New Motor

Following the writing off of Wills first car, he spun out on a roundabout in the wet, we got him this.

If he crashes this one he can take the bus.




Will's First Car

Will is now the proud owner of this old Peugeot. It's in good nick and been well looked after. It's a 306 GLX HDi 2.0 with 73k miles on the clock. Runs well. Looks good and is not TOO expensive to insure. Now it's out every day with him for two hours driving practice until it's test time.






Hackintosh

2.67 GHz Intel Quad Core with 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR RAM

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66GHz Socket 775 1066MHz 8MB (2x4MB(4MB per core pair)) L2 Cache OEM Processor
Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Processor Cooler
Antec P182 Gunmetal Grey Super Mid Tower Case - No PSU
Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM
Western Digital WD2500AAKS Caviar SE 250GB 7200RPM SATAII/300 16MB Cache - OEM
Gainward 9500GT 512MB DDR2 VGA DVI HDMI HDCP PCI-E Graphics Card
LiteOn 16x DVD-Rom Internal SATA Black Bare Drive - OEM
LiteOn 20x DVD±RW Dual Layer & Ram SATA Black Bare Drive - OEM
Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3R iP45 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
Antec 0761345-07660-9 - TRUEPOWER NEW TP-650 GB PSU 650W CONTINOUS POWER ATX
OCZ OCZ3RPR13334GK - OCZ PC3-10666 DDR3 Reaper 1333MHz Dual Channel 4G Kit 6-6-6-18 Heatpipe Heatspreader
Samsung SM2433BW 24” TFT Monitor 1920x1200 20000:1 300cd/m2 5ms VGA/DVI
Logitech Wireless Desktop Wave Pro - With New MX1100 Rechargable Laser Mouse

UPDATE: Now using two Samsung 24 inch monitors (as above) and the Apple Keyboard together with a basic Logitech mouse.

Five weeks to go

Everything is moving along nicely and we are due to move on the 28th August. I just hope the good weather keeps up for a while after we move in. I think some of the horror stories about the bad winters are slightly exaggerated but I still expect to get snowed in at some point, in fact I'll be dissapointed if we don't!

Got the new car to collect tomorrow. It's not a Subaru, an Audi or a Golf, which are the cars my son wanted. It's a boring Ford Focus. But it's brand new, it was a good price and they are damn good cars so....tough! To be fair to Will, once he had a good look at it and approved of the low profile tyres and the alloy wheels and the entertainment centre (you know the really important stuff!) he was really quite pleased with it.

The old MR2 is getting rested for the winter. Will is going to start stripping it down and we will be doing a full refurb over the next six months or so (money allowing, of course). Steering rack, track rods, reinforcing bars, brakes, bodywork, respray, new wheels, new steering wheel and some interior refurb and plenty of other things that we haven't even thought of yet. That's about £2.5k so far but, as all MR2 owners will tell you, the paying out never ends....




We're moving!

Tired of life amongst the piss-heads, pukers and car wing-mirror vandals of Aberdeen City as well as the diesel fumes and traffic, we've decided to move to somewhere a little more, ahem, isolated. I think the images below sum up the change of scenery quite well. I just hope the postman can find us.



The picture is slightly misleading. There is a road and there are other properties close by...two houses and a farm! No mains water (we've got our own supply) and no mains drainage (it all goes into a septic tank).

Check out some pictures of the house and views HERE



Prepare for boarding

Will's friends are coming up from Kent for a fortnight. Only three of them this time. They are great lads and I enjoy having them here. The energy levels in the house rocket! They arrive by plane (ooh, how awful, end of the world, doom, warming, CO2  etc. blah, blah, bollocks) on Saturday afternoon.

Will has spent the week washing bedding, shampooing carpets and cushions and generally cleaning and tidying prior to their arrival. Anything that gets a 17 year old doing that can't be bad.

The local shop keeper will be happy. They spent a fortune in his shop last time they were here, mostly on sweets, crisps and Irn Brew.

I'm hoping another one of Will's friends, now living in the north of England, will pop up for a few days. He was one of the gang until he moved up north to live with his father. His mother died last year and we haven't seen him since then. He's a nice lad and it would be great to see him again.

Sandra and I have been lucky with our children's friends. They have all been really great lads and the older ones have grown into good, decent men.

It's much easier for young people to stay in contact today than it was when I was growing up. Typically, you lost touch after leaving school and your friends went on to marry, have children and, often, move away from the area. Now they can stay in touch from every corner of the world and can follow each other's antics on social networks.  That aspect of the new technology is incredibly positive and only those, like me,who are old enough to remember the days before the internet, mobile phones and digital cameras can really appreciate that.





Well done son!

Will built his latest computer this afternoon. The bits arrived by courier at 3pm and he had it up and  running by 4-45pm. He hasn't installed any OS yet. He's going to load Windows XP (NOT Vista!) and Mac OS X Leopard (Developer) later. It's not as high spec as his main machine but then this is really just a spare which we hope Sandra will use rather than hogging my Mac. She has a laptop but, she 'doesn't like using it' - more waste of taxpayer's money (together with her new Blackberry, which never leaves the house).

Using our old keyboard and mouse, a £12 monitor bought on eBay and a free case he got from a fellow student in exchange for sorting out his network, the total costs came in at under £200 - including new fans. We should get a few quid back for the old spare parts so, all in all, a pretty inexpensive deal for a well specced (no crap parts) computer. Well done son!








Beam me up

We are in a holding pattern at the moment. Sandra is applying for jobs in England and we are praying that we will be able to get out of this damn place before the year is out.

Aberdeen City Council is in crisis. It was dominated by unbroken Labour control for 63 years, up until the elections last year. It is mired in debt and facing bancruptcy.  This state of affairs hasn't developed overnight, as you can imagine, but successive councils have refused to bite the bullet and do anything about it. Now Labour has the chutzpah to berate  the SNP and Lid-dems for cutting services in order to avoid complete financial collapse, a collapse that Labour must have seen coming for years. Tossers!

Whatever happens shit will hit fan. And we want to be well away from this dysfunctional city when it does. But the stress of waiting for an exit plan is a bloody pain. I've got bubbly and a big fuck-off Cuban cigar for the moment we know for certain that we are out of here. I can't wait.


Man's best friend

This is the little Parsons Jack Russell that befriended us at Cruden Bay yesterday afternoon (yes, I know it looks nothing like a JR but the owner assured  me that is what it is!). Will and I went for a drive at lunchtime and ended up at this delightful little village on the coast. I love going there. The sandy beaches are almost always deserted and there is something wonderfully relaxing about listening to the waves crashing against the harbour wall. The little dog ran over to us before we could even get out of the car and stuck around for the hour or so we were there. He was a bundle of energy and a great little fellow. His owner is a regular there, so I'm sure we'll meet up again.












Let's just start again

I'm slowly recovering from some kind of nasty bug which has really knocked the wind out of my sails since the new year. The great thing about getting over 50 is that the NHS starts taking your complaints seriously. In fact they become very proactive (sorry, hate that word) about testing and prevention. I have nothing but good things to say about my experiences with my GPs over the years. And on the few occasions a hospital consultation has been required I have been pleasantly surprised with the efficiency of the service.

Having a couple of very attractive female doctors doesn't hurt either!

Anyway, with luck I should be able to crank up my postings to a more respectable level again soon. You have been warned ;)

Bon Appetit!

We have friends popping over for dinner this evening. It's a retro meal. Avocado mousse with king prawns.  Salmon with currants, ginger and butter in pastry.  Raspberry and passion fruit Pavlova. All made from scratch, of course. It's a really easy menu with no last minute rushing around required. My days of 'competitive' dinner party cooking have long gone. I want minimum hassle, minimum kitchen time and maximum socializing/boozing. Cheers!


Bloody 'ell

Test confusion 'risk to patients'
Many junior doctors do not understand common hospital laboratory tests and are putting patients at risk as a result, biochemists have claimed. The Annals of Clinical Biochemistry reports that 18% of more than 80 junior doctors surveyed were happy to order a test they could not fully interpret. The Association for Clinical Biochemistry blamed poor teaching of the subject at medical schools.
It's not just junior doctors. I listened to the practice nurse at my GP surgery inform me a few weeks ago that my blood fats results were not very impressive. It appeared, according to her interpretation of the results that I had liquified lard coursing through my veins whereas, in fact, my results weren't just good they were bloody fantastic but the nurse had got her HDL and LDL cholesterol mixed up. I had a quiet word with my GP suggesting a little re-training might be in order as this nurse was probably frightening the life out of patients on a daily basis.


Where's my walking stick?

I drove to the hospital earlier today to drop off a bunch of flowers and a get-well card for the elderly gent who collapsed in the station yesterday. I wasn't expecting to be allowed in to see the old guy, but to my surprise one of the nurses said it wasn't a problem and ushered me into his room.

He was sitting up and looked quite chipper. His main concern was his 'staff' or walking stick which had gone missing and the fact that they had cut his clothes off with a pair of shears in the emergency room, where he had gone into cardiac arrest a second time. He was pissed-off about that. I resisted the temptation to tell him that he should be happy to still be with us, clothes or no clothes, given that the grim reaper had him by the short and curlies a couple of times, but I held my tongue.

His wife was with him and she was finally able to solve the mystery of why he hadn't wacked his head  on the ground.  I had been able to grab him in time and lower him gently to the floor, avoiding a nasty bump to his bonce.  I shook his hand and wished him well and we had a little chat before I made my excuses and left. It was good to see him looking bright and perky. With luck he should be around for a few more years. He came so close to checking out. It makes you think...

On the way to the exit I spotted a very old and frail looking woman in a wheelchair just outside the main door. Her drip was on a stand next to her and she was enthusiastically puffing on a cigarette. Driving out I noticed the sign, 'Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. This is a smoke free zone'. You've got to laugh!


ER at BR

I was at Aberdeen railway station earlier this evening  when I spotted an elderly gent appear to stumble. I grabbed him just as he started to collapse and quickly realised that something was seriously wrong. A couple of coppers came over and we got him into the recovery position just as a young woman arrived and announced that she was a doctor! She started to loosen his clothing to try and make him more comfortable. Of course, being an old timer, he had a shirt and tie, a pullover, a vest, a jacket and an overcoat. While she was trying to undo some of these garments the doctor realised that the guy had stopped breathing and so we turned him on his back to begin mouth to mouth. He almost immediately arrested and we struggled to get his clothes quickly undone. I did my 'Trauma' bit by ripping his shirt and vest open and the doc gave mouth to mouth while one of the officers did cardiac compressions.
I can do CPR but there were others about who were probably more proficient than I am and, to be frank, the scene reminded me of my mother's heart attack in the street when heroic attempts at resuscitation completely failed to save her. I didn't feel like going through that again. I stepped back and looked at the guy, probably in his eighties, and thought to myself 'I don't think you're going to make it, old timer'. Another member of the public took over the compressions and after a few minutes the patient started breathing and his pulse returned. Just at this point his wife appeared.  She had arrived at the station to collect her husband only to find him lying on the ground surrounded by strangers.  Fortunately, by this time he was breathing on his own and lying in the recovery position with an ambulance on it's way.  I said my goodbyes and left.


I hope the old timer recovers fully. He's over the first hurdle - about half of all heart attack victims die before even reaching hospital - but he's certainly not out of the woods.  I tried ringing A&E to see how he was but I gave up after several attempts. Aberdeen's main hospital and you can't get anyone to pick up the bloody phone at 8pm on a Thursday evening!  Jeez. Not that they would tell me anything. They'd probably quote 'Data Protection' or Terror legislation or EU rules or some such bollocks.

If I was religious I'd say a little prayer for the old timer but I'm not so I'll just have to hope the guy makes it and manages to stick around for a bit longer. Life is sweet, after all.

(Update: Visited him in hospital a day later, where he seemed fully recovered)

Farewell my lovely old fella

I had to have our much loved old cat, Jim, put to sleep this afternoon. It completely broke me up.

He was a great survivor and had a very happy and contented life but in the end there was nothing more we could do for him and I wanted him to have a peaceful and painless death. The veterinary staff were wonderful, as they always are on these occasions. I brought him home and cleaned him up ready for burial tomorrow.

For years he had suffered from a chronic sinus infection which meant he would sneeze a lot, usually covering everything close by in foul smelling snot. He had improved quite a lot in the last year or so and his sneezes were not as explosive. After the vet had checked Jim’s heart to confirm that he had died he went out of the room to collect a large cloth so I could wrap Jim to take him home. While he was out Jim let go one last sneeze! It was a reflex, of course, but - through the tears - it brought a little smile to my face. I shall miss him a lot.