Full Metal Wheelbarrow

New fusebox all fitted on Saturday (well, they call it a "consumer unit" these days, but stuff that, it's a fuse box to me :)) with only as much disruption as you're bound to get when you have to turn the electricity off for several hours.

We made sure to out the freezer on "Super" overnight beforehand - it's supposed to be able to cope with being switched off for up to 24 hours, but no need to make things any more difficult than we need to be.

The electrician seemed dead impressed that we'd cleared him space to work in the cupboard under the stairs - it seemed like basic common sense to us, but apparently not to everybody :) He spent a fair amount of time in said cupboard, making sense of the electrical spaghetti, and we said he'd have to change his name to Harry Potter :)

Anyway, it's all done and up to the current standards now, so that's good.

I seem to have failed to post anything for ages again. Bah.

This week we had a second Solatube installed - this time in the windowless en-suite shower, so it has an integral extractor fan. It was a bit more involved this time, as we had to get an electrician to disconnect the old extractor fan and then reconnect the new one and separate the lights from the extractor (so we can have either on without the other if we want to), as the Solatube installers don't do any electrical work. They're nice chaps though :)

The light coming in makes an enormous difference to the previously dark and gloomy room.

Since we had the electrician coming in anyway, we also got him to swap over the lightswitch in the lounge - it's a dimmer switch, which we don't need and which has always been a bit awkward to use, so we've now got an ordinary rocker switch, which has a much more positive feel to it.

While he was here, he informed us that our fuse box isn't up to standard, so we've asked him to replace that for us at some point, although we don't have a firm date for it yet.

I has a strimmer! And it works! Hurray!

It arrived yesterday, but I couldn't play with it put it to use until today because the starter battery had to charge overnight first.

It's a bigger more powerful one, with, and this is the important bit, electronic starting - so none of that messing about with pull cords, like Sandy trying to start the outboard engine so Flipper can lead him off to rescue his Dad from the smugglers (You're showing your age now. Ed.)

I have strimmed large swathes of the allotment today, such that it no longer resembles the Weedland Theme Park quite so closely. I actually managed to strim long enough for the petrol tank to run empty, which I never managed with the first one. I got more done this morning with this one in about an hour and a half than I did in all the time I had the other one - and I used less string to do it, too!

And do you know what else? This strimmer has a mini chainsaw attachment! Mwahahaha!!!!!!!

Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

(I am! :-))

Also, I got 6 CDs from the local charity shop for the princely sum of £2 for the lot - two by Mike and the Mechanics, and one each by Tasmin Archer, Bond (electric violin group), The Lightning Seeds and Franz Ferdinand (not quite sure about that last one, but at that price, it seems worth a try).

Last, but not least, my local supermarket had chocolate cake on special offer - great big chocolate sponges with buttercream on top and in the middle, normally £4.99 each and they were selling them for £1....nom nom nom :-)

This weekend Rob is engaged in building a new fairing for his race trike. For those unfamiliar, a fairing is a sort of enclosure that you build around the trike, designed to make it more aerodynamic and therefore go faster. This usually involves a degree of pointiness at both ends.

Unfortunately it also involves a degree of pointiness in the implements used to make it, and he managed to inflict a nasty cut on his left thumb yesterday, which bled alarmingly. Well, alarmingly to me, anyway. He was much more sanguine about it. He got it under control with some rather whimpery assistance from me, and merrily carried on working on the fairing.

Otherwise, my Saturday involved grocery shopping,  the making of cherry cake and mince pies,  and the preparation of kiwi fruit, oranges and mango for the drier.

Today, I took the newly returned Cordelia Strimmer down to the allotment. Clearly they'd done something to her at the factory, as she'd gone from starting intermittently to not starting at all....

Rob decided this was quite enough and we took her back to Screwfix, where he'd bought her. To their credit, they made no bones at all about exchanging her for another model, although they had to order it - it'll be delivered here on Tuesday. This one has an automatic starter, so will hopefully behave itself better. I am resolved not to give it a name until I'm sure it's going to behave itself.

1. I got a new liquidiser in Argos for under twenty squid.

I was looking at one in Lakeland, but although it looked good, it had a glass jug and after Rob's encounter with the tea-bag jar when we lived in Somerset [a] I'm wary of glass containers in the kitchen if they can be avoided.

I haven't had a chance to play with use the new one yet, but it has removable blades, which should make for easier cleaning than the old one.

2. I found a charity shop that doesn't charge the earth for books (honestly, I'd buy so many more books if they were more reasonably priced) and got copies of Speed of Dark by Elzabeth Moon, Prince of Dogs by Kate Elliot and Beloved by Toni Morrison [b] for 50p each.

3. I got series 1 of The Clangers on DVD in HMV for £3! Wheee!

(Exit stage left, whistling in the manner of a small pink knitted creature)


[a] For them as hasn't heard that story - he was making a cup of tea, dropped the tea bag jar. It broke  and a piece of the glass bounced up and dealt him a nasty cut on his left wrist. He sent me for some cotton wool. I came back with same and was heard to remark "Fuck the cotton wool, I'm getting you an ambulance " which I then proceeded to do.

He tells me that he had a Several of specialists peering at the interior workings of his wrist at one point. Remarkably, he'd managed not to damage any major blood vessels. Phew!

[b] I was curious about this one after edith_jones mentioned struggling with it.

Yesterday I made some apple sauce and put it in the liquidiser in order to make it non-lumpy for drying into apple leather.

I turned the liquidiser on, it went whizzy-whizzy-whizzy, as such things do.....and the apple sauce proceeded to turn grey.  Uh oh...

On investigation it became apparent that not only had the plastic jug developed a leak, but it had somehow sucked up some sort of lubricating oil from the workings of the lower part of the machine. Bah.

Can't really complain about it failing, since it was at least ten, possibly nearer fifteen years old, but it was annoying to have wasted the apples and now I have to go and wade through the advertising-speak to hunt down a suitable new liquidiser...

Also, I have been to the dentist and had two fillings this morning. The dentist and her assistant are both very nice ladies, who were very kind about my pathetic fear of needles, but nevertheless, it was not really fun.

On the plus side, we've booked up for a couple of nights at Ilam Hall Youth Hostel in August so that we can go walking in Dovedale, which is a lovely place.