Cold

Progress is being made on the bathroom but this meant that while we had a new boiler and tank yesterday they weren't actually connected. This meant no heating and no hot water. My daughter has, sensibly, taken herself of the the flat she and her fiance own and my wife headed over there for a shower yesterday evening. This morning I had to boil a kettle of water, pour it into a jug and carry it upstairs to have a wash - I know this would have been common a hundred or so years ago but even I don't ever remember doing that.

With no heating I am feeling rather cold - particularly my feet!

There is now water in the tank so I hope by the end of today we will have the immersion heater wired in at the very least so we can have hot water even if no heating. Anyway this is what it looked like last night:


New boiler and hot water cylinder in position but not plumbed in or wired up.



Hole that used to contain the cold water tank - should be useful storage in the future.



Where the toilet, handbasin and bath will go - notice the door on the left!



Impressive bit of plumbing waiting to do something.

UPDATE - They have just discovered that the brand new hot water cylinder is faulty so we are unlikely to get hot water tonight. The workmen are not happy (to put it mildly) as they have been trying so hard to get it working today.

UPDATE 2 - No hot water but they have worked like mad to get the central heating working. All I have to do is work out how to programme the controller.

Bathroom

I am currently meant to be making sure I don't get stressed; this is not working.

The first reason is very simple - my daughter gets married in less than 2 months. Now this, in itself, isn't stressing me at all but it is the female half of the house and this does seem to have a knock on effect.

The second reason is that with the house rapidly turning into a pressure cooker it seemed the obvious time to have the boiler changed and the bathroom re-fitted. The bathroom currently looks like this:



They tell us the work will only take 2 weeks but given that this is the end of week 1 I'm beginning to worry. The real problem is that I have to be around while the work is going on so I can't go out or go back to bed if I need more sleep.

With any (a lot?) of luck in a weeks time I will be posting a picture of our lovely new bathroom but until then...

Picture Of Happiness 2

I should know things never work out as you expect. I fitted the machine heads and new strings to the ukulele and finally managed to tune it. It was only then that I discovered that fretting is out, particularly the first fret, so it isn't playable anyway :(

Time Warp?

I just received an e-mail from Amazon to tell me that an order had been shipped. Nothing odd in that except IT ARRIVED YESTERDAY.

Picture Of Happiness

This is a picture of happiness:



It may not look like it to you but it is to me.

Some years ago a was given a ukulele for Fathers Day but have hardly been able to play it for one simple reason - it was nearly impossible to tune. It has straight pegs for tuners and the smallest possible about of angular motion seems to be enough to change the pitch by a semitone (slight exaggeration but you get the idea.) Mid December I ordered a set of machine heads on-line and they never turned up. The seller eventually agreed to refund the money as he wouldn't send another set in case there was a problem getting post to me - odd since they had posted things to me before.

Eventually I found another supplier and this morning the machine heads, a new set of strings and 2 felt ukulele plectra (the ci=orrect plural of plectrum) arrived in the post :)

Now, at last, I may finally get round to playing the ukulele.

Certainty and Doubt

I recently came across the following quotations which reflect how I approach both my faith and anything 'scientific'.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubt he shall end with certainties.
Francis Bacon (Not the painter but the one killed by a frozen chicken)

The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on teh capacity for doubt.
Wendy Kaminer

Composers!

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

Frank Zappa
(Found in Advanced Banter - The QI Book of Quotations)