Strike action leads to a dodgy haircut.......

Not an obvious link, I'll admit, but bear with me on this one.......

(And no, I haven't been tarred and feathered by angry colleagues for being a scab....)

Yesterday, I had my weekday day-off from The Hole-Making Shop. I had lots of jobs to do, including a somewhat overdue visit to the barber's....

Which is where the otherwise seamless robe of the day began to unravel...........

Yes.

I'd got the firewood in, taken the recycling to the tip, (scored a valve lapping tool and a pot of fine and a pot of coarse valve-grinding paste for 50p), taken a load of stuff to Emmaus for our landlord, and got some milk, bread and stuff for lunch from The Scilly Isles Supermarket.

Then I visited the barbers in Milton.

It all began convivially enough.

"Mornin' Sir, how are you, what can I do for you today?"

"Well, thank you, bit of a trim, please, nothing too drastic, just get rid of the fluff."

"Certainly sir".....snip snip snip....

All seemed to be going quietly and well for the first few minutes.

Then Mr Todd (not his real name....) seeks to engage me in conversation.....

"So what are you up to today?"

"Well, I'm on a day off, as I do 37 and 1/2 hours over four days at The Hole Making Shop next to The Big Repair Works."

"Oh yeah", (a degree of frost was noted....), "You on strike tomorrow then?"

"Er, no.... If we strike, we'll interrupt the supply of that which we extract....This could have fatal consequences....."

Mr Todd (not his real name) then goes off on one 'about public sector pensions, mollycoddled public sector employees, lazy bastards not knowing they're born' &c &c.

All the while, the scissors snipped and snapped about my barnet with a renewed vigour and alacrity which bordered on the scary.

I, (rather wisely, I felt, given the proximity of vulnerable lug-holes to flying scissor blades), exercised great restraint.

I did my very best, in the face of extreme provocation, to smile, nod and not attempt to interrupt the seemingly unending stream of utterly puerile Thatcherite drivel with any real-world common-sense-style comments.

I thus escaped the chair, unscathed and with ears intact.

I paid the man and left, vowing (privately) never to darken the nasty little fascist's door again.

As for my haircut?

Well, I think the expression "Close to the wood" rather sums it up.

Yes, Mr Todd, (not his real name), would seem, in his ire, to have got somewhat carried away.......

Oh well, I suppose it will grow back.........

BOGOF!!!!!!

I've always thought that the acronym of Buy One Get One Free sounded deliciously rude.

How often have I wanted to wish such a bargain on sundry maggot-danglers, dozy rowers or speeding plastic cruisers with two-foot high wakes.......?

However, this post does not in any way concern the likes of them.

Rather, it is about shoes.

Yes, shoes.......

My job at The Hole-Making Shop entails a good ten-hour stand every working day.

A good, comfortable pair of shoes are, therefore, a necessity.

I bought a pair at Marx and Engels in Cambridge about nine months ago.

Jolly good they were too (especially The Left one......), right up until the point when the soles cracked right through from side to side, failing so profoundly there was no hope of repair.

'Hmmmmm', thought I, 'they've gone west, I'll get a new pair'.

Some bloke-style shopping ensued.

(Establish need for goods. Travel to shops where goods are sold. Examine some in one shop. Reject on grounds of being just like the last lot and as likely to fail in service. Visit another shop. Try on good comfy shoes. Purchase same. Return home.)

Elapsed turnaround time c. 25 minutes.....

I wore these to a luncheon on Sunday and despite being new, it still felt like I had slippers on at the end of the day.

This prompted a return to Mr Clarke's High-Class Footwear Emporium on Monday, where a further pair were purchased. Despite being in the sale, and none being in stock at that branch, I was able to buy a pair in my size which were delivered to Pippin, post free, today.

Nice one Mr Clarke!

Messrs Marx and Engels had, however, not exactly covered themselves in glory, their Empire Made efforts having exhibited a marked lack of longevity.

It was left to my redoubtable mother to allow them the oppurtunity to redeem themselves.

Having given the expired pair a good shine-up, she returned them to the premises of M & S in order to seek a refund on my behalf.

No receipt.

No proof of purchase.

No chance?

Actually, yes......

Messrs Marx and Engels divied-up the full purchase price without demur!

As this was 45p less than the cost of the second pair of shoes from Mr Clarke's, I feel I can justly claim to have been on the receiving end of a BOGOF deal by proxy.

Nice one, St Michael!

Even nicer one, Sainted Mother!!

XX

Remembrance Sunday II

I have been thinking hard about this post: the relative wisdom of publishing it, the likehood of annoying or upsetting someone by doing so.....

All these things I have thought, and yet, well, here goes......

I have a faith. It is, broadly speaking, Christian.

If you've just tuned out, please tune back in again.

This blog is not an Evangelical Happy Clappy Holy Roller Forum.

Never was.

Never will be.

As I've said before, though it bears saying again, I respect all faith and faith in no faith.

Caveats aside, Christianity is what I believe in.

So what?

So, well, er.....

Okay. The thieving bastards who broke into my Mum and Dad's church......

If they choose to believe that Christ died for their sins and repent, ( Good grief, Christian nomenclature leaves almost everyone sounding like some loony TV evangelist.....) then they're forgiven.

I am glad that is true, for I too have a lot of stuff I regret doing.

Yet still, a small part of me relishes the memory of the fact that in Shakespeare's "Henry V", Poins and Bardolph were hanged for stealing from a church.......

It would seem I still have a long way to go..........

Remembrance Sunday

I went to church with Mum and Dad yesterday to Holy Epiphany, Castle Lane, Bournemouth.

It was an excellent service with a very good turn-out from the congregation.

However, I was stricken to hear that the previous week, the church had been broken into.

The charity box containing all the Poppy Appeal money was stolen.

Where are the words to describe the perpetrators of such an act?

In that, I am completely at a stand.

It is quite possible, in these moments, to despair of the state of this nation.

One could easily then focus on such as the feral behaviour of the August rioters, the selfish greed of a financial community that has led us to economic defeat, and above all, the daily, seemingly random, nastiness of life in this country.

And yet, even in all this, there is light.

The Mothers and Toddlers Group at Holy Epiphany had got together and not only made a beautiful Poppy collage for the alter, but had also raised enough money to entirely replace the sum so wickedly stolen.

It was for such as these our good men died.

China Boat Cat

Some pictures of our new boat cat. She's called China and is c.14 weeks old. At first Tom was terrified of her (despite being 10 times her size) but slowly they're getting used to each other. Tom though is still doing a fine impression of Clint Eastwood in 'Gran Torino'...

Gordon Bennett!

What a week!!!!!!!!

Thrills, spills, a gearbox, a generator, (nearly.....), and a funeral.

I am absolutely cream-crackered.

Okay.

Best start at the beginning.

The gearbox saga came to a most happy conclusion on Tuesday.

For those of you who have not been following this (somewhat less than riveting) story, a precis:

Our gearbox broke.

Some bloke who does Dutch barges suggested someone.

We engaged this person to repair the box.

He agrees a price with us.

He arrives, removes the gearbox and takes it away for repair.

We ask him (again) for an overall price. He gives us a price which is expensive but short of the cost of a new 'box.

We agree.

The 'box is repaired.

We get a bill for a lot of money PLUS £850 + VAT for labour and transport (Cost:£1.50 per mile.....)

At NO point during our negotiations had this been mentioned.

Gearbox Repair Man is emailed an annotated sketch of where he can shove his bill AND our repaired gearbox.

I hope it made the bastard's eyes water............

So Pippin is gearboxless for some months.

Enter The Good Guys, stage left........

Jackie phoned a Norwich based company, A R Peachment, who specialise in PRM gearboxes and are brilliant.

To cut a sorry tale short, this company have sailed up the creek and given us back our paddle.

It's brand spanking new, and has a warranty!

I cannot recommend them highly enough: if you are on the Norfolk Broads, the Cam, or Great Ouse and it's tributaries and you want honest, decent service, from men who not only know what they are doing, but take pride in a job well done, then look no further.

As for the Coventry-based numpty, may God rot his socks...........

Let us move, then to the topic of generators.

Or the lack of them.

The gremlins had well and truly possessed our Pramac P6000S diesel generator.

It was pumping out the volts, but with such irregularity that our Inverter wouldn't accept the charge.

We tried replacing the capacitors, to no avail.

I considered asking Pam, our local vicar, (she really is now, as the actual vicar, Lucy, has moved elsewhere, leaving the parish in interregnum and Pam in charge..) to pop by and lay hands on it with a view to ridding it of the gremlins.

Who yer gonna call?

Well, neither the local vicar nor Ghostbusters, actually....

Instead, I called The Royal Engineers......

As you do....

Yes, my chum Mark turned up and had a jolly good go. Sadly, it wasn't fixable at the time. (A large chunk of circuit board needs re-wiring.........), but he did lend us a portable Honda genny until the gearbox was fixed.

HUZZAH! for the Royal Engineers!!!!!!!

So to the funeral.

I am sad to say that my most wonderful God-mother, Joan, recently passed away. I will not here dwell on how remarkable a person she was.

There is a world enough, and time.

But not here.

And not now.

Sleep well, my dear, for you were loved.

In-capacitor-tated

Thanks so much to Mike Prior-Jones who saw yesterday's blog and visited us last night with help, advice and a test meter. Hope the proffered sherry, sausage and mash and lift home was adequate recompense for your trouble, Mike!!

Our landlord Martin had already helped me narrow down the potential problem range by lending a 1kw Honda generator which we plugged in to Pippin.

The inverter worked fine! It was taking a charge and the mains worked too.

So Jeremy's original diagnosis of a generator fault was sound: He'd popped out to have a look for us on Wednesday and found nothing wrong with the inverter but the generator giving something like 270 volts:

I'd persisted in thinking it was the inverter as I couldn't see why the generator was faulty if it could still power a washing machine and not blow any fuses.

Logical enough, I suppose, if, like me, you are electrically illiterate........

Of course, there's much much more to it than that.

Mike drew me lots of diagrams and led me by the hand through the mysterious garden of delight that is RMS, sine wave forms, phasing, and quite a lot of other stuff to which I confess I could do little but smile and nod at as it sailed way over my head.

Now, I speak under correction, but if I understood correctly , it seems to boil down to this:

You CAN have too much of a good thing.

The 270 odd volts that the genny was kicking out was far too much for the inverter.

It had refused to recognise or synchronise with that voltage to protect itself and the boats circuitry. This resulted in the big drain on the batteries while the washing machine was being run through the inverter. (The washer isn't sensitive enough to be badly affected by that variation in voltage, so ran fine when plugged directly into the generator.)

Jackie, meanwhile, had been on the phone to Pramac (makers of the generator) who suggested some possible solutions, one of which was a new pair of capacitors.

These are being delivered today and will hopefully restore the correct voltage to the inverter.

Watch this space!

Thanks again to Jeremy, Martin amd Mike for all their help.