paper and announced:

I recently went to Singapore for a couple days, we had an earthquake one day and a monsoon the next.

At this point I was wondering whether I was actually in the dentists after all and not a creation by Douglas Adams (RIP), handily the hygienist came to collect me so I could settle for opening and closing my mouth like a goldfish.

The scariest thing about the hygienist though is not the eyes peering over the face mask, nor is it the evil looking bits of weaponry with long hoses, it is not even the bright lights, neither is it the slight scrapping and cutting feeling.

It is in fact the gurgling noise that the pump makes that flushes and sucks away water the whole time.

Back in around 1930 Tolkien wrote the Book of Lost Tales – a synopsis of a mythology that he created. This eventually was rewritten and expanded, finally after some editing by his son Christopher it was released as The Silmarillion some years after his death.

Tolkien maintained in his notes and his papers that there were three major stories in the Silmarillion and through his life he worked on these when not writing the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings. These three stories, were the tale of Beren and Luthien, Children of Hurin and the Fall of Gondolin.

Bear in mind that the Hobbit and LotR although set in Middle Earth were never mentioned in the Book of Lost Tales and that when Tolkien did mange to link the events to the Book of Lost Tales and so to the Silmarillion that they are set thousands of years later than these earlier events. Also that they were driven by commercial requirements by his publisher Unwin and Allen. The three main tales of the Silmarillion were worked on for many years, in verse forms, prose and synopsis. All however are alluded to in LotR as are other events in the Silmarillion.

After many years of studying his fathers papers, Christopher Tolkien has finally managed to piece together enough of one of the three tales that instead of an eight page synopsis in the Silmarilion we now have the pleasure of a vastly expanded story.

The tale is about Hurins capture by Morgoth (of whom Sauron of LotR fame is only a servant), the curse placed upon Hurins family and the doom that befell them try as they would to escape it.

In style it is far beyond the short version of the Silmarillion and not as detailed as the LotR otherwise we would know the time of day, how many bushes Turin had passed and what the Halls of Nargothrond looked like in great detail.

However what we do get is a closer look at Turin the main protagonist as he battles through life to escape the curse. This is a tale that is both sad, distressing and terribly moving.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book but then that may be because I enjoy most of Tolkiens Middle Earth works whether non Tolkien fans would enjoy it, I am not sure.

At the weekend as I mentioned before, I acquired a radio (Roberts Radio model R9906) from a jumble sale.

After purchasing some batteries for it and getting it going, it occurred to me that a manual would be nice as it has a clock, alarm, FM text and other stuff going by the acronyms on the button.

So on the off chance I emailed Roberts Radio’s customer services enquiring as to whether they would be kind enough to email me the manual for a discontinued model radio.

A few minutes ago I received an email with a PDF manual for the radio.

Excellent customer service.

So if you are in the market for a radio I can highly reccomend Roberts Radio not only for their customer service but also for the quality of their radios.

The dealer had a look at our car and came to the conclusion that the oil is leaking due to a head gasket issue. Consequently the engine is in bits and should be back together with a nice shiny gasket by the end of Monday.

In the meantime they did have a courtesy car I could borrow, this time I had both bits of my driving licence and now have the err pleasure of driving a Peugeot 107. Lets just say that it isn’t spacious, isn’t particularly comfortable and feels like being in a tin can. Still it will do and at least we have a car to use.

I am so pleased that all this is covered by the warranty that expires tonight.

Whilst at the dealership I asked for prices for the MOTT, major service and aircon recharge – lets just say that they quoted me more than the small independant garage.

In other news the book diet is erm failing.

Mrspao found another jumble sale for us to go to, so guess who came out with 20 odd paperbacks and a Roberts radio for the earth shattering sum of eight quid?

My mission to have a radio in every room in the house is slowly proceeding….

When we bought our new car three years ago mrspao decided to call her Marie-Claire.

Well three years later she has been serviced every year and yesterday had her first MOT test in the small independant garage that we have used for years.

Sam at the garage pointed out that there is a slight oil leak that we should get sorted out under the waranty, at which point it was too late to phone the dealer.

This morning on the train to London (for work purposes) I phoned the dealer who told me to bring it in straight away which of course was problematical. The agreed that I could drop the car late today or first thing tomorrow morning so at least they have it and so the leak is covered as a warranty repair.

Dropping the car in just before five today they tell me that they have a courtesy car I can use, sadly I did not have my driving licence with me so that was a non starter.

Instead tomorrow if they haven’t fixed it I can at least collect a courtesy car and use that until the car is sorted out.

Phew.

Another quick look through the referral logs shows that still more odd stuff gets to this blog:

define marble eyes
here we go again on my own
amateur housewives
vampyre eyes
which city will get nuked
front view pictures of forts
is there an operation that will change my eyes to cats eyes
safe cafe via tagline
posh points
dreamweaver reset router
duck birthday stuff
vampire victims
housewife swingers
putting your own real in a cinema cost in sydney
girly cam
Five TV snobs programme
brain feels scrambled
vampire sex

At the end of last month I received the annual reminder that the car tax was due. This time the form said I could renew it online.

So wanting to avoid hours in a queue at the Post Office I put in the magic number on the form into the DVLA website, confirmed the car details and paid via credit card.

A moment later I have an emailed receipt.

When we returned from holiday low and behold a shiny new car tax disc has arrived in the post to play in the windscreen.

I am still stunned that the system actually worked.