Looking after Hannah’s girls, Ali’ and Sofi’, my nieces, this weekend has been really good medicine for my troubled mind/soul!
The sun even made a welcome appearance.
The weather today alternated between gloomy grey overcast skies, with drizzling rain and bitterly cold winds, and rather pleasant sunshine! Luckily we got a bit of the latter whilst out.
We need a hammock!
I tried out a rather robust netting hammock, of which there are two. It’s fab! We need something like this in our back garden. Sooo relaxing!
Teresa and Sofi.
The Northstowe park we went to has a kind of open-air public gym. I think all human habitations should have such municipal amenities.
Ali, atop the the rather nice timber climbing frame.
Well… ‘least said soonest mended’! As several of the ‘downstairs’ characters in You Rang, M’Lord were always saying.
Without giving too much away, I hit some sort of crunch or crisis point this evening. Not a pretty sight.
Thankfully some things were in place to minister to a mind in turmoil. And I appear – for the moment at least – to have weathered this latest storm.
It’s been brewing a while. I kind of knew it was coming. I’m hoping it was like a pressure valve releasing. Fervently and devoutly wishing for better days ahead!
The two R. Crumb pics illustrating this post are chosen purely for their ‘poetic truth’; they aptly get across where my head was at today. Melt-downs and explosions!
I’d kind of like to get into some of the nitty-gritty. But I’m too close to it right now!
In readiness for the work that needs doing on the MX5 exhaust system, I’ve chopped out the section with the oxygen sensor attached. I did try to take the sensor off/out. But it’s seized solid!
The section I need, with attached sensor.
Apparently the garages that do this sort of thing can undo such tightly seized joints. I hope so! I certainly can’t. But at least now I can transport the parts more easily.
Got all the parts on order – for Monday, they tell me – from bofiracing.co.uk, and scheduled to go straight in for fitting at fourpawracing.co.uk, either Monday or Tuesday.
Black eyed dog he called at my door The black eyed dog he called for more A black eyed dog he knew my name A black eyed dog he knew my name A black eyed dog A black eyed dog I'm growing old and I wanna go home, I'm growing old and I dont wanna know I'm growing old and I wanna go home Black eyed dog he called at my door The black eyed dog he called for more
Never been a dog person. Much prefer cats! But a little yappy terrier called Insomnia is barking and biting at my heels again. Put the little fucker down, I say.
And in the hallway, in the shadows, his darker more vulpine cousin can be heard, panting and drooling, occasionally pacing the few meagre feet of corridor. Depression is that mutt’s name. I can smell his stink from here.
I’m not listening to it literally. But the words and melodies of Drake’s ‘Black Eyed Dog’ are circling like carrion in my spent and careworn brain.
I'm growing old and I wanna go home, I'm growing old and I dont wanna know
Can I get an a-men? Too right! Ah-bleedin’-men! Can I get a hallelujah? You must be fucking joking! Tired of scrabbling in the dirt and dust in the peripheral shadows. Stop the ride, I’m sick and dizzy, and I want to get off.
Some while ago our neighbour alerted me to some footage he’d caught on his home security videos, showing some villains fiddling with several cars on our street, inc. mine!
Rear view; exhaust attached by sensor lead!
At the time we’d concluded – and confirmed with a neighbour further down the road – that these miscreants were thieving catalytic converters. One of the neighbours further down the road had actually arrived home as the bastards were leaving his front drive.
Look how the thieves cut/compressed the pipe!
They were so quickly down and back up again by my car that I assumed they’d decided against bothering to try and take mine. I was wrong! But it took a while for the issue to develop; gradually my exhaust system grew noisier and noisier.
It turns out that some cunts do this ‘professionally’, and use a tool called the jaws of life* (or something like that?) to snip through pipes and noiselessly remove CATs.
Sheets and tools in the road, trying to disconnect the sensor.
Anyway, as I got into my car today, to go to do a delivery route for Amazon, the whole exhaust system was roaring and rattling like an emphysemic dragon. I barely got 10 yards, and had to stop, get out, and look under the car. Almost all of the exhaust between where it exits the engine bay, and the box at the rear of the car, was hanging loose.
The engine side of the ‘snip’.The rear of the car, and the other break.
Even worse, it transpired that it was solely connected to the car by the wiring of a lambda oxygen sensor. After several hours spent getting the car up on jacks, with thoughts of zip-tying it back in place, which didn’t work, I tried to remove the sensor, where it joins the exhaust.
Second view of the rear break.
But that was seized solid; so, no dice! It then became a question of finding out how to disconnect the other end of the sensor wiring. This, it turned out, disappeared up into the bodywork of the car. It took a lot of hard work, both on the car and researching online, to finally crack that conundrum.
And all of this in very cold, muddy, drizzly conditions, with the car protruding several feet into a busy road. Gaaargh!!! I had to cancel the Amazon delivery shift, and forego any lunch. And I spent literally three or four hours doing all this. It’s the sort of thing one ought to be able to do in minutes if, A) one knows the anatomy of the vehicle intimately, and B) has the right tools.
The clip end of the sensor cable. Inaccessible!
Once I’d finally and mercifully got the damaged and broken section of exhaust off, I stuck it in the passenger side of the car. Doing all of this did teach me more about the motor. And I took the photos that illustrate this post, which I sent to various MX5 parts folk, and potential repair garages.
A YouTuber’s vid’ located the sensor clip junction, inside the passenger side interior.
It was thanks to the photographic evidence that I learned my CAT definitely had been stolen. The most damning and conclusive evidence was how the exhaust had clearly been snipped, and compressed, just around where the CAT ought to have been.
So not only do I have to replace 80% of the exhaust assembly. I also have to get a new catalytic converter. I got some quotes on parts and work. And it’s a nightmare, frankly. Because, as ever, I’m stone broke.
Finally! Unclipped. Allowing exhaust removal.
Still, in the past we’ve always battled through and found a way, even if – as with the cam-belt episode – I had to do the sourcing, buying and fitting of everything myself. This time I can’t see myself doing the installation. Partly this is due to the time of year; having to try and do such work out in the front drive or the main road? It’s just too cold and wet!
The exhaust, sat in the passenger side.
* As used by fire crews to rescue passengers trapped in crash-damaged vehicles.
PS – This is the YouTube video that enabled me to finally locate and uncouple the sensor:
Using several strands of private historical narrative – from ordinary British folk, such as two sisters in Norfolk, or Scots artillery man Frank O’Brien, and members of the Home Guard, etc, to resident ‘aliens’, such as Italian Decio Anzani, or the German Jewish Baruchs – Midge Gillies weaves a tapestry of warmly human firsthand accounts around the theme of ‘Waiting For Hitler’, or the invasion scare of 1940.
It was rather nice that there were quite a few stories relating to areas I know, mostly in East Anglia (and even London), such as Snettisham, and Hauxton. It turns out that Gillies is local – she lives in Ely! – so that might account for the unusual number of Anglian anecdotes!
A lot of what one reads here makes Dad’s Army look worryingly like documentary history, as opposed to loving satire. England, esp. after the ‘heroic’ debacle of Dunkirk, was not well prepared! And the way we treated ‘enemy aliens’ is revealed to be shockingly heavy-handed and unjust.
It’s hard to credit the impact an imminent Nazi invasion really must have had. Though this book does an admirable job of trying to convey the range of feelings, from ennui to all out panic, and from the unifying ‘we’re all in it together’ to the divisive paranoia around fifth columnists.
Perhaps because we know the feared invasion never came, even when one does read these accounts, it can all seem to partake of that ‘cosy rosy memories of WWII’ nostalgia Britain seems so obsesssed with!
Still, all told I found this an enjoyable and compelling read, and can definitely recommend it.
PS – Thanks, Chris, for gifting me this on my recent b’day. T’was a good read!
I’m not a big fan of selfie culture. But that said, sometimes it can have a value for me. In this post I’m musing on this latest bout of ill health I’m currently undergoing. The pic above was taken just now, still in bed, at about 6.45am.
Yesterday, feeling somewhat better.
The next pic in this series is me on the lounge couch yesterday, feeling substantially better. I think it shows! And the latest pic, at the top, is therefore a bit depressing; looks like I’ve been crying all night! I haven’t. But I have had a rough night of neck pain and extreme headaches, in addition to the Strep A throat.
This was Saturday night, in bed at Hannah’s.
And the third pic, the furthest back in time of the three? That reflects my annoyance, more than the physical toll illness is having. Whereas the image right at the top captures both, to my mind. Sometimes when you’re unwell you hit a plateaux of being sick of being sick. I’m there!
During the first three days of this throat infection I went from ‘business as usual’ on the Friday, which I’m assuming is the day I caught it, whilst teaching in two primary schools, to a 50/50 mix: bed rest most of the time, but still doing Amazon Flex delivery shifts (Saturday and Sunday), to more or less complete bed rest, yesterday and today (Monday and Tuesday).
Yesterday I had a blood test at the doc’s in the morning, and I cooked dinner in the evening. But outside of those two things, I was mostly in bed, sleeping or reading.
This could be very useful!
Today I ought to be working on a Grade 7 drum piece I’m doing with a pupil (Tower of Power’s terrific ‘What Is Hip’). And I’d also ideally like to do a shift for Amazon, as I really need the income! But from a health and well-being perspective I probably ought to be having complete rest. Hmmm!?
I’ve had a sore throat for a few days now. Symptoms are very Strep A like, and I believe that’s running amok in the UK. Teaching in schools, I guess, may make me more likely to be exposed? It seems more virulent amongst the very young. And I teach in two primary schools.
But I can’t find any particularly helpful maps of known cases. Something I thought might shed light on whether this might be Strep A or something else. And then there’s the various varieties: Strep A, Scarlet Fever and IGAS may all be caused by the same bacteria, but (I believe?) each manifests in slightly differing ways. So, for example, I don’t have any rashes, so I don’t have Scarlet Fever.
… and Scarlet Fever.
But without proper medical advice – ironically I had an over-50s NHS health check last Monday, before I got this damned sore throat – which is increasingly hard to get as the Tories grind the NGS into the ground, how do I know what’s causing it, or indeed even what ‘it’ is!?
BTW, the info-graphic map images I’ve used here are from my researches, and usually the webpage (if not always the image itself) adds more info, such as when the statistics were gathered, or the time period they cover, etc.
I guess I was after this sort of thing, for our area.
What I really wanted was a map with ‘pins’, something rather like the above image, but showing cases in my living/teaching zones. Maybe then it’d be easier to see if there were recorded cases where I’m teaching, for example? Anyhoo, calling 111 has (so far) got me nowhere.
Teresa and I are back to childminding at my sister’s. And we’ve been roped into an extra night over, as my mum backed out of her usual Sunday commitment. She did so partly due to dad having Covid (so I hear!?), and me having this sore throat.
I also booked two Amazon delivery shifts: one today, another tomorrow. Todays was a real nightmare. First off they had approx 30% more stuff to deliver – 30 bags as opposed to he usual 20 or so – than I normally have, and yet supposedly to be delivered in the same (two hour) time frame!
My Flex shift today was hellish!
On top of this, even before I’d left, the scanning and naming/numbering of the deliveries didn’t tally correctly. There were extra bags, numbers/names/codes didn’t match, and, well, more on this later…
I’d also very much like to opt out of making any deliveries to Cambridge. Most trips to Cambridge involve dropping deliveries to at least one ‘block of flats’ or student halls of residence. In theory I can contact the customer. In practice this doesn’t always work. Today I had a whole slew of Chinese students in multiple occupancy residences , none of which had sufficient info to locate the customer, that made the entire shift a total nightmare.
Supposedly 2-4pm, I didn’t finish till 5pm. And when I did I had two bags of undelivered stuff left over! I had to call the Flex driver support line several times. To their credit, they do try to help, and sometimes they even actually sort things out. But, as ever in modern life, there’s far too much interacting with automated robotic systems. And they can’t always resolve stuff satisfactorily.
I anticipate negative feedback from Amazon on this delivery run. One particular order initially took over 45 minutes to ‘complete’ (or so I thought), putting me seriously behind schedule. And in the end this was – or so it seems – the order to which the two extra mystery bags that were left over belonged to. So adding that in, as well, at the end, means that one stop accounted for about an hours work!
How all this makes me feel!
Add to this my sore throat, the bigger than usual load, that for much of the shift it was cold and very rainy, and, nearly all of it being in town, there was heavy traffic congestion to negotiate… Bah! Not fun at all. For the most part I do enjoy doing Amazon Flex deliveries. Not so today! As already mentioned, I’d like to decline any further delivery trips to Cambridge.
Back ‘home’, at Hannah’s in Northstowe, I’m mainly staying in bed, as I don’t feel at all well. The right hand gland in my neck is swollen and painful, swallowing hurts, and I’m on a diet of liquids, paracetamol and lozenges.
Missed (again!). Bloody awful.
Thought a bit of snooker might help. So I watched the Trump vs Bingham Masters semi-final. Trump won, 6-1. But, my sweet lard, was it ropey! It was excruciating at times. I like fast heavy scoring snooker. This was low breaks, tactical grinding (and wailing and gnashing of teeth), and, frankly, quite boring . Both players playing well below their best.
