On Saturday, we decided to go visit my folks again.

Since the weather has been good lately, my mum's phobia about thunder and lightning has abated, which basically means that she has got her life back, and consequently, my dad has had an easier time of it too. 

She's been like that for years, but lately, it seemed to be getting worse, and everyone in the family has tried to suggest some sort of therapy, or treatment, but none of it has worked for long.  It means that it is impossible for her to plan anything beyond the next weather report.

Anyway, since she has been very up on the phone lately, we thought we would take advantage.

M and I headed up there on Saturday in the TR6, stopping briefly in Keswick on the way.  After we got there, we had a good time, staying up till 01:45 chatting about this and that.  Since my nan died at the tail end of last year, I guess that my mum has taken a long time to get over it, but she has resolved to turn a corner, she even told us that she drove a car for the first time in what must be five years.

Sunday, and all four of us headed out in my dad's car to southern Scotland, round the coast from Carlisle to Dumfries, it must be about 20 years since I was round that part of the world.  We paid a visit to the museum, and had a look at the camera obsucra there, which was interesting as neither my mum nor M had ever seen one.

On the way back, we were just leaving the town, when we notice that a VW dealership was still open, and one of the topics of conversation the night before was that my mum thought that the Polo, which she had been driving last week 'felt a bit big' (!) so my dad suggested that she look for a Lupo for sale, and there on the forecourt was just what we had been looking for.  A '04 model in silver with a sports interior, one owner etc. etc.  As the dealer was closing for the day, my dad took his card, and said that they would call back the day after.

As I had to go to work on the Monday evening, we decided to head back to Yorkshire on Sunday night, and eventually made it back home by 22:30.  I really should look into improving the headlights on the TR6.  (up to 28mpg now!)

Well it's been over a month since I blogged last, and I have realised that I need to overcome the inertia which has led to the blog sloth.  Perhaps it's my own personal vanity about what I publish here, that means that I would rather post nothing than something which fails to come up to my own standards.  Maybe I just think that I can't come up with anything clever or interesting for the time being?

Anyway, no matter.

Quite a lot actually has happened since last time.  The Mistral flew for the first time this year on Saturday 21st.  Alan the check pilot passed it as OK.  Steve the engineer has all the inspection paperwork to re date then send off, so I should have a ticket for a year's worth of flying.  Just in time for the insurance to run out, ho hum.  The check flight revealed that the stall warner doesn't work (again) in spite of me fitting a complete new system over winter, so I guess it's going to have to go back to the manufacturers.  Alan reported a smell of fuel in the cockpit during the flight, which I traced to the fuel shut off valve beside the left seat.  Further examination revealed that the valve was a rubbish cork thing which had dried out and become leaky, I replaced it with an item more suited to use on an aircraft.  I also found out about how to recalibrate the barometric pressure window on the altimeter, so it read something sensible, and did that too.

Nothing much else has happened since then because I have been stuck at work on a 72 hour week this week, although I have been using the TR6 for commuting.  Not sure if it's a good thing that the loud exhaust and wind noise keep you awake on the trip back home from nightshifts, because going to sleep after you get home might be made a little more difficult!

I have been web browsing for some info about building Ducati 900ss engines, as the new crank cases for my ebay engine turned up this week, and very nice they are too, I am going to have to make the rest of the bits I bolt to them look just as shiny. I also ordered a set of JE high compression 92mm pistons from Cycleworks in California, and was impressed that I could get them for $314 as opposed to £215 + 17.5% VAT being the cheapest quote from a UK based supplier for the same parts!

Well yesterday was budget day. Bit of a mixed one, the headlines are full of 'Substantial cuts to the basic rate of income tax' and I was interested that the threshold for payment of 40% tax has gone up to just over £43,000.  The BBC have created a good ready reconer to work out exactly where you stand at:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/business/budget_calc/html/budget_calculator.stm

It turns out that the increases in national insurance and vehicle excise duty will almost wipe out any gains from income tax cuts.

So, the Gord giveth, and the Gord taketh away.  (see what I did there?)

Just realised that the last couple of blogs have been a bit ranty, so hopefully this one is going to bring things back to normal.

Today I had planned to get up late (nightshift tonight) and go to see Keith, a fellow TR6 owner in the local club, to see if he had any ideas about how to make my hood fit the car a little better.   However it turned out that he had the builders in at his house, and was rather busy, so I played with the hood frame some more, but haven't come to any conclusions with it.  I end up un-doing some of my previous work, then changing something, only to find that it was better where I started!

I decided to go for a run instead, and set out on my usual 5 mile route (I try to do this once a week, but missed out last week) and after about 2 miles, I noticed a familiar figure driving towards me in a JCB.  I waved at David, a local farmer, and he turned around and parked to have a chat.

David is very handy to know if you have aviation as a hobby, because in addition to having a large farm in the next village, he also has an airstrip and a Vans RV7 kit plane which he built himself.  Our Mistral was hangared there before Phillip and I took over ownership.  We hadn't bumped into each other for a while, so we spent a companionable 20 min or so catching up with our current affairs.  I would like to use David's airstrip to base the Mistral when I complete my flying training at York, but I need to get some hours in first!   Rufforth is much handier as it has several runways making it a lot simpler to operate from.  Crosswinds make things tricky.  Hopefully, all work is now complete on the Mistral, I say hopefully, because it has been inspected (ages ago) and is now awaiting a check pilot to come and do the annual check flight.  This process is more difficult than you might imagine, because the local instructor can't do it (even though he can instruct on the type) because a Mistral is a bit different to a 'conventional' 3 axis microlight, so needs a check pilot with time on that type, and because Mistrals aren't too thick on the ground, or in the air for that matter, finding one is a bit tricky.  However there is a chap called Alan who can do it, so Steve, the engineer at Rufforth, has booked him in to do the job.  All I can do now is wait for Alan, Steve, and Me to be available on a Saturday morning, when the weather is OK.  Now do you see why everything in aviation takes such a long time?

I got back from my run in reasonable time (50min or so of running time) and started to make tea (spaghetti carbonara) the problem with going on nightshifts is that M and I only have about an hour and a quarter at the best of times to see each other when she is working and I am about to go out on nights, so getting the cooking nearly finished by the time she gets in from work gives us more time to catch up with each other.  She was later than usual, because the auditors are in this week where she works, and she has to keep them happy, but there is still a lot of unresolved crap from before she started there.  Hopefully they aren't going to ask too much about what happened before she started!

Appologies since this is strictly old news, but it hasn't come to my attention till now.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/ukfs_news/...00/6420885.stm

Does anyone actually call up this so called channel? Or any of the others for that matter? When I bought a digibox, in anticipation of all those lovely shiny new channels, as touted by the adverts as a thing of wonder, how angry can you imagine I was when I found out that at least half the channels on offer were filled with this, the lowest form of wanky arse imaginable. My anger was further added to when I discovered that after a certain time of night, ITV which, being far from my favourite of the terrestrial channels, changed over to ITV play.

Now I think that there is something quite ethically dubious about the whole business.  For example, they might have say, a wordsearch, where you need to identify several words, then if you feel lucky, call up on a premium rate line (normally 75p/call) and give your answer, and if you win, you get £500!  Easy you may think? Well it turns out that even though the presenter in the studio is filling time, and giving the impression that no one is calling, and they might even put a countdown clock on the screen to drum up more calls, then if you called in, your call wouldn't be taken by the presenter, and you have still spent your 75p, and been glad you had value for money!

The accountants project that ITV play will make £20m this year. And no wonder!

I find it depressing that so many people are dim enough to think that they might win something. And I thought that the National Lottery was a voulantary tax on stupidity!

The most irksome thing though is that the quantity of stupid people who keep the likes of ITV play going is that they are cluttering up the TV bandwidth, and preventing me from being provided with the programmes I actually want to watch, rather than this low rent, populist drivel for the brain dead.

Apparently there are checks and balances in place to limit any one person's number of calls down to a mere 200/day, in the hope of saving the stupid from themselves, and preventing them from becoming adicted. The mind boggles!

George Orwell wrote in 1984 that "If there is any hope, then it lies with the proles." From what I have seen, then there is NO hope for society!

However when the rabid capitalist part of my brain kicks in, it secretly envies those who thought up this business opportunity, as exploiting those who literally have more cash than sense has always been an ambition of mine, because if you really are that obtuse, then you deserve to be exploited by those smarter than you.

Tuesday morning, and a week after the home improvements began.  Dave the builder got a lot of work done when he was here from Tuesday to Friday last week, and now I am pleased to report that the sitting room is resplendant with its new cieling! 

Jobs completed last week include:-

Brickwork on the gable wall of the garage repointed.  This took two whole days as all the old loose mortar had to be removed before new applied.

The window cleaners came round on Wednesday, and since they were there at the same time as me, for once, I got them to clear out some of the downspout and guttering which was blocked and making the front wall of the house wet.

Damp proof course injected into two walls of the garage, and new fascia boarding around the top of the gable.

Old, crappy aertex cieling removed from sitting room, new plasterboard installed (all on Thursday) new cable run for extra lighting, making 6 lights in total, instead of 4, TV aerial cabling run trough roof void (much tidier) then new plaster to finish off (late Thursday, early Friday)

Woodworm in garage timbers treated, new bulb in outside security light, which needed ladders much longer than we have to get to.

So over the weekend, M and I had been spending time cleaning the inevitable building debris up (her) and fitting new surface mounted halogen lights into the cieling (me).  The holes that Dave and I had made in the plasterboard needed enlarging to make the light units fit, and then the wiring up proved to be a little more complicated than I first imagined.  Since there were two pairs of lights, fed from two switches I thought that I could wire up one pair and test it, but the lights were wired without junction boxes, so I had to make some up using terminal block, still everything went back together eventually and I only blew the fuse out once!

On Sunday the first coat of paint went on, but it probably needs another, then all the walls need painting because the old cieling had plasterboard tape all round the joint between it and the wall, which pulled off the top inch or so of plaster all the way round the wall, don't you just hate it when someone does a really thorough job which you need to undo?

The only downside to all of last week's activity was that the dining room still has its original cieling, but  with hinsight, thinking about all the work done last week, it was a bit ambitious a target to get all that done as well.  It took Dave and I a whole day to remove the old cieling, cut, shape and fit new plasterboard, and then to plaster half of the new boards, so hopefully it should 'only' be a day and a half of work to get the dining room done.  This job is even more urgent now, as compared to everywhere else in the house it looks much more ugly than before.

On another tack, I am thinking about transfering this blog into either Blogspot, or Myspace, mainly because I can post some pictures, it seems that on here, I can only get about one and a half in, before I run into the storage limits, BAH!

Yesterday and today, Dave our friend from Market Harborough has been up in Yorkshire sorting out various jobs on the house which would take me years to do, if at all!  Firstly the gable end wall for the garage needs re pointing and a damp proof course injecting, and then the cielings in the sitting room and dining room want taking down because they look like the surface of a Marks and Spencer's Christmas cake. Unfortuantely, pesky blogdrive won't allow me to upload a pic to show you all what it looks like!

When we bought the house, nearly 2 years ago, that was the one part which we both agreed had to go, still, it gives us the excuse to decorate both rooms inside, and hopefully I am going to have a dry inside garage wall to hang all my tools on in future.

Dave is going to be here till Friday, and hopefully by then most of the hard work will have been done!

Several un-eventful days in work from Wednesday to Friday, Wednesday around 16:30 the weather looked reasonable, and having got out of work a little early there was about an hour before dark, so I dug my running kit out and made it round my five mile route in about 50 minutes, much better than I expected given that I hadn't had a run since the start of winter, must try to make that a more regular fixture, and get the time down to nearer 40 minutes.

M rang me up at work to say that she 'might' be getting a promotion at work so that her duties are to encompass looking after all the IT systems (well managing outside contractors to look after it at least) as well as the accountancy stuff, so well done her!  Apparently, like all the best promotions, cash and duties are yet to be decided upon.

Saturday we made our way down to see M's family who were having something of a get together in Lincolnshire.  Simeon her brother is back from Australia for a few weeks, and we hadn't seen him since our wedding in 2004.  His original reason for being here was that his (and M's) cousin Hannah was due to get married this weekend, but apparently it's all off for the moment at least, some excitement I am not party to!  Graeme one of M's other brothers and Vicky his wife brought along their twins, who are 4 months old now, and were quite rightly the centre of attention for the day.  In all there were 2 Hewitsons, 7 Wisners and 8 Craddocks present, quite a roll call.  M told her dad about her promotion, and she wondered how pleased he was, she thinks that he is worried about her liking money too much, which might hinder the arrival of grandchildren... As a dad of five and grandad of seven, he really loves his house filled with children.

Just been browsing some music websites looking for some future gigs to go to (got out of the habit of going to see live music, need to do more of it before I feel too old go go to gigs with all the 'youngsters'!) and found out that it's the 10th aniversary of Belle and Sebastian's first album Tigermilk coming out, (had it on in the car yesterday) as well as A Short Album about Love by The Divine Comedy.  Where did the time go?