The car wouldn't start this morning. It sounded like battery failure – little sad electrical noises then nothing. Tom and I pushed the car out of the drive and onto the road and tried to bump start it, but failed. I think I was probably doing incorrect things with the ignition and the clutch. We turned the car around and parked it up, heading back to the house to use the internet on hints on bump-starting cars. Turns out I *was* doing it wrong after all. We push the car back up the road with the intent of turning it round and re-trying the bump-starting on the slight decline down the road, but Tom had run out of energy, being full of man-cold as he is. Thankfully at that moment some neighbours pulled their car into the drive next to where we stood panting, and agreed to jump-start our Micra! On only the second attempt and after a mere minute of charging the car started, and we quickly revved it a few times then drove straight to work, thanking our nice neighbours. I’ll have to buy them some chocolate or something to say thankyou, since they really saved us! Car was fine on the way into work but I’m a little nervous about it – hopefully it will be okay to drive home but I’m not so sure about tomorrow morning – I’m going to try and find a garage to replace the battery tonight lest we have the same issues tomorrow.

Poor Lucy.

I had a tupping puncture on my bike this morning, the fact of which seems to have put me in a bit of a bad mood this morning. I gear myself up fr a cycle then can't, so I have to come back indoors and get changed and drive to work. The kids are back at school after half-term which means the roads are back to being busy again, and there seemed to be an unnatural number of tractors and HGVs on the road, slowing the cars down which made me grumpy.

Tom reminds me what it used to be like in Bristol - sitting for hours in stationary queues of cars, waiting at traffic lights watching them turn green, then red, then green, then red, unable to move because of all the edjits sitting on the box junction. When I first came to Salisbury I was amazed because the traffic MOVES and people are polite and let you out, they don't cut you up! But I've started to become annoyed at anything less than perfect traffic, which is a bad thing.

Hmph, I miss my cycle. I have to go to the gym now to make up, which I also dislike (it takes up too much of my lunch break for my liking). Ah well - I'll feel better once I've gone!

Took the car to the garage this morning for what I assumed was going to be a fairly routine brake pad replacement, but turned into a more expensive brake disc replacement costing £140. Oh well. I guess it's not too bad - after all I had a cheap MOT recently and at least I caught the brake discs before any real damage was done (they had just started leaking fluid, which explains the stickiness and strange smell first thing in the morning) so if I had ignored the problem I might have ended up with faulty brakes! Damn cars.

I've got a whole bunch of parcels to collect from the post office this morning. I think they are wedding invite blank cards, purple card and paper and Tom's secret santa (a bit late!) from someone on the Penny Arcade forums - exciting!

I also checked a few details on the house we like. Although it's oil-fired central heating (not too much of an issue) you an at least get fibre optic broadband installed, which to be honest was a little bit of a worry! No decent broadband would have meant seriously rethinking our plans. Woot!

Some other rather nice news was received yesterday. I collected the car from the garage on the way home from filming, as it had passed its MOT! Actually, that's a lie. It had failed its MOT because the headlights were dipped too low, but that was fixed by turning the little dial on the dashboard, he he.

I think this is the first car I've ever owned to have passed an MOT first time! Good old Lucy.

Heroes last night was fabulous. I haven't had my usual chat about it with work colleagues yet, because everyone seems very busy today. Perhaps tomorrow. I also caught the first of a new BBC programme called Ocean, which I thought was going to be a Wildlife On One-esque nature programme. It was a nature documentory, but it was much mroe dramatic and follows a crew of marine biologists doing crazy-arsed things like diving with giant canabalistic squid. It was highly entertaining!

Top Gear wins!



That is all.

Some interesting things happened this weekend. I don't feel like doing a full update so have some bullet points!

• My nan turned 75 and we had a nice meal in a slightly expensive posh pub in the Forest. During this, my mum got confused for my nan and wasn't impressed.


• My dad had a leaving do, as he finished his job with New Forest District Council and next week will move to Sussex to start his new job as head of department. He'll be 300 miles away from my mum but everyone keeps tellins me it's going to be fine. I'm not convinced but I guess as long as mum's okay then that's what matters. A lot of travelling at weekends will happen I think.


• moltenlead and his lovely girl Nina came over for the party and we had a nice chat and a drink. All good!


• During the party I got bitten by something through my jeans which has caused an itchy raised area aproximately the diameter of a small wine glass. I'm guessing just a nasty mosquito but it's not itching too much so I'm not soncerned.


• On the way home I put £46 of petrol in my Nissan Micra. I may never buy petrol again!


• A new series of Top Gear has just started! Hooray!

And that's about it! Back to horrible shift work next week so much tiredness will ensue.

After getting lost no less tha three times on the way back from Bristol trying to avoid the closed A36, we have bought a satnav! They're not as expensive as they used to be now, and I think it'll make life that much easier since we've started going on longer journeys to visit friends and relatives.

Still, yuppie or what?

 Drove my new little Micra into work today, and three things were apparent.  One is that it's fabulous to have heating again!  My toes were waaaarm.  Two is that I've missed Terry Wogan on Radio 2 in the morning.  Three is that the display on the stereo doesn't work, but I can live with that because Radio 2 and Radio 4 are close to one another on the auto-tuner, and apart from the odd stint with Virgin Radio when Jam's in the car with me then that's all I need.  Mostly I just listen to the ipod (which there is no lead for, but I have an itrip so I can just tune it in that way).

Jam is still coughing a lot, and feeling rotten in the evenings.  Last night he was particularly grumpy, to the extent where he even shouted at me when I mildly scalded my hands making him a cup of tea!  Grr.  Still, this morning he seems a lot better apart from the coughing, so hopefully he'll be well by the weekend.

I in the meantime have developed a cold, but typically of me it's lasting a few days at the most.  Last night I was ratehr snotty, but this morning I'm much better (though I still have my olbas oil handkerchief handy, because it smells lurvly).

I seem to have missed the internet Holiday Season card posting session, but I'll try and make some kind of electronic card to make up for it.  :)

Had a fun and fairly productive weekend! Jam and I headed to Cheltenham for a mini bonfire night gettogether, featuring the burning of much stuff (including a mini Guy Fawkes effigy), BBQ, sloe gin, beer, cake, Sing Star and iToy. It was fun! We saw lots of fireworks going off all around the house (who needs to pay to see a display when you can watch from your back garden for free?), it was pleasantly warm round the fire, and we all ate much meat then toasted marshmallows and told bad jokes.

Why are pirates called pirates? Because they 'arrrgh'! *sigh*

Sing Star was chaotic fun! Though after a couple of songs no-one wanted to play against me. Apparently I'm too good, or something. Bah! Still, I rocked Tom Jones then enjoyed watching everyone else having a go; only two people refused to play, and they were girls so no surprise there. Why are girls more easilly embarassed than guys? Silly creatures.

I fell asleep on the sofa (facilitated by the slow gin, perhaps) before retiring to bed shortly before midnight. The boys spent the rest of the night drinking tea and playing Risk, so it was a good thing I went to bed when I did (I have developed an irrational dislike of Risk, largely because it's boring and slow as hell and I always lose and end up sulking while everyone else gets drunk and makes me uncomfortable).

Sunday we were good and turned down the offer of dinner and World of Warcraft with W&S, and headed back to Bristol indtead to do more packing. We're about halfway there, I think, which is a little concerning because we've only got about four boxes left. Most of the stuff still to pack is stuff like clothes and kitchen stuff, which we're going to need right up until we go, so I'll save that packing for Friday when we've both got the day off work.

At some point this week I need to get the car to the garage, as I've got a slow puncture. It's not been a problem up 'til now - I just pump it up whenever I got for a longer than usual drive (pressure drops quite slowly), but obviously if I'm going to fill the little car with boxes the pressure needs to be up and stay up, so I'll eitehr need it fixing or replacing. It's just finding time to do so, since the garage isn't open early or late.

Just got a message from jam_warrior to say that I left the internal light on in the car and now the battery's dead. Boo! I'm terrible at doing stupid things like that. The battery must be my single biggest area of broken-down-ness in cars.

I'm not sure what Jam was doing with the car (he's at home today playing Zelda - Phantom Hourglass) but I'm very glad he was doing whatever it was, because now he can get the garage out to charge the battery. Huzzah!

Ugh. Stupid busy short-staffed Monday with crackling phones, shouting people and perverts (I chose to ignore the question I was justed asked by a customer. "Did you have a nice weekend? Maybe a romantic weekend?" Yeuch).

Oh, and exhaust is loose on the car, so will need to get it to a garage this week. Plus it's atarted making a mysterious squeeking noise that seems to come from the front passenger wheel. Bah!

Argh it's cold in here! And I'm wearing tights! Damn you, autumn!

I haven't done a decent update in quite a while. That's probably because not a lot is happening at the moment. I got the car sorted (sort of) - new battery, new ducting, oil top-up and a good clean (where I actually managed to scratch the paintwork in a few places by scrubbing at the dirt too hard. Oops!). It survived a trip to Gloucester and back, and I just need to get it serviced now before I do a journey of any great length, then sort out breakdown cover (a task I delegated to my finace, who is ignoring rather admirably).

Jam is potentially getting a small promotion within his temp job at Ofsted - senior admin or somesuch - provided his application goes through fine. Would mean a little more money for probably no more work on his behalf, so all good there. Still no job news for me, but I have to send my CV off to Cardiff council's scientific services dept for them to browse. Annoyingly they don't have a departmental email, so I'll have to use snail mail! So archaic!

Five weeks until the show, which is terrifying! Not helped by each rehearsal being attended by less than a full cast, so each week there are people who don't know what they are doing! Then men in particular are bad at attendance. I'm sure it'll all come together fine, but at the moment the whole thing feels rather amateurish.

Argh, cold! Off to make anotehr hot drink. Maybe buy a duvet to snuggle under at the desk.

Tried to start the car before heading off for singing and, of course, it didn't work. Buggery. Got to ohone the garage to see about a new battery, possibly a new alternator and a new extraction pipe for the exhaust system (have noticed a rather large hole in it, which simply means the fumes aren't going where they should be going - not a major issue, but one that needs sorting). One wonders what else will be wrong with our brand new shiny rip-off.

Car now jump started and charged somewhat - I'll try and start it after work to see if it's holding charge, then it'll be down the garage for a battery/alternator test. Plus it needs a new extractor pipe, as it's leaking fumes into the engine. I think the engine needs a service, because there seem to be lots of little things wrong that don't matter on the MOT. It would put my mind at rest to know where potential problems are going to crop up, even if it will be costly. I've already spend £900 on this car - what's another fifty or so? Bah. Next time I'll be buying from a dealer, just for the peace of mind tha brings.

Went our for a nice (if short) walk with W&S, and had a picnic. It was a mile and a half, which only took us an hour walking slowly. I would have liked a much longer walk, but Will said that was anough for him and Shilpa's not particularly fit. Still, sun and grass and countryside and nice food. :) Then back for WoW. not a bad weekend, all things considered.

Rather annoyed to discover the battery has gone on my brand new car. >:(

We were heading round to a friends house in Bristol, and the car wouldn't start. It's definitely the battery, as it was making noises as though trying to start but not managing it. Seeing as I didn't leave anything on (that I'm aware of) since driving it back, I can only assume it was very low on charge to begin with, and the seller charged it enough to drive it, but not enough to hold the charge.

Today is not he first time that some friends are coming round to try and charge the battery enough to start the car, then I'll be up and down the M32 for a bit to try and recharge the battery. If that fails it'll be a trip down to the garage next week, and yet another week of getting the tupping bus over to singing on Monday evening. Grr.

We picked up out new car last night! I was certain something was going to go wrong; that we didn't have enough money, or the car had been broekn into, or the guy had done a runner with my deposit, or other completely unrealistic imaginings. Thankfully all went well, and Jam likes it as much as I hoped he would- he said it was exact;y the sort of car he was looking for!

I have to call the insurance people tonight, but hopefully no problems there. Smaller engine than the previous car, so maybe my insurance will go down - that would be nice! :)

Went to see another car this morning, and ended up putting a deposit down on it! It's a Fiat Punto S, 1998, 56k, new MOT, 3 months tax, and is basically a very nice little car. No problems driving it, no rust, engine looked tidy (but then I don't know what I'm looking for when I look at an engine, besides no obvious gaping holes, leaking fluids or black smoke), and I argued the price down by £50! Not much, I know, but I'm so terrible at haggling I was impressed I managed to say anything and didn't just offer him the full amount. Gave him £50 for a deposit, and will try and get the rest to him either tomorrow or Tuesday. New car - woo!

I've spent most of today furiously costuming. It always amazes me how long these things take - I seem to have been working on this badger head for bloody ages now, and it's still only just looking like the creature it's meant to be. The head is almost entirely furred now, and I just have to tidy it, add the eyes and nose, trim the fur round the muzzle, and he'll be done! Cute fuzzy critter. :) Then I have the fun of making the body, which can be both hugely fun and very frustrating. Oh, and hand and foot paws, which are fiddly.

The sponsored walk is tomorrow morning! My sponsor page is here, if anyone want to give any last-minute sponsorship! Jam's on handler and photographer duty, and I'll post pics as soon as I have the film developed.

Due to the fact I'm giving the Micra back to jam_warrior's mum on Sunday, this week I've been rather furiously car-hunting. Wednesday we went to view two cars, the first of which was a nice little Rover 100 - a bit of an old-mans's car, as Jam said, but very well looked after and low milage. It would be reliable, but a bit on the dull side. The otehr one we saw was a Punto, and to be honest I took one look at it and thought about turning round and going home. It was, as described, a little scratched in places - nothing too bad, just a few cosmetic dents here and there. But the seats were filthy! It looked as though someone with a really grubby backside had sat in every seat repeatedly, or possibly spilt cola everywhere. It drove like a mechanical slug, slow and rattling and jerky. He'll be very lucky to sell it.

We're viewing a couple more this weekend, but I kind of think we'll end up with the Rover even if it is a little bit of a boring car.

Can't decide if I love or hate car-shopping. It's certainly a hassle...