so of course it had to happen.

an accident of course.

easily, done a verre de vin into the keyboard.

bloody annoying - only certain key function.

i may be gone a long time.....

r

Bank holiday blast

Bank Holiday weekends are not good times to be out on the motorway system.

With the credit crunched everyone who would be off abroad seems to be staying home and a fair number of them seemed to be charging down the M4 towards West Wales.

Naturally management decided this might be a good day to go and see her mum and I was volunteered as duty driver.

Now, motorways are normally a pleasant environment in which to drive. A mass of people driving large trucks and cars who are used to being there and just get on with the job in hand.

Then it becomes a bank holiday weekend. Suddenly all these people who drive a whole ten miles a day decided they need to be somewheres on the other side of the country involving hundreds of miles of driving on motorways they rarely normally use.

Of course hundreds of miles of motorway driving would wear them out so to deter slumber they pack the car with their partners (who will definitely have a "view" on their driving) and children who will begin to brawl about 5 miles from home and keep up a continuous war all the way t their destination. That is of course if they are not being amused by iphones or nintendos which will almost certainly lead to a serious "my turn"ing war.

Sitting in this mobile combat zone will mean that the hapless driver will be oblivious to all around him and the fact that you are driving something humungous festooned with flashing lights will be no guarantee of being seen.

Put yourself in a car and you might as well be wearing your cloak of invisibility.

So management and I made our way fairly easily up the M4 then far more cautiously back home.

We have a series of bank holiday diversions meaning we missed the biggest of the cues and got home in not too impossible a time.

The object of our visit, Managements mum seems to be back on fine form and remarkably well for someone well into their 90's.

But of course this was us and the car decided to replace Citroens famous hydraulic suspension with bricks. This was exactly what I needed on a bank holiday weekend. Our last car off the road.

Just as I was resigning myself to an interesting last 20 miles home the fault cured itself as quickly as it came.

Another drama missed....

The weather tomorrow looks distressing, promising sunny and dry, ideal for the garden - sigh...

R

Been a short day...

Been quite a short day really

We were very late getting up and a long time getting ourselves organised.

Then off for a bit of a shop.

Anyone would think a war about to start.

Bookers car park was full of cars - very unusual.

A real rush around the place with a lot of stuff bought.

Bread was fortunately available on a very short date so we ended up with more 20p a loaf bread, to put in the freezer.

Then more bulk stuff bought and we moved on to Morrisons.

The management has taken against Tesco with a vengance.

We bought what we needed then home.

The place was in mayhem, really odd, this does not feel like recession at all.

Gwion has saved his money for a while and decided that he wanted a new Nintendo DSi,
now if there was a real recession no one would have been buying but we took the last in the shop from Comet.

Considering we are in recession there seemed to be a lot of money flying about.

R

A fine weekend in store....

I think management has not realised it is easter weekend.

She has decided that as it is raining we are going shoping today.

Much has been made of the rain and wind which are wonderful weather, well if you ask me anyway.

But it would be nice to have some slightly better weather, then I can get the digger running. If she thinks I am digging a 30 foot long 2 foot deep trench with a pick and shovel she has another thing coming.

R

Home at last

So a lovely 5 mile trek.

A joyfull bus ride several hours of wandering round town then a lift into uni and a long meeting.

Finally dropped at the top of the drive and walk 1/2 mile in the rain.

BUT not a shovel looked at, not a pick waved, bliss.

I am still knackered mind.

Rhys.

Rambling on....

Soo today I am off to be all important.

Trouble is management went also for meetings in Daycastle.

This leaves me with a bit of a walk into town to catch the bus to cadge a lift into Uni.

Still I suppose a couple of miles walk will do me good.

After all it does not involve a pick or shovel and maybe someone I know will pass and take pity on me.

R

A fatal thing to write

A little while back I wrote about cheap cars.

We have bought a cheap car it's still cheap but it was someone dumping a problem.

This was a modern car with all sorts of leccytronics which were in meltdown.

Now, it turns out this was a very simple problem, but of course the computer is only as good as the nerd who programmed it.

So, when the catalytic converter jammed with carbon, most likely because the owner was being "green" and running the thing on chip shop fat, it started dumping lots of unburnt carbon loaded gas into the inlet side of the engine which sent the computer into meltdown.

This we took, based on what the computer said, as our cue to throw all the electronics out and re configure the engine with old fashioned mechanical injection.

Of course the puter had some virtues and at least with the fault the engine would sort of run.

With all that replaced by old fashioned mechanical devices; we ended up with an engine that barely would.

The grease being a bright engineer worked out that the inlet side of the engine was choked.

He has been dealing with a very blocked pipe.

The way this was dealt with is simple, you fill the pipe with paraffin let it soak into the grime and then torch it out.

This means sticking the blowtorch into the pipe to set it alight and then following up with the airline. 5 foot jets of flame are us!!!

This all went down well with young Taliesin, management was less sure.

Now it all goes back together and we see where we go from there.

R