Bleeding brakes...

In the past two months, we've done a lot - I started my new job, we moved out of a house with no electricity and into a new one which has been completely repainted and a new bathroom and kitchen put in, and bought a new car. It's a Holden. Or more accurately, it's called a Vauxhall here. Being in it with the windows closed makes me feel sick, because the first owner was an avid smoker and a builder. 

We've also been to Reading a few times with friends, and I've moved offices, to a little place called Pangbourne on the Thames river, just south-west of Reading. (It's dirty and yucky, but at least it looks pretty!) 

Last Friday I was driving to work. The BMW in front of me slowed down and stopped at an intersection. I put my foot on the brakes... and I wasn't slowing down! I managed to slow down enough and turn the car onto the shoulder with a squeal (there was only a sliver of one, and then a building)! I got to work a bit shaken, with no brakes. 

Thanks to certain friends who are good with cars, I managed to impress the mechanic who came to tow our car home enough that he drove me all the way home instead of charging me £150 to go 20 miles, which was awesome. (I was very grateful.) 

 

He also explained that it was probably air in the braking system, and told me how to bleed the brakes. Brendan and I decided that this was a good idea, and we would do it ourselves. 

So, all of Sunday afternoon, and Monday evening, we learned how to take the wheels off the car and bleed the brakes. Lots of fun, arguments, swearing and four (four!) trips to Halfords to buy the right sized spanners and assorted tools. But, the brakes worked again! We are very proud. We're not particularly mechanical people!

The car is at the mechanics at the moment, though, just to double-check. Apparently the reason I stopped a little and didn't totally crash into the BMW or into the building, was that the back-up brakes went on when the main brakes failed. It looks like we do have to replace the master cylinder. Ack. But brakes are, shall we say, quite important.

Brendan is...

feeling guilty for not making any blog posts and leaving Tina to do them all.

That was all I had to say. Who needs Twitter to microblog when you have laziness?

Singing exams at Odiham

This afternoon another choir member and I went to the village of Odiham (near the RAF base), about 10 miles away from Basingstoke. We were to to sit choral singing exams run by the Royal School of Church Music, at the church of All Saints. 

This is a window installed in the church by the RAF. I like the helicopters!

While Sue was having her exam, one of the bellringers arrived to wind the clock in the belltower, so I got to climb up the rickety ladders to see it. The clock mechanism is actually 150 years old!

There are 6 bells. This is the one which makes the "dong!" sound on each hour. The wheel on the left is the mechanical ringer, I think. On Sundays and special occasions there are 6 bellringers to make the chimes. Sue says it's all about following the patterns.  

 

After, we had a traditional British cream tea in the local pub. Enormous, warm scones and little ramekins of jam and clotted cream, which looks a little bit like whipped butter.

We're going on a car hunt...

... this weekend. Because we absolutely need one. The bus/train/bus combo only works for Brendan if the train is perfectly on time and the bus is late. And I need a car for client meetings.

I'm really enjoying my new job, although it's super-super busy. I get to do lots of writing and work with cool people.

The other "interesting" thing is that we are currently sitting in our room surrounded by candles, because our flatmates didn't pay the power bill. And we didn't realise until Tuesday, when the lights didn't work. Tymek is on his way home from holiday in Poland, so hopefully that's sorted soon.

A quick update....

Still no car. It's a bit awkward, since the buses become a bit sporadic after dark. I walked home an hour in the dusk the other day rather than wait 1.5 hours for a 10-min bus. However I did get to see a tiny deer in the forest by our house, so it wasn't all wasted.  

Brendan is enjoying the sights of Las Vegas this week for a work conference. Or more accurately, he's in conference rooms during the day and hearing the sights of Las Vegas rumble as he tries to get early nights. (Comment from him today during our talk on Skype: "I get to bed much earlier without you!"*) I, on the other hand, have been revelling in late nights and a lack of socks on the floor. ;)

But all this is about to change - on Monday, I start a new job in marketing/communications! I'm really excited since I worked really hard to get it. I'll be doing a lot of creative work (and hopefully use my filmmaking/writing/design skills) as well as learning to have my own clients, which is awesome.  

In other news, here are some gratuitous pictures of the countryside/woodland park next to our house. Enjoy. 

Here are some bluebells next to the path I walk through the woods to get to Tescos/the bus stop. The forest is filled with them, and occasionally I'll get a whiff of the most gorgeous smell coming from the flowers. 

(What you can't see is that to the left of this image, people have been dumping their rubbish as the path opens out into the corner of the car park. Disgusting. Before I took this shot I removed all the plastic bags scattered over this area, and put them in the communal bins downstairs. And then a spider jumped out of one onto my hand!)

I also discovered this pretty cluster hidden inside the tree belt between the houses and the field next door. 

The fields are lush with dark green barley at the moment. I think a lot of people walk their dogs here, because this is a right-of-way footpath.

*It's not that he's inherently an early bird, because he most definitely is not. It's because he needs more sleep than me, and takes longer to get to that point.

RIP little car....

Our car is dead. The past few weeks it's been steadily worsening: loud rattling noises in low gears, clutch deteriorating to the point of being unable to get it into 1st or Reverse without turning the car off first, struggles to get it into any other gear.... We'd worked out how to get around these "quirks", but we didn't expect it to completely die tonight from another issue!

When we drove to Paris in November, Geoff said he thought the clutch would die in about a years' time, and that it would take a few months to fully die at that point. Um, not even 6 months.  

Brendan had just dropped off his carpoolers at the railway station when it died, so it didn't need to be towed too far home. Thank you insurance company!! The tow truck driver said it was the starter motor. (He also said, "Your clutch must be really ****ed if we can't hill-start it.")

The unfortunate thing is that it chose to die tonight. I have two meetings on Wednesday afternoon, in different parts of the country. I can't make it between them by train. So I immediately jumped online and booked a rental car. Between the cost of trains for me, and Brendan needing to take a bus/train/bus down to Winchester, the price actually works out to about the same. 

As soon as our flatmate gets back from Poland, he promises to help us find a new car. He has some sort of Polish car mafia contacts. Or something. 

Domesticity

Today Brendan was home sick for the second day running, so he felt the need to go to the supermarket and buy junk food from Iceland. Like neopolitan icecream bars for 75p. (It's kinda funny when he tries to talk, and only a whisper comes out.)

Presenting: Kia Ora orange squash. Not orange juice; orange squash. It's quite bitter. The name, though, is hilarious: for non-NZers, "kia ora" is Maori for "hello". So it's "hello orange squash"? Also, I feel as if it contravenes some indigenous copyright laws. Much like the Lego Technics debacle a few years ago.

(Here's a photo of a walkway near our house. Our new house in Chineham is much nicer than our last one.)