Long old days

This has been a long old day.

Started very early this morning after finishing very late last night.

Came down to a scene of devastation and a sea of sleeping teenies.  

The student staggered off to university, got asked by the lecturer to stop snoring...

I pootled about a bit and got the young people who had no transport home.

Little D has gone out for the night, proper All Hallows.

This means it's seriously quiet and - maybe  an early bed tonight.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz

R

   

No tidal wave yet

Has been a quiet night tonight

Well no they have made serious noises and they are doing serious shouting now.

No tidal waves of crashers of gates, just loud teenies

Been easy really

R


   

So far so good

Well we have got this far, there is serious din downstairs

But they have some sort of fire going outside and we are nothing to do with that.

I think i might have a few hours rest, the student is locked in journals

R

Captains log star date.

It's so far so good here at Penole.

A big contingent of teenies have arrived and are fairly well ensconced downstairs. The student and I have taken refuge upstairs. My one trip downstairs produced the kind of silence you would get by rolling into a Hells Angels meeting riding a scooter.

Diving into the fridge to rescue a bottle of wine I noted a lot of my white wine seems to have walked downstairs  and jumped in the fridge to keep the lager company.

Telling them we have a stereo in the living room that might go down as one of my less sensible decisions when reviewed at 2 am.

Da man, the terror of cats, and hunter of cows, yes honestly he has been known to try and bring down a full size cow.  Da Man has had enough and made a break for the outside. He who treats the fire as his personal property prefers the great outdoors.   

Adam, the grandee and old man of the cats has decided we have got the right idea, and joined us upstairs.
  
At least there have been no gate crashers - so far.

R

Happy Halloween

Sometimes things just happen, your calm and clear day is thrown 180 degrees on it's head.

When Bethan announced she was holding a Halloween gathering for a load of her little mates and volunteered here as a venue I did sort of get a premonition. Premonitions of course are OK on Halloween but this was more of an uneasy sense of foreboding.

The plan was to gather a group of her friends here, which has indeed started to happen.

The trip home could not be completed without a trip to Booker's and more particularly the aisles stacked with booze.

Food was going to be dealt with by a huge Chinese takeaway, tricky that one as, had Bethan checked our local Chinese is closed on  a Tuesday.

Beth then announced a change of plan, since all her little mates might be a bit potless (hadn't seemed like that in Bookers I might add) she would prepare food.

Well, that was  premonition gone, full on  alarm bells were sounding everywhere.

Bethan is not quite cordon blue when it comes to cooking, more your cordon blimey type. The notion that Bethan was going to cook for 16 produced a simple three  word text from she who has retired to university, allegedly to attend lectures but I think it was to hide.

"She'll poison everyone"

Bethan has found some beefburgers and is making jelly (beefburgers in jelly perhaps?), there are no rolls and only two loaves of bread.

Even the big J man himself started with 5 loaves though I am pretty sure we cann run to 5 fishfingers if that helps!!

But of course as ever there is more, this here party has been promoted using that great medium Face book. So of course there might be 20 or so of her little mates there might also be 200 gatecrashers.

I have put a couple of my more "diplomatic" mates on standby in case we need to evict a few later.

Just to complete our joy, Little D knowing this was something nice for someone else seems to have decided to jam a whole toilet roll down the toilet before he went out, so a furious (in all senses of the word) rodding and flushing session has been needed.

The student is so concerned, studies have been abandoned and she is rushing home.

Me I am bracing myself for what could be a very interesting evening.

It's all there for the making, teenies, alcohol, the student off one one, and a few hundred gatecrashers.  

Watch this space.        

Life here is lots of things but it is very rarely boring.

R

Conservative values

Back in the 80's the Tories were in power they needed to impose their will on the country and the miners got very firmly put in their place. Workers could not expect decent treatment from their "masters". Policing changed from upholding the law to imposing order, no matter if they way it was done was lawful or not.

Last night,  across the country, it would seem that numbers of those who have stood up against cuts for the poorest and hardest hit were targeted by the Police in what seems to have been a blatant attempt to put the frighteners on them.

We are back to being arrested for "wearing a loud shirt in the dark".

Never mind the law - this lot want order.

R

Diploma in Computing Rodney

The student consulted technical support, looked intelligent rather a lot, then set to.

Fair play, by lunchtime she had it all running, then suddenly computer decided it needed to update - all fair and good there then.

All 80 updates took a fair old while and then - grey screen.

This produced a bit of head scratching and a lot of profanity.

Back to technical support she went and got more advice. The poor chap at the other end of the phone was a proper specialist, I think his specialism was hair dryers as he seemed totally lost when it came to computers.

Steadily growing frustration turned into steam under the collar rage, which could have been pretty ugly had the poor chap been in the room.

She is currently sat, trying to be calm reloading things and trying again.

Myself I think firefox is having a scrap with outlook distress and that's the root of it.

I am trying to make helpful suggestions, but any comment at all is living dangerously.

R
  

A world in computers

The student is back in full studenty mode. this meant much harrumphing as of course Gwion has loaded her computer with all sorts of junk which in turn means it runs at a speed comparable to the postal system.

A lot of shouting later she decided the only thing to do was bit the bullet and get herself a shiny new HP.

This was ordered and, after a bit of excitement the package came down the drive.  Much unpacking with setting up of computer and all was well with the world.

Until yesterday, her new toy threw a hissy fit and refused to play.

She is currently deploying all her diploma in computing skills which means she is swearing like a trooper, stabbing keys and looking both confused and angry at the same time.

Computers don't they make life easier.

R   

A good day

Today was spent running round a bit. Bethan had an interview yesterday and today she had another today.

Both were for casual staff to fill occasional slots to cover sickness and other stuff.

This afternoon she got a phone call from a reputable care company saying they had decided to offer her a 20 h a week contract instead.

I am a very proud dad tonight.

Of course it's also pretty much where i started and look where I ended up - oh dear.

R

Van tastic

Yesterday, back to the fold cae the VW, running like a sack of shovels.

Back to the garage it goes today.

The Xsara is better news of sorts.

Bought with a dead clutch, it seems the problem was hydraulic rather than mechanical. That has saved about 300 pounds.

The engine management problem seems to be located in the fuel tank where some fool was trying to run a modern HDi engine on a cocktail of kerosene and vegetable oil. This could be serious bad news if the previous was doing that for a long while unlikely though as the thing was not running at all on this fuel.

The VW needs to be done though as it is crossing the channel again next week.

Must make sure there are no strikes promised.

R  

changing times

 The student has been setting out her dissertation and looking at social policy issues. This has made us think a bit. 

I suffered  an education, despite being at one of the best Welsh schools they barely contained me till my O levels. For all the engagement I had in 6th form I might as well have gone down the pub, actually I managed a few visits down there.

This is not to write off the teachers or me, the connection just didn't happen.

Despite this I left school and walked into my first job, then some years later walked into my first  house.

But by 21 I was living on my own. What a disaster married life was for both of us. 

My children: Bethan at the same age seems even more at home than ever, Branwen is up in Aber being a student.

At least Taliesin has moved out, he is in a caravan 100 yards away from here.   

For young people today the certainty of employment has gone, with it the possibility of true independence.

Wealth or the chance of gaining any has evaporated. For this generation scraping together everything they have to make a deposit on a house, then spending 20 years servicing a loan secured on it has gone. They are simply going to have to burn money on rent and be left with nothing at the end.

Wealth is moving into fewer and fewer hands - just as Marx predicted.

R

 



   

Dissertation to despair

As part of this here degree of hers the student has to produce an academic dissertation.  So of course not doing her normal thing, leave it to the day before then stress herself and all around her to death, she has been doing proper preparation.

So the title has been decided, the area has been decided and she has been writing, thats 200 words down 9800 to go.

This could be a long couple of months...

R 

Even more car antics.

The day started rather well, with young D being invited to the Police Station to discuss what they had video of him up to in a local store. This is some form of restorative justice where he has to make amends for his "sins". He has been ordered to make things right, then of course he is still banned from the shop but he will have paid off his debt.

Back home and time to round up the builder and get the Xsara over to Greasy Garage. Xsara was something I bought a good while back and we simply never got round to sorting it. It has a totally naff personal plate that will have to go, but of course it will need to have a valid MOT before we can change that.

Of course, with an MOT needed it must go to a garage,  one of the reasons I got it cheap was that it  has a clutch fault. Not the slipping sort, the other sort, the not releasing type. So it was start it in gear then drive to the garage without using the clutch to change gear. This is the sort of thing that's grist to any old truck drivers mill, in fact, driving without using the clutch is one of my show off tricks in the old fire engine.

Of course an old fire engine has lots of things a modern car doesn't have, like an engine that needs a computer to tell it what to do. The engine management system on the Xsara has been a bit flakey and I got a whole mile from the house before it went on total strike. So it was abandon the car and come back a few days later with Phil the builder and his Jeep. On with the show attach the tow rope and away. I have some nagging feeling that using a towrope is now illegal and you are expected to use some sort of rigid device, anyway away we went and it was down into the valley with me providing retardation then up the other side with Phil providing motive power.

Up to Greasy Garage and, the field entrance which the car was due to be parked in was blocked with another car parked there. Never mind, we could just  manoeuvre the car a bit, well when i say a bit, there were a few back and fores and a decent amount of lock to lock changing, lots easier if the power steering was working but a dead engine wasn't driving that. Soft tyres helped not at all either, the Green Goddess is easier to turn than this thing, still, a lot of sweat and swearing later, it was in.

This was not the point where we needed a head to pop over the gate in the house opposite and offer to move the car in the spot we originally intended to put the Xsara.....

Still, it was back to the pub and refreshment. I happened to notice the Xmas menu on the wall. The starter was Coquilles St Jaques, impressive stuff, thought I, Le Chef was serving and I asked in innocence, how do you do CSJ?  Turns out she had never done Scallops before, now, I was taught how to cook scallops in a restaurant in Brittany.

She was dead pleased I had popped in, I offered to do some pilot cooking to test the recipe. I think that, for the local palette I would need to use a lot less garlic and maybe even drop the Gros Plant in favour of something like a Touraine.

Want my original recipe?

Dream on.....

R

        

    

A day of traumas

I feel really sorry for no one son Taliesin, life recently has been a series of knock backs, then just as he gets over it and seems ready to move one something else goes wrong

When his car went off the road he was absolutely potless so we lent him his mothers VTR Perhaps not the best of moves as fairly soon the Police were taken a lot of interest in the man himself and that car

Young men are young men and i dare say a certain amount of bravado was displayed, though I never heard or saw him doing anything totally daft.

Meantime's he scrapped his pennies together and bought himself quite a tidy little Honda Accord (the exact opposite of a copper magnet)  and set about getting it through it's test.  Quite a lot of money was spent but he ended up with something that was quite a nice little car and an ideal runabout for a young man who wants to work and will turn his hand to anything to turn a pound.

This morning D the elder was having a bit of a moment and ended up late for coll. Myself, I have simply left him behind before now. When you end up walking into town then paying for a bus, you tend to sort your morning routines out quite quickly!

Not so this morning and Tallie tried to get to town to make the bus, only to meet someone coming the other way. Now, the important thing is that everyone walked away without a scratch. The car, unfortunately is scrap.

He just has such crap luck.

Still he went off to work in the VTR and things went back to normal, or rather they did not.

I had not reckoned on the effect this little brush with the grim reaper would have on the student. Now, I might have alluded to her driving style previously. Of course I would not dream of being critical, but the student behind the wheel is quite err brisk. In a sort of; grasp the armrest firmly, close eyes periodically, try not to whimper or throw yourself into the foot well curled into a little ball sort of way.

This afternoon all had changed, progress was sedate, sedentary, funereal even. As we drove round in the big C5 estate I snatched a quick glance behind in case she had sneaked a coffin in there and we were leading a cortege somewhere. Corners were approached cautiously, junctions judiciously, there has been a transformation.

It won't last of course but at least some good came out of Taliesin's troubles.

The man himself has a suprise to come, the insurance company announced his car was to be collected by a prominent local garage best known for holding the BMW franchise. The exciting sequel to this message being the announcement that a replaceent car would be provided for the duration. there followed of course a flurry of excitement at the thought that a BMW would be making it's way to Penole for Taliesin to slum it in for a few days.

Nothing could be further from what happened. The recovery crew turned out totally underequipped for the job. I was cursing the fact I had stood the Green Goddess down for the winter, all the kit they didn't have was on the back of that!!

Eventually we got the wreckage on to their trailer and sent it on it's merry way, whilst I drove his replacement car home. It wasn't actually a top of the range BMW, the recovery driver barely concealed a snicker as he handed me the key. This was a very bottom of the range SEAT, now. I have driven some right ropey old cars in my time things like Triumph Acclaims, Rover Montegos, and in some moment of madness we once ran a small Fiat with a large diesel engine that shook the car to pieces. Those cars at least had the defence of being extreemly second hand.  This monstrosity was brand new, it had a little light on the dash that came on to tell me i was in first, then it turned into an arrow and flashed at me to say I needed to be in second.  The terrible graunching when you apply the brakes is probably a way of warning the hard of thinking their feet have strayed on to the centre pedal.  Then again, I suppose that, if you are daft enough to need that advice the fact it handles corners like the springs are made of jelly and bumps as if there are no springs at all would not matter so much.     

This then is a car for those who hate driving, maybe to be bought for those who love driving by someone who does not want them to drive. 

R
           

Days of peace and silence

The student and I had a lazy start to the day with a long lie in. Coffee and off to take Gwions little friends home which lead to a stop off in the Cash and Carry in turn meaning that "just buy cat food" turned into a 100 pounds shop which in turn meant a stop in the pub on our way home.

Rain is terrible stuff and when you are just mad to get the wood cut rain is an obstruction as it stops you working (shame). Student has been thinking and thinking now she has decided her dissertation subject. I suppose that is a first step.

Now I am sitting here writing this and contemplating the corkscrew. Naah too early.

R 

A wild week

The week has drawn to a good conclusion, much building work has been done. Huge progress has been made.

 Today we set off for the auction to disappointment nothing worth a punt so home very early.

Via the Museum of Internal Fire Wow an oilheads dream of a place. Lots of early engines for powering pumps and generators, huge engines the size of caravans. We got there just as they were starting up the engines, what a fascinating place full of engineering from the last 100 years.

Home and chainsaw, lots more wood cut chopped and stacked. I am vaguely optimistic, we have a pretty huge stache of timber cut now. Only another 10 tons or so and we should be sorted - grooaaaann.

   




    

The year draws in

Building the future

One of the great things with Penole is the flexibility.

Start of this week at the end of the building we had  2 bedrooms a shower room and bath room and lobby. Now we are well on the way to having a small self contained 2 bed unit with small kitchen and bathroom.

It could even be a self contained flat.

We are eyeing the future for the D's, they will need to be more independent or we could even take on a couple of people from the adult placement scheme.

Options options.

R

The force of reason or reasonable force

Another piece of posturing from the Tories this week, the homeowners right to defend their home. Or carte blanche to beat up anyone you don't like the look of.

There is a terrible myth machine around the law in this country (the UK) and the rights you have to defend yourself. 

Everyone carps on about reasonable force, actually when someone uses a physical intervention on someone else there are three criteria.

Necessary - could they have done something else, like run away.

Reasonable -  taking into account all the circumstances was what they did a sensible thing to do.

Proportionate - was it in proportion to the threat and not excessive.

There are 4  circumstances in which Physical Intervention  is lawful:

Self defence.

To protect another person from assault.

To prevent crime or detain a suspected criminal.

To protect property.

So basically the law is currently fit for purpose, the only reason the Tories might have for changing it is to raise the defensive stakes when say, someone believes their property is being raided by persons they do not know to be armed so decides to shoot them in the back as they are running away.

That of course was one of the cases the government is referring too as the right to defend property. Obviously their gated communities will need armed guards with the right to shoot the proles on sight.

R

 

Building for the future

Once again the builders are in evidence in Penole.  Yesterday i amused myself by hacking off a wall so today the builders amused themselves by knocking one down. We are creating a mini self contained unit at the end of the building. A hang out place where both D's can have a telly, DVD player a small kitchen and a general space of their own.

This will move D the smaller out of his room adjoining our living room and create an academic space for academic students to have an office and do a lot of work for themselves in peace.

Looming over the student and thus us all is an academic dissertation 10,000 words is actually not that many, but  seems a lot when you have to write it. She has just ordered herself a new laptop which duly arrived today. This being a computer, it took most of today to install updates and get it all working.

Next will be a desk and bookshelves and a lock on the door. So she can work on the inside oblivious to anything on the outside.

R 




  

I've been driving in my car....

The lack of VW has rather put me in the driving seat of the little VTR a lot recently.

For those not into cars Citroen dropped a rather lazy and softly tuned 1600 cc petrol into their smallest saloon car the Saxo about 10 years ago.

The combination of small car and big engine produced something of a pocket rocket. It's also an all wrong combination of power and chassis, push it and the car is overwhelmed by the torque and power under the bonnet.

Put another way it's lots of fun to drive.

It's also a delight to drive as the total over supply of torque makes it a very lazy car. Waft it along and it wafts.

Unfortunately there is a serious down side.

I was driving yesterday more interested in Radio 4 than anything else, making a steady 60-70 when cars I had passed  would break out from the stream in a dash and make a point of passing me.

4x4 BMW's seem to have this programme built in, overtaking was a personal slight.

The person in the Zafira ended up explaining all to the other person who blasted past in a blue Volvo estate, the one with all the concealed  blue lighting.

This person in a Clio really got personal coming up a steep hill and was really pushing the car to keep ahead of me when I was not trying or wanting to play.

Then we turned off and I had a few miles on a lovely windy B road, it was nice to play and enjoy the car, the competitive bit is the really dangerous bit. That's when people die.

The Saxo VTR is a lovely fun car to treat with respect - funny thing though I reckon our old Rover 214 SEi was quicker over the same stretch of road.

And no one ever called that a fast car.

R 

     

Ever more fun

Actually it wasn't too bad today.

 A few hours this morning with the SDS in hand removing render from one of our walls inside the house. Barrow all that away to use it to repair the drive. Very handy!

Then, a day of mundaneness, Bookers and Lidl.

Student off tomorrow and builders in so I will be on tea making duties.

The student will be on a long day tomorrow, out till 10 pm. Poor thing, not sure how long this module lasts which will give run out of steam first? The module or the student!!!!

Think I might take her for a meal tonight, while she is still awake.
  
R

A fun day

The day began well, off with little D to see his step dad, then a down the tip and down to work moment.

Back to sell a load of Green Goddess parts and get stuck in proper to make sure work can commence next week.

A pile  of wood moved and stacked, Big D the student Bethan and Harley in full on sweat mode.

Then call in Taliesin with the digger to pull out a tree, next  a veritable mound of stuff moved.

Really, it's no wonder we had damp when we looked at the way the back of the house was configured.

We found a drain that had been blocked for at least 20 years.

Drains in a house like this really matter, we get so much more water than anyone else

Moved the compost bin, phew was that ever a smell and a half..

Tomorrow time to start hacking off the walls.

Work work work

Tired tired tired.


R

 

      

Something for the weekend sir??

The morning started with pain, the pain of a big bill for a reconditioned head for the VW van. That will be here Wednesday all things being equal.

Next on a small ammount of work, or so said she who must be obeyed.

Two bedrooms and the shower room (used as a store for many years now) completly emptied. The lobby gone through with a brutal sort out. All this left us ready to move in on the building work next week. The student urged us on to our labours with the promise of a leisurely day off tomorrow. In our dreams, the arrival of phil the builder planned our day tomorrow. A day of wheelbarrows and digging and chainsaws and hacking off walls and putting up scaffold.

My day was cheered considerably by a lovely letter from social services. Stressing the importance of education for looked after children. The first line was: Education is very import for every young person.

If thats the sort of thing a senior social worker writes - god help us all!!!!

R  

Taming the inner Jonah

Fresh from sorting the saxo, down the drive came the parcelfarce van, bonnet up and top the C5 with rather a lot of hydraulic fluid which in turn, with the ignition on, produced a fair bit of motor noises lots of air bubbles and a Citroen on it's highest setting, to be sure all air was gone.

Letting it down we set off for greasy garage and some detailed investigations.

The man himself shoved his head under the wing and found one of the suspension pipes had pulled itself out of it's housing. So, instead of returning suspension fluid to the reservoir it was dumping it on the road, something you might never notice, as it w ould be doing this when the car was moving but not when it was parked.  So no tell tale puddles of oil to see. The "cure" was a temporary bodge until the replacement bits arrive but this was a lot cheaper than it could have been.

On to the VW, the garage had described some sort of combustion chamber Armageddon. I was expecting a mass of broken metal and shattered castings. Perhaps I have seen the effect of more mechanical butchers than them, either way, I wasn't that bothered, I have rebuilt far worse messes in the days when I was into rebuilding things myself.      

Our neighbours have been far less lucky, they have insurance that includes break down. The ancilliary drive belt went about a week ago and out came the insurance companies repair agent. Not sure where he went wrong but by heck the end result was a trashed engine, the belt flew off, locked up the crankshaft and wrapped itself round the camshaft. This stopped the top end of the engine dead. The camshaft pulley was ripped clean off the cam and the shaft itself then shattered by valves being driven up by the pistons.

Trashed is a really good description, far worse than our engine.

That's enough about cars, lets talk social care.
 
R   

The power of psychology

When you drive a car it can be a weird thing. Out on the motorway every squeak can be the sound of collapsing suspension. Light rattle is obviously the engine trashing itself and that bottle rolling round in the back is the sound of the car tearing apart.

Last day I had full on convinced myself the gearbox in the saxo was on the way out. This morning as I was leaving Taliesin noticed that something fell out from behind the wheel. There was a stone between the brake disk and the hub which in turn makes a noise very like a gearbox destroying itself.....

R 

Cartastrophy Continued

Just as I was leaving for the old Bill they came on the phone. Some of you will know there is a catastrophe unfolding in mid wales. Lots of our local bobbies have just been redeployed to mid wales to help with the search for that missing 5 year old girl. So no Police Interviews for us tonight

Compared to that families woes we have it easy. That said, the VW is off the road with a major engine fault, I hesitate to phone the garage and ask.

This morning out we went and the C5 suspension didn't. Normally the C5 pumps itself up to height but there is sits on the ground.

Shuffle and rethink, into the VTR, this morning the gearbox was making a distant whir, this afternoon it's making a full on horrid noise.     

The C5 seems to have leaked it's suspension fluid somewhere, of course the modern Citroen does not use the ever popular LHM, it uses some new fangled high tech suspension fluid that the motor factor has never heard of and the Citroen main agent does not stock.

Brilliant!!!

Thank goodness for GSF, they may well be in London but they will get it to me tomorrow.

R 

Back in the Jug again

Haven't been in the custody suite in a while.... Reports have been filtering back over the summer that little D has been engaged in a bit of criminality, then on the day of his 17th down the drive came the white van with all the lights.No, they weren't there to wish him a happy birthday but they did invite him to visit their office..

So this afternoon myself, himself and R'Ottweiler  solicitor at law will be presenting ourselves at the local nick to watch some home movies they have collected from a local source.

Now technically as Appropriate Adult  I am supposed to know nothing of what he is about to be charged but it was hard not to notice his name on the front door of our local Spar with the one word "BANNED" next to it.

So on a whim I went inside and had a look at what was where and crucially where the cameras live and where they point. Nothing like a visit to the locus in quo as Rumpole termed it.

Haven't had to do an AA in so many years I had to go and look for my course notes.   

Of course the man himself has let out a few of the broadest type hints that he might not turn up, that could be interesting, having him brought in on an arrest warrant. Not done one of those for even longer!!!

R

Terrible weather

This is the very worst sort of weather, cool, dry with not a lot of wind.

The worst weather, I will be able to find no excuses for not getting the chain saw out and getting on with chopping more firewood.

Now Harley and Bethan are back so there is likely to be a big cutathon and chopathon tomorrow.

R

Driven to distraction.

Today was one of those days that held a promise of a lovely day. The student went off to university I settled in for a quiet day.

As if, Tallies girlfriend was going to work so I gave her a lift all was well in the world.

Half way home the van just stopped - strange.

It wasn't turning over - time to call the RAC.

Dragged the thing over to the garage and a sad tale.

A minor oil leak had contaminated the cam belt which had snapped

Not good in an open wallet surgery sort of way.

Still it could have been worse, it could have let go last week in France.

R 

Twas the night before uni.....

Well the student and I had a quiet day before she goes back to uni.

Quietly unloaded the van.

Tidied up the hole that is called my side of the bed.

Moved stuff round

Went shopping

Printed off a load of her handouts for uni.

Meanwhile I have been reading stuff for a new project in the field of training that I really hope comes off.

Could be an exciting new direction to go in. Well it excites me anyway and that's all that counts.

A late PS - how could I forget, neither Bruce nor the students grants seem to be sorted so that was not peaceful - no there were touches of full on drama there!!

R