Written by: paul

The bloke came yesterday as stated to look at the ceiling to check as to what needed doing. As suspected, it just needs repairing. Louise had fun. He rang a couple of times, as he did not know where it was? Left garbled messages, only blurting out what his mobile number was on one message left. As Louise was finally deciphered it & was about to call, he turned up. He did his schpiel, told us it would need to be repaired, got the camera out to take some pictures, proclaiming that is what he was about to do, & then promptly asked where <his next destination> was… Louise having said she didn’t know he left in a fluster, leaving his camera & having taken no pictures. Louise had to then call him on his mobile to tell him that he’s lest his camera, so that he could bring it back… Sounded a right droid.
Glad to be sat down. I’ve been running over Manchester trying to find a ‘null modem connector’. No Joy. I figured that this is what I needed as I have both the Ethernet card & the modem card for this eMate I have now. Succeeded in the end in getting them from ebay… didn’t pay too much; could have paid less for the Ethernet card, but that’s the way it goes… The problem now is to install the software so that the Ethernet card works. It’s an old chicken & egg. The Ethernet card will work well as a connection thing – but I need to establish a connection to download the software to make the Ethernet card work… Bah. The modem, I thought, would be the key… but I’m now thining, perhaps not. I thought I might be able to establish something called a ‘null modem’ connection. Getting the modem on this eMate to talk to the modem on the iMac… in theory possible… but then I need some form of cable for the modems. It seems I may have misinterpreted the term ‘null modem’ in that respect, perhaps… as there seems to be no such thing that will connect the socket that the modem plugs into the phone line for each modem… sigh. I foolishly thought such a thing might be easy enough to find, but no. Having thought about it, I may still be able to work round the modem thing. Considering making a cable, but worried it might bugger things up. May be able to use the phone system to connect them up, rather that via the cables themselves.
Did eventually end up in a specialist Mac shop. Saw a new flowery iMac. Pretty – better than the pictures of them might indicate, as the translucence of the plastic does not come over.
Louise has been feeling a little icky in the early days of pregnancy.

Glorious morning. Both children were in our bed with Louise as I left. Eve woke just as I was about to go, so I took her from he got to Louise, & she fell directly asleep again. Too early for her to be stomping about really.
(train home) Again the day is sweltering. I am not ideally suited to such weather, burning to a crisp. Eve seems to have the sort of skin that could cope with the sun. She has got more & more brown as the summer days have set in. Louise describes her hands as being ‘black’. They do look like they could do with a good clean, but are in fact merely well tanned… Jack remains quite white compared to her increasingly olive complexion.
The contractors from the insurance are comming today (or suposed to have come today) to assess the damage that the pipe leak has done to our ceiling. Hopeully this will be on the road to resolution. The ceiling already is stained from previous water leaks from the broken seal on the bath – so with any luck that will be cleared up as well. I am not looking forward to yet more disruption, but if that is the way it is… that is the way it is.
I’m feeling a little short on things to waffle about really. There is nothing I feel I want to write about (excepting, perhaps one thing hinted at earlier, but I’m wanting to be coy there)… so perhaps I’ll do what ‘they’ all do & deconstruct, just a tad, & note that perhaps the good weather puts me in a better mood. I feel less of an urge to cleanse by writing. I would rather not be burdened by concentration.
Work is not too bothersome as things are settling in with the new company & the support issues thereof. I learn a little bit more here & there & sort out a little bit more here & there. It would be pleasant to actually have some definite under-pinning to my shaky logic on the perception of how things work, but the snippets I learn are keeping me happy enough for now. I actually feel vaguely confident that I will manage to learn some stuff here & there that will be useful.
Perhaps this ‘contentment’ will even transfer time being able to concentrate enough to do some organisation with ZUM!… That would be nice.

We now have hot water again.
Hattie came on Thursday & put a new connector from the lead to copper pipes. It drove her a bit barmy, as it appeared that it would not seal, so she redid it a couple of times… to no avail. Then she got some more light to it & found that the water was actually seeping through the fitting itself. Through the brass of the connector. Micro-fractures or some such… bother. The leak is still there albeit very slow now. I will have to take the floorboard up when we get home to empty the bowl.
Caroline came up for the weekend to see us. All the way from London for a weekend. Very good of her to venture. Had a very nice time. All pretty low key. Popped over to Hebden Bridge on the Sunday & that sort of thing. Eve was wary of her the last time she came, but aside from a few ‘who are you?’ frowns, she was very accepting. Eve has generally become more open with people since we had the builders in & out & messing about.
She fell over on Friday & broke a nail off. This time it was actually not one of her daredevil stunts that came a cropper. She was just pushing a toddler cart up the path. Must have fell badly.. Poor little tiny finger with half her nail hanging off… quite gruesome. She was stoic about & calmed down soon enough. I put a plaster on to help stop her banging it as it looked tender, but she just bit it off.
She came a cropper again about an hour later – standing on one of her trucks out back – fell over & banged her forehead. Had a whopper of a bruise for the evening, but it had calmed down by the next evening.
She has remained weaned since last week. No relapses. Getting more accepting of going to sleep; the new routine of actually just falling asleep… Both of them actually slept through the night last night. No one called out & no one pottered into our bed. Weird. Civilised, even! Eve’s teething seems to be calming down for the moment – she has molars now & can chew her food a little easier.

...(cont from previous entry)…
Nice one. He also muttered darkly about the lead in general. The pipes had might go at any moment & all that sort of crap. Thinking about it – he was most probably frightened of them. It’s curious to note that Hattie chose not to put any specialist lead to copper fittings there, but soldered the joins. The emergency plumber was unwilling to do any repair soldering because… he did not want any comeback that any work he might do may go wrong, or perhaps as well, he did not like the concept of lead pipes. His advise was to have them all ripped out as they were all rotten. Yes, well, he was a doom monger in general. In his line of work, I guess it pays to be. They should be replaced. – we would prefer it, but this is not something we have the means to do. He left it that there would be someone coming to assess the plumbing, & that they would most likely advise the need for replacement. Oh, & in his opinion the whole ceiling would need to go. Riiiight. I could even see that this was a highly dubious assertion. The paper on the ceiling had been damaged, but peeking thru a hole in the paper – the only thing that could be said to be wrong with the plaster was that it was still a little damp & it had a little crack in it.
So, after undermining our sensibility with his prophecies of doom, our cheery morbid hungover plumber was on his way. Caroline next door helped us with a ‘getting things into perspective’ type chat. We spoke to the people who had sent the plumber out & they felt no particular need to send anyone out to inspect the plumbing, so we await the return of Hattie from Spain to await the return of hot water to the house. Pan boiling & stair tramping to fill the bath for the kids on an evening is not such an onerous task.
Oh, & the store we bought the lights from yesterday called to advise thst they would, in fact be sending the lights out to us (as we fully expected) &they should arrive… in the next few days to a week.. or so (depending on how lethargic their post room is.
Stress at work yesterday. Still working like billio on our ‘support mailbox’ that is drowning in correspondence. Passed on an urgent query from last week to the technical manager, which caused ripples, as it should have been sent on…. last week. Another dissatisfied customer. Oh, & said technical manager actually shouted at me. I asked him a query from a customer on the phone that I could not answer. Typed it into the IRC channel that all the staff use to communicate & he was not looking, so I tried a few tricks to alert him, still nothing, so I resorted to leaving the phone & going into the next room where he sits to check he was there & point out I had a customer query – so he shouts “what is the question?!” – yeah – right. It’s in channel, but let me get back to my desk & I’ll type it again if you want. sheesh. Sure the customer heard his foolish bellowing. That makes the company look professional dunnit. That’s good for all round staff moral innit. Bloody fool. He has shouted at a couple of the other lads. as well. We all rant, rave & fulminate, but not directly at each other. There are common grounds of decency.
At home, the attic is on the home straight… it’s looking really good and Louise had some news for me when I got home yesterday, but perhaps more on that later.
Above going into work – now headed home.
Much better day at work – stress levels seem to be returning to normal.
He had green marker pen on his arm & face yesterday when he came home. A testament to the foolish over excitement that playing with his pal Tom Kelly produces. Tom is a little wild at the edges & Jack reflects it when he plays with him. He was none too appreciative of me rubbing off the marker in the bath that night. Fortunately it came off with basically little fuss, but I’m not sure Jack would agree on that one. Hopefully that will prove as a deterrent.
I’ve had my thrills over the past couple of days. I say an item on Ebay (Internet auctions) that I wanted as it would be useful (thinks I) – so I bid for it. I had a budget to keep to, & was well within that & the highest bidder for a good long while. Unfortunately the bidding closed after I left work (where I was keeping an eye on it) & I was outbid. But then the person who strategically outbid me was pipped within the final 30 seconds of the auction by someone else completely new to the bidding – which I thought very cheeky! Even if I had been watching the bidding, & seen that final (below my budget) bid, I don’t think I would have been able to do much about it. PAH!
I guess I’ll have to wait for other chances.

…(cont from previous entry)…
They did the next day & I took the call & was perhaps more pliant than I should have been – so Louise took over while I went to get another bit of information from the packaging. She was more strident with them & ended up with another call back from the manager where she had to argue the point that we did buy it on the premise that there were bulbs included, we bought extra bulbs for another set of lights that did not have them included & just because you buy something in the sale that you do not expect to get substandard bulbs. The manager capitulated & we should be being sent the missing bulbs. Having said that – they should have called us yesterday to confirm… Maybe we will have to yet resort to ‘customer services’. The manager of course blamed the shop assistant who sold it to us, but them she was only passed the products at the last moment by a ‘floor assistant’ who was dealing with us & gathering up the stock (from the back room where it was not supposed to have been moved). I worry that someone will get the rocket for a mistake that we have highlighted & was not her fault… Perhaps I worry too much about the other person.
Oh – the quip earlier about it raining in our back room: Friday night – just as Jack had fallen off to sleep. I heard a whooshing sound & Louise yelp. I wondered why Louise had seemingly poured a great deal of water into the bath next door, just as Jack was slipping into slumber. Louise than called me from downstairs… eh? Not next door in the bathroom? As Jack seemed off I bobbed downstairs. Louise had been standing in the back room when a great whoosh of water fell from the ceiling. There was a burst pipe! Suspecting it was the hot water I turned the boiler off. The water was only really dripping & it died down soon enough. The whoosh was because of the build up of a ‘bubble’ of water under the wallpaper on the ceiling, which ‘burst’. SHAG! Having just been on the phone with the lighting department earlier this evening, it was back on the phone to the insurance agency (after some scrabbling around for the appropriate bits of paper). So then – we explained what we thought it would be to the bloke who coordinated the emergency plumbers who is subcontracted by the insurance agency. (Arcane comes to mind as a description of a system here.) We thought that it would be the join from the old lead pipes to the new pipes that had been installed with the new boiler. Seemed plausible, as that was what Hattie (our plumber) had been worried about. She could not come to help, as she was in Spain, on holiday, as we found when we called her mobile & got through to her – on holiday… in Spain… oops. Ah well.
So we stayed in on Saturday & waited. It was a nice day – so it was no bother. We had intended to go out on a shopping expedition to get back a pair of sandals for this hot weather we were having. It was a glorious day, so it was pleasant enough to be out & about in the garden & so forth. Chatting to our neighbour Caroline (who has been so good to us) she said that there were some sandals in the cobblers. They stock new shoes, cheap. There were & they were good. Jack has his new sandals. No urgent need to be away. So, we were in when we received the call from the plumber expected to visit mid to late afternoon. He was in Stockport. He could still make it today if required, but it would be about 9:00… yeah, right. So we opted for the next day. Up bright & breezy again, & he did turn up on his 1st visit. All tattoos & complaining of a hangover. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that Hattie, our plumber was not, in fact, a man. As that seemed to be what the source of the problem was – a woman doing it… ah, ok then. fine. So, after sawing his way through a few floorboards to access the point that Hattie seemed not to have needed to saw the boards to reach he told us what we suspected – the lead to copper seals had gone… He was ‘not told’ that there would be lead to copper – so had not brought any fittings that would fix them.

Really shite day at work on Thursday. I got on the train slumped down, got a magazine out of my bag to slump my brain into for the return journey home, & noticed my packed lunch had not managed to get out of my bag. I had not eaten it & not realised it! We were a tad busy…
I noticed that there was something up when I tried to dial in to collect some expectant email & note the I had been outbid once more on a pcmcia network card for this emate on ebay…. yet again. The new BT provided phone lines were not giving authentication on our dialup . Uh oh. Changed to another number to pop into the IRC channel we use for work & see if there was anyone there to check up on it. Not really. OK – well it may be nothing. Unfortunately it was not ‘nothing’. As soon as I put the phone on the hook at work it was going crazy. As feared there was something wrong with the lines & EVERYONE who we had tried to get in on these new BT numbers (including the ‘surftime’ thing) was getting authentication failure. The BT system was somehow not passing the calls on correctly to our authentication servers: people’s username & password were being messed up in the transition & nobody could get on. AAAAAAAA!
We have just been spending an age trying to get people onto these lines as they are supposedly going to be more reliable in their routing than the lines we already have (& the company gets more kickback on them). Good ol’ BT. The problem was cured about midday. The afternoon was spent helping people with over complicated little problems. One nice old lady (who made me miss my usual train as the call took so long) had had her computer set up by her son who had since departed to Europe. Nothing wrong in that, but the mail application was Quickmail Pro for Windows. One of the more obscure mail applications I have come across. The error messages it was giving were misleading (but it lead me to ‘cleaning up’ a sloppy set up) but after a few goes we got there in the end. Nice to get a result in such muddled circumstances. In the middle of the phone problem mayhem I had a call from a little Mr. Angry; who rather than want his problems sorting out seemed to want to go on & on & on…
Friday was a much better day. Back to the usual level of calls (i.e:. I could breathe between calls,
UG. Never rains, but it pours (in our back room.). Jill (electrician Jill) was fitting the lights in the attic. I went up to see her was doing when I got home from work on Friday & all looked tickety-boo. That is except for the fact that the halogen strip had no bulbs (!). Box said that they were included & as they can be a fiver each, easily, this is not something we would slip up on. Phoned the department store we bought them from in Leeds there & then. Dithering on the part of the shop assistant on the phone had them leaving to call back.

The plastering be done. It looks… smooooth. There ya go – it’s plaster. It’s a bit odd to see it all there really. The room is quite well formed. There is not that much more – cosmetically, that needs to be done. If I was to be really picky – as is my want on occasion – the edges meeting the skirting boards are the only area I could tut at. I noticed a couple of tiny gaps… heh. It’s lovely. I think my general misgivings seem to be from the money side of thing, as we have the ‘budget’ & it seems divorced from the real world of money. There are some doubts that we’ll meet al we want to get sorted on the house with the budget. So be it. The main problem in it is the ‘consumerist’ inclination it gives you. It’s very difficult to pin down, but we have overspent somewhere & our household funds are a bit down. Perhaps the unreal money has inclined us to a more cavalier attitude to spending somewhere… The main downside of this is that I cannot see how we can afford to go to Bob & Wendy’s wedding in June. We just cannot figure where the money for travel & accommodation will come from. Bah!
It seems that Jack finally twigged yesterday that Louise & I will be using the attic space as our bedroom. Louise says he was a bit put out at the thought as he likes to come into our present bedroom (which will be their room). We were up late last night & he awoke & stumbled for our bedroom as we were only just going to bed. I took him from the hall & laid down with him in our bed & he started to chuckle. He was basically asleep & dreaming, but something going on in his head was ticking him. Sweetie.

Hmm So, it goes. They were playing out a lot of the day as it was a very pleasant day. Jack likes to tidy & one of his ‘games’ is to sweep up the leaves on the back street. Something I will join in with as I’ll get to sweep the yard & outside our yard. As we’ve had a mini-skip out there from the work we’ve had done in the attic – it seemed a good idea if I could ensure that there was as little debris out there that could be associated with that. Eve likes to join in with a dustpan & brush as well. She has not quite got the hang of it yet, but at least brushes toward the pan. I get bored of this game a lot quicker than them as one of my punishments for a major wrongdoing when I was a lad was to sweep the car park. Sweeping holds a special place for me that lowers my tolerance for it very quickly.
After tea such things moved to the front of the house. Jack was just rushing out from inside at one point when he tripped going through the door & fell. I came to pick him up & he complained of his knee & ear (which he bashed on the wall outside as he fell). So I sat down & gave him a cradling cuddle I noticed there was a spot of blood on his ear, but was as little bemused to find no injury. Louise came to see what was the matter & was a bit shocked that when I moved my hand from the back of his head it had blood on it! Eeep! One of those unpleasant moments when you think there may be something serious going on! After a bit of checking we found the wound. A (thankfully) small cut to the side of his head above & behind the ear. Louise dabbed with a wet flannel & Jack professed that it did not hurt. We kept calm as although we were alarmed at it all – we didn’t really want to distress Jack any further. He seemed remarkably unfazed by it all. Wanted to see the blood on the flannel, but was only shown a small bit & was happily mollified by a sweet cup of tea. That would be the 1st time he’s had tea with sugar in it. He didn’t try to brog it the wound & it scabbed over by the time he went to bed. Phew!
He was a little late to sleep & early to rise (awake before I left in the morning) but Louise says that he was back to his usual self more yesterday – not the shouty boy of the previous day. Slept well last night. He was asleep as I left as usual, although Eve was up this morning. Having said that she has slept through the night for the 1st ever time! Louise has probably had the 1st night since Jack was born that she has not had to get up in the night – woo!
The plasterer came yesterday (with plasterer’s mate in tow). No word of what had detained them in Anglesey. Tempted to ask, but could not. A couple of walls done yesterday & preparation for the rest to be done today. He intends that this be his last day here. Plasterers, it seems, work quickly. He don’t hang about. He is good & in demand – more work to getting on with. His eyebrows raised when we asked how long it would take for it to dry & us to be able to work on it. Mainly because we said that we were going to varnish it. “Never heard that one before! But then I’m just the plasterer.” heh. With any luck it might encourage an even better finish.

Train home. Another early night last night. I think I might be starting to get sensible & obeying when I actually feel tired. That means that we got no attic painting done – but nonetheless the will was there, if not the energy.
Still too busy to have updated the web page recently – which is a bit annoying, but if I cannot find the time, I have to concede that there is no time even if my conscience disputes the nature of reality. Damn that reality – it’s so set in it’s ways. I know it keeps a little extra time up it’s sleeve somewhere, but it doesn’t want to tell me about it. Why do you think boredom takes up so much time? It sneaks extra minutes in when you’re not paying proper attention.
Ah, to luxuriate in inane boredom…
Eve has been to the doctors this morning. Just a routine thing as recommended by the health visitor due to our general concerns for her. Jude will also have his chest listened to, as he has an unpleasant cough at the moment. To be honest his cough should have been checked when he had his immunisation jabs last Friday, as I don’t recall him being any better then than he is now. Hopefully there is nothing to worry about in all of this, but a parent naturally worries & lets phantoms of doubt breed.