For the first time since I broke my ribs, I actually rode a bike properly. Admittedly it was only a gentle 12 mile ride to Bitton and back on the TriCross, but that was more than enough given my lack of riding in recent weeks.
Due to a burst watermain somewhere nearby, I’ve had no running water since I got up this morning. This is somewhat annoying when you’ve got several loads of washing to do, and are in need of a shower.
I was going to head out for a bike ride, but I’m not going to do that whilst there’s a good chance I won’t be able to shower afterwards.
Update: The water returned eventually, both from the tap and from the sky.
I’m just back from a couple of days staying in Padstow.
On Monday we went to the Eden Project which had changed quite a lot since I was last there in 2001.
Tuesday was spent wandering round Padstow. We took Ethan for his first trip round the Crazy Golf course where he took a rather unorthodox approach to playing.
Straight after that we headed out for a rather wet speedboat trip which necessitated a subsequent shower and a change of clothes.
Annoyingly I got back home to much nicer weather than we’d been having in Cornwall. Such is life.
A cheque for £160 fell through my door today courtesy of the Portman/Nationwide merger. Now I could stick it in the bank and use it to pay for the other half of the TriCross, or I could put it towards a new iPod. I’m toying with getting a 160GB iPod Classic at the moment, however despite slagging them off initially due to the high price and low capacity, I find myself strangely drawn to a 16GB iPod Touch. Fortunately for my wallet, neither of them are available in the shops at the moment.
It’s Booth weather.
I bought myself a digital radio today. Am I a geek because it’s digital, or a luddite because it’s a radio? Or does one cancel out the other and make me normal?
It’s pretty much done now. All the colouring was done today, although we decided not to do all the white as the chances are that it probably wouldn’t look very good after a while.
All I need to do now is to leave it for three weeks or so, then go back to get it touched up a bit to finish it off.
Photos in a week or so.
The comments feed should be working again.
This weekend I was at Avon Scout Network’s Intense, a camp and activity weekend for Network Scouts. Not only was I on photography duty, but I was also helping run the security for the bar and ensuing camp fire, the downside of this was not getting to bed until 3:30 in the morning, then having to be up again a few hours later.
Saturday was activity day, I ended up spending a lot of it hanging around and practicing my meagre archery skills.
Sunday was the piano bash, two hours of violence and destruction, great fun to watch, no doubt even more fun to participate in.
I’m currently sat listening to Flibbidydibbidydob by Snuff. I reckon the last time I listened to it was when I was in Leeds back in the early 90s, it certainly takes me back.
After successfully avoiding such tortures for fourteen years, I finally had to attend some mandatory training today. Starting from 08:30 we covered such delights at "Clinical Governance", "Health and Safety", "Waste Handling", "Adult and Child Protection", and "Infection Control", finally escaping back into the real world at around 3pm.
As you can imagine, it was quite possibly one of the most boring days I’ve ever had the misfortune of having to put up with.
To make the day even more exciting, I’m spending the evening charging batteries ready to take photos at the Avon Scout Network camp this weekend. At least there will be a bar there run by Bath Ales, so the beer will be good.
Apparently we’ve decided to back the current pathetic pay deal. I’m fairly surprised by this as I thought more people would have been sensible enough to reject a below-inflation pay offer.
It looks like we might all end up going on strike this Autumn.
BBC NEWS | Politics | Unions back ‘co-ordinated’ action
The UNISON ballot as to whether we should accept the payrise on offer closes on Thursday, I suspect the answer will be "No".
My ribs are playing up again today. Even worse, some lowlife scum had drunk all the coffee whilst I was out of the office last week and didn’t replace it, so I haven’t had my morning coffee yet.
I have finally submitted my AfC grievance though, so something might start to happen with that in the next few weeks.
Things have mostly healed up now, there’s just an annoying ache left at times. However I’m not going to risk screwing everything up again by riding a bike just yet.
Daft.
I gave up smoking 11 years ago today.
It’s just after 8pm on the first Monday in September, and for the first time since 1993 (or is it 1992?) I’m not at Widcombe Social Club ready to start the skittles season off.
The Langster departed a short while ago with it’s new owner. Hopefully they’ll get on well with each other.
I’m sat watching an episode of NCIS, and as far as I can tell they keep referring to someone called “Lager and Wee”.
A complete bar/stem/brake transplant has now taken place on the TriCross.
It’s now equipped with the Salsa Bell Lap bars, Specialized stem, and Cane Creek levers from the Langster, along with a new Suntour Self-Energizing brake on the rear, and the rear Avid Shorty 4 from the Trek XO on the front. The brakes are a stop-gap until the Paul Components ones arrive in a month or two. The downside is that the Trek XO is now lacking a rear brake, but I might see if I can pick up another Suntour Self-Energizing one cheap to tide me over.
I’ve upgraded to Movable Type 4 and had to rebuild most of the templates from scratch.
No doubt lots of bits will be missing, and quite a few more will be broken. I’ll try and fix things as I go along.