Holidays

Ten giveaway signs that you've been on an activity holiday....

• A big pile of dirty washing
• Legs like pit props, buns of steel*
• Seriously chapped lips from six days in the sun and the wind
• A letter from the car hire company saying you've been caught in a speed trap
• No guilt about sitting at home all day on Sunday reading newspapers and watching crap telly
• Beer? No thanks
• Sleep deprivation
• You've almost forgotten what you do for a living
• People call you "redneck"
• No money in the bank

Anything I've forgotten?

* Re. #2 - I lied - my buns of steel days are probably behind me (like my buns).

Graham Hill

There was an excellent documentary on BBC4 last night about Graham Hill. He's a vaguely distant but still evocative memory from my childhood and, as with most programmes like this, it was an opportunity to fill in the gaps about what I knew about him already, as well as to wallow in a bit of nostalgia.

He was, on evidence, a natural raconteur and wit, able to be self deprecating and extremely funny whilst also being very perceptive. There was one piece that particularly struck me. He was standing in front of an audience, about to deliver an after dinner speech, and simply opened with the following statement (sorry not an exact quote, but close enough). Imagine it being spoken in the accent of a raffish Englishman with a slightly upper-class accent to gain the full effect...
"Well, the idea is that I stand up here and bang on for a few minutes and then you can ask me a few questions. Don't worry if you can't think of any questions because I've got some pretty interesting ones I could ask myself, most of which I don't know the answer to."

The above quote particularly struck with me as a wonderful expression of self-awareness, put incredibly succinctly as well as humourously. He articulated so simply what we should all do now and again. An ability perhaps to get yourself into perspective, all the more interesting from a man who lived in the rarified atmosphere of super-celebrity in which F1 racing drivers existed.

A lot of the documentary tried to understand what motivated him, where he found his apparently innate driving skill, why he continued to race after he and his car were no longer competitive and why he continued to race after an horrific injury in which he almost lost both his legs. He was it seems something of an everyman, a doting father but probably philandering husband (very much implied anyway), an extremely difficult man to work for, yet admired immensely by those who worked for him, and a determined competitor, always going for the win.

The programme also touched on the camaraderie of racing drivers in his day (the 1960s) and how they were all, in general, respecting of each others skills. They were an elite club who enjoyed each others company and competed on the track but were also friends off it. They also died with alarmingly regularity which I think accounts for the bond that existed between them. In Hill's time, the approximate chance of an F1 driver who raced for five years being killed in a crash were two out of three. Perhaps a shared gallows humour was what united them, but discussion of death was probably not something they talked about much, if at all.

I rather get the feeling, although he may have had the self awareness to realise he had some inherent driving forces, he couldn't bring himself to analyse or confront them. An understanding that, although for the time being they helped him to achieve success, statistically speaking, they were more than likely to kill him. He survived through good fortune, the programme showed the good drivers died, as well as the less talented ones.

He survived his incredibly dangerous racing career and retired from the sport perhaps a few years later than he should have, and - for some reason I want to use the word "ironically" here, although I know it's wrong - died in a light aircraft crash a few years later.

How to Remove and Charge the Battery on a Honda ST1300A (Pan European)

You know, there are not enough blog posts out there explaining how to do simple practical stuff so here is my attempt to redress the balance.

I am currently troubled by the battery on my bike going flat. I park the bike up and, until recently, if I left it more than a week the battery would be flat. Lately it's been lasting even less time before going flat. This problem started over a year ago and the battery was replaced and it seemed to get better briefly - the battery that was in there before really was knackered - but now the problems have returned. I can't believe this battery is shot after little over a year. Steve the Bike, who does my servicing, says he can't detect a drain while the battery is on the bike. This is the 2002 model which had an uprated alternator fitted in later models (thanks Freddy) so I suspect the charging circuit on this model was questionable but it certainly shouldn't be this bad. The investigation continues.

Anyway, here we go with an illustrated guide to removing the battery on a 2002 Honda St1300A, and putting it on charge.

You will need....a Honda ST1300A....like this one, it's mine you know. Park it on the side or centre stand giving yourself a little bit of room to work on the offside (that's the right side if you're sitting on the bike). The nearside is the left hand side; as an aide-memoire, I always remember the nearside is the side nearest the kerb.
















You will also need some tools. However expensive your vehicle is, all manufacturers will always economise in one place and that is the toolkit. The most expensive vehicle you can buy will only ever have the most rudimentary and shoddy toolkit - only good in an absolute crisis. Buy your own if you plan to do even the smallest amount of home maintenance. I have this handy little set of JCB tools which include a socket set and allen keys (also known as hexagon keys). I got them in Robert Dyas a few years ago. God bless Robert Dyas - one of those shops you can always kill thirty minutes in looking at loads of useful things like tools, gadgets, novel electrical appliances, bottles of strange chemicals and all sorts of stuff. It has that wonderful, heady aroma of Men Enjoying Themselves.
















Now to the process itself. First, using the ignition key, unlock the seat/pannier locks on either side of the rear seat section.
















Next, push down on the little brass coloured seat release lever under the offside seat/pannier lock and, keeping it pushed down lift off the rear seat section.



After removing the rear seat section, lift away the forward seat section. This may need a firm tug as it is clipped into position.



Remove the near side rear pannier by grasping the handle and lifting it up and outwards.



Next, using a 5mm allen key, remove the side panel by unscrewing the 3 bolts holding it in place.



The battery terminals are now visible. Using a 10mm socket, undo the right hand battery terminal - that's the negative one. There's a small retaining nut under each bolt, make sure it doesn't fall out (this can happen very easily without you noticing) or you can't reconnect the battery later.



Lift off the relay unit which is snapped into place on top of the battery cover.



Remove the battery cover which is snapped into position at the top rear of the battery.



Using the 10mm socket again, unscrew the battery clamp which is held with a single bolt above the centre of the battery.



Lift off the battery clamp.



Using the 10mm socket again (this is turning out to be a wise purchase), unscrew the positive battery terminal.



Now you can just lift out the battery. It's a sealed battery so can happily be tipped over at an angle of 45 degrees without risk of spilling nasty battery acid over yourself.



Your bike now looks kind of naked but you do feel rather clever because you've done all this dismantling in the space of only three or four minutes. Carefully put to one side all the bits you've removed (I put them in the back of the garage) putting the six bolts in a sensible place where you can find them again. Put the bike back in the garage and take the battery to its designated place of charging - that's my living room. I guess it's a good thing I'm single (woe, woe and thrice woe) as women tend to consider motorcycle parts in the living room a Bad Thing.



Connect your battery to the charger. I have an Optimate III charger which I bought a few years ago. The battery will take between one and 12 hours to charge depending on how flat it is.

Nick likes to...

Here's a silly little meme picked up from Rob at Eine Kleine Nichtmusik.

The basic idea is, you type into Google "[insert your name here] likes to" and see what the first ten hits reckon you like.


1. Nick likes to do puzzles, play with balloons, work on the computer, and ride his bike...innocent enough, I can live with that.

2. Nick Likes To Be Backdoored...I like to think all my doors are open, except possibly that one.

3. Nick likes to eat microwave Buritos...surely that would make them rather soggy, and aren't there two "r's" in burrito?

4. Nick likes to mix it up in the community with his live shots around the seven county metro area during his weathercasts..."mix it up", "live shots"? I think this particular Nick is the butt of some particularly cruel jokes in the office that he doesn't understand and sadly thinks everybody loves him.

5. Nick likes to play with his own fingers...I hate my hands, they look enormous in photographs and I prefer to keep them out of shot.

6. Nick likes to let off steam on his motorbike...now we're talking. See previous / future posts.

7. Nick likes to be Lashed by trannies 40 times...see answer #2.

8. Nick likes to study hard...sometimes, but if I have, it's never helped me in any subsequent exams.

9. Nick likes to find all my ex-girlfriends on the internet and then pretend he's me...a gentleman who behaves like this deserves to be thrashed on the steps of his club.

10. Nick likes to ensure that all the people involved are on the same page...I've chaired meetings and tried this methodology briefly but never found it achieves much.

I'll Try Again.....Next Year *weeps*

Madonna - "innovative", "orignal" blah blah blah.....

Didn't she "shock the world" with her conical brassiere in about 1990 yet The RAH Band were doing it back in 1985?



Please, just don't ask me how I came to be watching this particular video but surely....a missed classic....well isn't it?

You've Got It Wrong Again Gordon

So, bloody-nosed from their drubbing in the local council and London Mayoral elections last week, we've witnessed a steady procession of cabinet ministers promising they will, from now on, take opinion on board and will "listen and learn" before making future pronouncements and decisions.

Quelle surprise that today, after receiving a report from an advisory body they probably created, New Labour decided to completely ignore the recommendation to leave cannabis as a Category C drug and switched it back to a Category B. Nice to know they've now started to listen - well, just not quite yet though.

I don't really care what category cannabis is in. I'd just like it to be in the right category, presuming that's where it actually belongs. I would assume if there is an expensive advisory body set up to review this category then the government would actually listen to what they say but apparently not. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary said other opinions from people such as the police and education services had to be taken into account and the advisory body was speaking only from a medical point of view. But on Radio 4 this evening, a former member of the body said that other opinions (such as police and education) were, as a matter of course, taken into account and that their report reflected these varying views.

So, there we have it. The government hasn't bothered to "listen and learn" less than a week after promising they would. They had already decided what they were going to do before the advisers even opened up the custard creams and sat down to pontificate. The government even said they were more concerned about sending out "a message" and they believed a re-categorisation was the way to do this, rather than just reading the report they so assiduously commissioned. Another bit of gesture policy-making they imagine is made on what they hope is public opinion (something they have been shown in the last week to be hopelessly out of touch with) and what really happened, as with the abolition of the ten pence tax rate, is because Gordon says so....and that's all the debate that is apparently really needed. End of "discussion".

Noroc and Salaam Alekum

I've spent two out of the last three weeks out of the country. Fortunately, I get occasional bursts of travel as part of my work so three weeks ago I had 5 days in Romania and I spent last week in Egypt.

Romania, or more specifically in my case, Bucharest, is a great place to visit. My colleagues in the Bucharest office are without doubt the most hospitable and fun people in the whole organisation. There were also four colleagues visiting from the Paris office. They are also exceptional fun so we had a great week. I counted the stamps in my passport and this was my seventh trip to Bucharest and I hope there are lots more.

Whenever you mention you have visited Romania you get one of two reactions. People start (trying to) make clumsy jokes about Dracula or they mention gipsys. I've even seen colleagues on their first visit there try these sorts of comments as some sort of icebreaker with the Romanians. They are usually answered politely with a courteous smile or occasionally a suggestion that perhaps these are not the sole characteristics that define their country and its people. I love going there and would recommend it to anyone. Can't wait to go again. Fantastic climate, fantastic people.

Egypt is a tougher nut to crack. Egyptians seem rather more cautious on first meeting and one gets the impression they expect a Western visitor has arrived with a lot of preconceptions about them, mostly negative for some reason. In my experience, after three visits, that's not the case. I encourage colleagues to go there because Cairo is so different to any city we're normally accustomed to. It's a frantic, sprawling and often bewildering place but utterly safe, certainly no more dangerous than some parts of London at the wrong time of day or night. Revisit cars you only dimly recall from your childhood by hopping into a local taxi - agree the price first though, none have a working meter. In the tourist spots you will be hassled to buy stuff, especially in areas like Khan El Khallili (the massive market) or around the Pyramids, but respond in a friendly manner and you soon realise they have a fantastic sense of humour. Yes, they want you to buy something but they're smart enough to realise they are probably the fiftieth person in the last hour that's asked you the same question and they have to survive on their wit and charm to keep your interest. The people in the office open up pretty quickly as well and any suggestion of initial mutual distrust is soon gone. Try to speak a few words of Arabic - it's a real icebreaker as you try to pronounce a simple phrase which to a Westerner simply sounds like you're trying to cough up your breakfast.

The Final Kitchen Blogpost

OK, it's finally over. Electrician #3 returned today to fix the light he broke on the last visit. He'd drilled through a cable that wasn't supposed to be there. This has left me with two rather ugly holes in the living room ceiling and a hole gouged in the wall which is tactically obscured by a Mark Rothko print - No. 10, 1950 - if you're interested.

I've managed to play with all my new appliances. The AEG washing machine appears to wash clothes quietly and efficiently. The mini Bosch dishwasher is a hoot. The Neff oven, hob and grill all appear to work exactly to requirements - but getting used to
those will take a little time.

My concerns over choice of tiles (I have no design or colour co-ordination skills) have been vindicated by various compliments from the neighbours and the granite still looks utterly, utterly beautiful.

So below are a few before, during, and after pictures.

Mortality

Within the last few hours I've heard my next door neighbour has died and a very good friend for the last 25 years has had a heart attack.

Phillip, my neighbour, was a compact jolly man. He was getting old but I regularly saw him on the stairs as he jogged up and down the three flights to take the rubbish out. I always joked he could get up the stairs faster than me. He always wore immaculate white trainers and had a witty comment about something in the news or some recent local event. His health started to deteriorate very quickly a few years ago and one night I had a knock on the door from his distraught wife as Phillip had fallen and couldn't get up. I went in to their flat and manhandled him, as only an amateur can, back up onto the bed. A few days later he went into long term care and that was the last I saw of him although I often asked his wife Betty how he was as she went every day to visit him and spend the day with him. He died earlier this week and was buried on Thursday.

I've known my friend Colin, for over 25 years. We were flatmates in a terrible houseshare in Forest Hill. Everyone in the house got on fine, comrades in adversity really, as the landlord was a tedious little prat. The kind that leaves notes about the place while you're out.
We've all been friends ever since. He was running for a train on Thursday evening and suddenly collapsed. Next he knew he was in St. Thomas' Hospital being told he'd just had a heart attack. He called me from there a few hours ago. The prognosis sounds good. He had two blocked arteries which have been probed and have been deemed repairable without any invasive surgery needed. He has to take it easy for a while. We celebrated his 50th birthday only a few weeks ago. He's always been active, is definitely not overweight and is only a moderate drinker and never a smoker.

It's only times like this you start to think about how many people you know have actually died and the numbers get pretty frightening. My mum is one of three sisters. They all married. Of those three couples, one sister and all the husbands have died. Of the four who died, my father was the only one who got past 60.

My mother fortunately is still in robust health and shows no sign of fading at 70. That's probably got a lot to do with her lifestyle. Once she got rid of me and my brother she decided to keep horses instead of kids and has had, at any one time, between two and five horses on the go, so to speak. She's always done all the mucking out, grooming and all that stuff herself, as well as towing them around in horse boxes to go eventing. She can still chuck a 25kg sack of pony nuts further than I would care to try or bundle half a ton of recalcitrant horse flesh through the stables and out into the field for the day. Perhaps I should find myself a hobby like that or take up munro bagging or something as apart form the gym a couple of times a week my lifestyle is pretty sedentary.

In Which I Gain a Double Oven and Lose Some Lighting

So, this refurbishment is, as I have probably said before, is a series of battles. Some you win, some you lose, and some you get a bloody nose but come back fighting the next day to be victorious.

The last two days have been a mix of all the above. Yesterday the granite was fitted - it's gorgeous and the single most beautiful thing in the kitchen so far. Electrician #3 arrived today to fit a new cooker circuit, consumer unit (that's a fuse box to us normal people) and fit the lovely double oven.

The new cooker circuit went in OK and the double oven was fitted, eventually, after we hacked up most of the back of the unit. Unfortunately, at some stage one of the cables to a living room light has been hacked through. So I have a partially darkened living room in which I cannot read. The RCD (circuit breaker) is also over-sensitive and may be prone to switching off the entire flat at a moment's notice. Electrician #3 has spent 14 hours here today and will have to return next week to try and solve the above problems.

Electrician #3 has also pointed out the poor quality of workmanship of electrician #1 whose work I had suspected for some time was rather makeshift. I don't want #1 to do any more work, but he will have to come back as it is not permissible to locate sockets and switches directly above a hob which is what he's done.

Tomorrow, more kitchen units are assembled. I still have to choose tiles though. All appliances are purchased.

Maybe I will have running water in the kitchen by the weekend....but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Easter Snow

I'm just back from a weekend up North - the North of England that is - Yorkshire to be precise. That's where I'm from originally. Well, actually, as a small child it was Yorkshire, then they moved the county boundaries and it became Cleveland, but the area is also often referred to as Teesside, so that confuses everyone and people who don't know the area assume you're from Newcastle anyway so it's always a bit of a drag to explain it. So I'll stop now.

Anyway, my Mum still lives there, a few miles from the coast and the aptly named North Sea. Weather comes from all sides and, despite being a few miles inland you can taste the salt in the air when it gets particularly wild and the wind is in the right direction. When snow arrives, you'll generally get a decent amount, and it tends to stick around for a few days and doesn't turn into a sodden slush by mid-morning like you get in London. Lots of the North is like this, but since the media is London-centric in the UK, snowfall in the UK is always reported in the news with the same degree of shock as nuclear attacks or the suggestion of a Labour tax cut.

So, before I get too political, here are a few pictures of the village of East Cowton last Sunday. Granted it's not a big snowfall, but come on, it's Easter dammit, and I think it looks especially pretty and picture-postcardy.

It's also nice to get away from the flat for a few days as I still have no running water in the kitchen and the dust levels are getting really unpleasant. The granite is being fitted today.

Progress

The electrical gloom of last week has hopefully been resolved. The problem was that there was no locatable cooker circuit in my flat. You need a 30 amp plus circuit on which to run most modern double electric ovens. You can probably get away with a lower rating but you run the risk of the fuse blowing midway through cooking your Christmas dinner or something. These circuits should exist but as I had a gas cooker before, it was not required and had long since, probably before I even moved in, been entombed in a wall and lost. To find I now needed to install a new circuit just after the kitchen was decorated and half the units fitted was a bit of a shock as it would probably mean fitting a complete new circuit requiring much burrowing into my newly decorated walls.

A panic to find a trustworthy electrician before more construction was done was undertaken. And I think I've found one. He's the third electrician I've needed. One to wire up the new boiler, one to install lighting and sockets, and now a third to install a cooker circuit. The good new is that all the cable can be surface mounted and hidden discreetly in coving or at ceiling level and hidden by units. The work hasn't been done yet, but the spark #3 arrives next week to install it.

Also next week the granite worktops will be fitted. In order to fit granite, you must first template it. This involves part constructing the kitchen to the point where the future locations for the worktops can be accurately measured. You can't just trim a slab of granite on a whim if it doesn't quite fit- it's got to be measured once, cut, and you have to get right first time. All the units, sink and supplies must be in place but disconnected. I have had no running water in my kitchen for over a week. The templaters did their work today and return next Tuesday to fit the granite worktops. After that, the cooker circuit can be added, the oven and hob installed, the sink and tap can be plumbed in, the tiling can be completed and the rest of the units can be fitted and finished.

I feel I've crested the majority of problems. There's the potential for many things to go wrong, but I feel none of them will be insurmountable.

Highs and Lows

As my kitchen and plumbing refurbishment continues and the cash and the will to live ebb slowly away, there is the occasional high spot. They are few and far between and one must treasure them like a pearl in an oyster before you choke on the little bastard.

This week's high, which has been counter-attacked by deep, gloomy depression over electrical issues, is the arrival of my kitchen tap. It comes in its own soft, fuzzy-felt, monogrammed, drawstring bag. Gaze upon its cruciform splendour. It's the only good thing to happen to me this week. One day I may see it in situ.

I am Good.....apparently....

How evil are you?

A Great Book Related Meme

What a great idea for a meme. It goes as follows.....

• Take the book you are currently reading
• Turn to page 123
• Skip five sentences
• Post the next three sentences in your blog

So, here goes with my three sentences...

I believe it has never been used since Johnson's death in 1784.

There is an interesting picture, attributed to Reynolds, of Jonhson's (sic) black servant, Frank Barber. He was a Jamaican slave who received his freedom in 1752, became Johnson's man-servant, and apart for (sic again) a short period, served him faithfully until his master died thirty-two years later.

Who was responsible for proof-reading this manuscript? I hadn't noticed any mistakes reading the book until now and then I find two in three sentences. Anyway, it's an interesting book - In Search of London by H.V. (Henry Vollam to his pals) Morton. A Pevsner style book on London written fifty years ago, very evocative and, if you've spent any time in London, addictive to imagine how places you thought you knew might have actually looked half a century ago.

Tattoos and Tiling

Crouch End has now got its own tattoo parlour. I'm not sure how their market research concluded Crouch End has the right population demographic for tatts but I look forward to Amy Winehouse visiting the area soon to reccy the place out.

In other news, the flat refurbishment continues. It's slow, but not that slow, and as long as things continue to progress I'm reasonably happy. I'd worry if things stopped, but that hasn't happened yet and there's no sign of that happening. Walls have been replastered, the floor has started, and electricians arrive next week to put in lighting, extra sockets and to wire up the plumbing properly. The bathroom will have to be done next as, despite their best intentions, the plumbers had to wreck a lot of it to lay in new pipework for the heating. Latest photos herein....

My kitchen has now almost completely moved to the living area. I am perfecting the art of living off coffee and sandwiches and still go through the motions of trying to keep the place clean but I just find that trying to clear up the dust and rubble only really agitates it and it just resettles over everything fifteen minutes later.

Boilers ands Ladybirds

Look! I have a new boiler and the cast-iron drainpie which I once though might become a feature of la cucina is now steadily returning to the darkness which it has occupied these past 40 years or so. That was the last time any work was done in this kitchen.











If that was not enough, these last few weeks I have been under attack from swarms of ladybirds that seem to know how to get into my flat. I would supply photos but they are so numerous that I have finally just resorted to just hoovering them up every evening. Seriously, I don't make a habit of killing bugs but this is out of control. They buzz round the lights, I pick them out of my bedding, the bath, my toothbrush, they converge on windows. I'm sick of the blighters and they keep on attacking in waves every morning. A little internet research suggests this is not an unusual problem.

Time Passes Very Slowly

Time passes very, very slowly when you're sitting at home, waiting for a plumber.

Kitchen Refurb. - Day 2

John the Kitchen is definitely a grafter. He's been back today and has industriously plastered neatly where the holes and roughly filled plasterwork were before. He's left it clean and tidy, as he's now away for a few days until the plumbing and heating guys do their stuff. He even 'phoned just now to ask if it was OK that he had left the plastic sheeting he'd laid over the carpet to protect it while he hauled rubble and my demolished kitchen through my flat and down two flights of stairs.

The Grand Kitchen Refurbishment Begins

This is how my kitchen currently looks. Nice innit. Work has finally begun. New boiler, pipework, kitchen units, cooker, granite worktops, slate floor, trendy lighting.....but when you see it like this you wonder how long it's going to take and how something this horrible will even ever metamorphose into the chic picture I saw in the brochure.

Optimistically, it's going to take three weeks - and these things never go to plan - because I'm having several things done at the same time and the pictures here are just the opening salvo. Today, John the Kitchen has been ripping out units, demolishing an old larder/cupboard, taking up the horrible lino floor and filling in the cracks in the walls. Everything in my flat has a fine coating of red brick dust. I know there's no point in trying to keep anything clean for the next three weeks. I have a dry taste in my mouth as a thick dust lingers in the air.....this had better be worth it. Hang the expense, it's just got to be right at the end of it all.

More to follow......