Well, despite our high hopes of September, we have not bought the farm back. Martin Wilcock has however persuaded his dad to buy it for him. So we are under no pressure to move out, but we feel that the time has come to do so.
So Lorraine and I have been looking at houses, and have made a "very big" decision. So this Friday we get the keys to our new house. It is in Hindley. It is called Lyndale and it's on Alder Lane.
To say I have butterflies is an understatement. I wish I were busier at work to take my mind off it all, but it's a bit slack there.
The problem with us buying the farm back was that, the Forestry Commission, with whom Lorraine was dealing, were put off buying the rest of the place, by the fact that the Coal Board had placed a hold over the place for the next fifteen years with a view to extracting the coal from just under the surface, so they could not plant any trees. So they bowed out. It turned out for the good after all, because when Banks sold to Martin, they put an extra £40000 on the bill for VAT and another £40000 for access rights over the railway line and across the meadow. Robbery. That would have seen us right off the deal anyway, putting it well out of our reach.
So we have liquidised all our savings to put a deposit on this house and I am paying a mortgage on it that is over half my take home pay. So I only hope I can keep it up.
Before we move in, we need to do some work on the house so we can use it properly, so our moving date is as yet unknown. I'll keep this up to date if I can.
On another tack, I now have to take half a tablet every morning to aid my system in it's production of insulin. It had to come eventually. Life's like that - try explaining that to Lorraine though. You'd think I did it on purpose.
I don't know how long it will be before we move into the new house, but when we do I intend to put a lid on this blog and start a new one called Lyndale. We'll see how far I get with that.
posted by Alan 12:25 PM[edit]
Long time no blog. I have changed jobs, In March I was headhunted by a company in Northwich, and I am now back driving a desk. This has meant buying a car (Passat estate diesel) and getting many more miles on my precious bike. In five months I have added 5000 miles to it, not bad eh? Us old 'uns can still "kick it".
I have finally got the back tyre sorted, and in the process found out how difficult it is to remove the back wheel. It's a real s*d of a job. Next time I intend buying a paddock stand to get the back of the bike higher.
Banks group have decided to sell us the farm back, and despite my protestations, we are doing it. Lorraine has found a man in the Forestry Commission who wants to buy 80 acres, so we only need to borrow £85000 to buy the house and 12 acres. Fingers still crossed on that one, we have the mortgage almost sorted, and the Forestry have written to confirm their interest, now all we do is wait.
posted by Alan 8:24 AM[edit]
Well, It's been a very long time since the last episode was inserted into this epistle. I've been busy. After all that trumpeting about the new bike, job etc. I have been rushed off my feet with the job to the extent that I hardly ever get to ride the new bike. so here I am in June 2002 with a bike with less than 1500 miles on it.
It has been through it's first service and has not had the clutch interlock problem sorted - I'll talk to the man again about that little problem. But apart from that each and every mile had been at worst pleasant and at best terriffic. It was very hard work running it in, something which I decided to do even though everyone I asked thought it unneccessary. But I'm a traditionalist and felt it needed doing.
So onto me - a subject I know lots about unfortunately. I have been diagnosed as diabetic. Not the full blown inject with insulin every four hours or you will die type diabetic, no the don't eat anything remotely like worth eating or you will be very poorly kind of diabetic. I'm most p*ssed off with it actually, because I've lost a load of weight and all those new clothes I bought for the new job are all hanging off me like a sail on Twiggy.
posted by Alan 4:20 PM[edit]
Well, I've finally done it, the holy grail of bikers, I went into a showroom and came out with a receipt for the deposit on a brand new bike.
I must be out of my tiny mind eh? I only went in to look - well, not really. I had discussed how to dispose of my redundancy money with 'er indoors and she suggested a tour of the local dealers the following weekend, well I couldn't wait could I?
So it was off to the internet at work, and a short time later I had found the bike I wanted (secondhand) in Leigh of all places. So I went and looked at it, fell in love and decided I had to have it. Now the guy was only looking after the shop so to show my bike to the right man and get a trade in value etc. I had to go to ESB in Bolton the following Saturday morning. I don't mind saying that I was so keen that I forgot all about breakfast that morning.
Talk about being knocked flat. No deal was the concensus. He would not even insult me by giving me a value on the bike unless I was buying something obscenely expensive off him. Cheeky b*stard.
So I did some more looking on the web and found a man (KJM) selling a new one for only £500 more than this twelve month old specimen.
One phone call later, I was off to the shop - same deal, let's have a look at yours Alan.
He wasn't much better on his valuation, but he WAS prepared to take it off my hands.
And when we sat down to do paperwork, he actually included the PDI etc. in the price, instead of putting it on top of the sticker price - a case of "What you see is what you pay" - you could have knocked me down with a wet saveloy.
Now for the crunch - I can have it on August 4th - after settling all the paperwork, it seems it takes that long to get one out of the box and put oil in it. Un-bl**dy-believable!
So I informed him about my holidays, August 1st to 16th and he changes it to the 17th (not, oh well, we'll rush it through so you can have it before you go - oh, no.)
So here I am with four weeks to wait for it. Boo Hoo.
So the beauty is a Honda Deauville NT650V by the way and I'm getting a beige one. And before you ask, yes I am having a Y reg one two weeks before the new registrations start, but if I waited, the price would go up, and I didn't want that to happen. So there.
Oh, what have I done?
posted by Alan 12:10 AM[edit]
I got the BMW fixed yesterday - I went to Huddersfield on Saturday and got the parts I needed for the gearbox and on Sunday morning I set to and ground the end off the broken bit of gearbox, then fitted the new parts. It only took three hours.
Then I got on with the carburettor problem, replaced both diaphragms and all seemed well until I got onth East Lancs this morning, and the old problem came out again. So tonight I'm going to get my hands full of petrol again whilst I mess with filters and things.
Tomorrow I've got an interview with a company in Stockport for a PCB design job, so I'll see how that goes.
Wish me luck
ttfn
posted by Alan 3:16 PM[edit]
Well, what a week we've had.
I'll go back a bit - a while ago I had breakdown - I'll re-phrase that - my BMW broke down. The clutch stopped working, so after I got the bike home, I started to strip it down until I needed a special tool. Now the story of the special tool is this, when I had a BMW some years ago, I needed this tool, and when I found out how much they were, I made my own by grinding a socket to fit the required hole. Of course, I've seen this socket hundreds of times since, but when you need a thing it's never there is it? After an afternoon and two fruitless evenings searching ever more unlikely places I had given up on ever finding it again, so on my way home on Thursday I called at Webster's tool shop to buy a new socket. Only when I got there it was almost as expensive as the tool I was trying to avoid buying, so I left it there.
This brings me to Thursday evening. As I approached home, I spotted smoke, and thought "Oh no, now what? Am I going to be able to get past this car on fire. But no such luck, our meter box was on fire this time. Apparently the council had been down to see John McGovern about the new gate he had put in his fence, and because he was upset at having to apply for planning consent for it, he decided that as we had reported him (in his mind - we had done no such thing) he would "teach them a lesson" and one petrol soaked rag and a match later - viola one blaze.
Of course if I had not called about the socket, I would probably have either seen him do it, or prevent him, by just being there. But no such luck.
The Fire Brigade were very good, they made short order of the fire, and found the remains of the rag, and it was they who called the police to the scene - not that they were any use - and Norweb came out to make the thing safe, which was already done, because the fuse had gone when the cables shorted in the sub station.
So we had a generator for that night, and the following morning I had an interview for my new job (more on that later) so I left Keith putting a new door on the box, Norweb having said that we had to make the box secure before they would put a new meter in it. When I returned, I immediately went out again to get the cable and stuff sorted out to repair it.
The amount of damage was such that I needed to replace the cable where it entered the box underground due to the fire having totally destroyed the cable as far as the soil under the box. I could not belive the cost of these bits and pieces - the original stuff cost less than £20 for the fuse, switch and metal box to terminate the cable, but now it was almost £100. When I got home I had to dig out the front of the box to reveal the cable and pull it through, saw some off and send Lorraine to get some new to match. Meanwhile I went off to work for the afternoon. While there Keith rang to say that the minimum length of cable was eight metres at £71 (we only wanted three metres) - typical.
So I spent all day Saturday working in the hole and the box splicing the new cable on to the old and connecting everyting inside the box. Norweb had put a new meter in the box ready, so as soon as I was able, (about 1pm) I got Lorraine to ring to ask to be connected. The man from Norweb was rushed off his feet, and he got to us at 4pm. It only took 15 minutes to connect us and he went away by 4.20.
I had the evening off, and took Lorraine to an Indian restaurant for tea (at 11pm) and it was delicious.
On Sunday it was time to catch up on jobs that I needed to do for me, first the new shock absorbers for the Kawasaki.
Of course a simple job like this has to have it's share of problems doesn't it? One bolt had got glued into place by rust and had to have it's head and part of the thread ground off. Nothing is ever simple, the wheel had to come off to get the grinder into place. The replacement bolt was too long, so that had to be ground off and dressed to accept the nut.
When it came time to line up the brackets which had got bent during the removal of the old shock absorbers, the screwdriver that I was using decided to snap. I don't know what the world is coming to, I really don't, you use a tool for ten years and then one day it decides to rip your hand open and then carry on up your arm to gouge a lump out of that as well. So I carried on, dripping onto the ground, my jeans, the bike and just about everywhere else too. Then when I started on the other side, my other screwdriver snapped too. Victor Meldrew sprang immediately to mind. So now my other hand was cut in two places - I thought, this is going to make washing fun. So that meant that the surgical gloves I was wearing to keep my hands clean were both totalled, so bang goes the keeping clean idea as well.
Anyway, I finally got the new parts on the bike and did a road test (you always forget to tighten something don't you?) Well this time it was the adjuster for the chain, I only remembered it at teatime, and when I looked, yes it was almost on the point of falling out like it did last time. So road test over, time for lunch.
After lunch it was time to get the gearbox out of the BMW. Remember the lost socket/special tool? Well that had turned up, so I was really glad I didn't buy a new one. So after undoing the last two nuts, it was time to wrestle the gearbox out. It only took about an hour all told, and when it was out, I discovered that the clutch itself was OK, it turned out to be the actuating rod that had got worn beyond repair, so now I need a trip to Huddersfield to sort it out.
As I was finishing this job, Keith and Martin drove up to the gate and when they got there all h*ll broke loose with Keith shouting "get the police - get the fire brigade!" at the top of his lungs.
Some kind person had decided to place the remains of a Ford Escort across the outer gateway, totally blocking us in. Martin was incensed - we got the pickup and a chain and pulled the car in, then drove round it and pulled it out of the gate and, intending to put it across John McGovern's house gate, kept on going. Unfortunately the Escort fell apart and ran into the ditch, sticking out into the road. This meant it was a problem, but only to people in lorries etc. Not us. So we left it there.
Of course the police turned up some two hours later and went to ask McGovern to move it, so he did, he pulled it out into the road and left it there, totally blocking us in again. Except that we could of course go roung the back of the yards and get out that way, but other people don't know about this, and they ended up leaving their cars by the cricket club and walking down after clambering over the Escort.
We just left it, it got moved on Monday morning.
Anyway, things seem quiet for now.... watch this space.
On to more pleasant things though. I went for the interview and met a couple of very nice men who had decided to employ me before the interview, all that needed to be sorted was starting date and salary, so those formalities out of the way, we shook hands and I went away clicking my heals.
I am going to be a Field Service Engineer, looking after PCs and peripherals in a chain of 97 chemist shops spread over the North West, and into North Wales, and Yorkshire, and one errant one in Birmingham. Driving a little diesel van all over the place.
By year end they hope to have 150 shops and next year will be a rollout of Winblows2000 which means all new PCs including the 100 in house PCs as well. Then at the end of next year there is a projected move into new premises, which means moving the in house boxes and the resultant networking experience.
So I am looking forward to the experience. I start on August 20th and I'll keep you informed of progress.
posted by Alan 11:27 AM[edit]
So Monday came and went without incident, but Tuesday - oh no not again. I got to Pewfall on the BMW on my way home from work and the clutch decided to pack up, just as I stopped at the lights. So I manhandled the beast into a suitably safe position, and called the AA this time, after waiting two hours for the RAC last week, I decided to give the 4th emergency service a try. Well, not to disappoint, they were two hours getting to me as well.
To top it all, I had an appointment in Leicester on Thursday and lo and behold the car I was travelling in lost it's clutch too. But better yet, the AA took two and a half hours to get to us. A total waste of time, the meeting was not made and I have had to catch up by fax and email since then. So I've been a bit busy today.
Never mind, I'm off work now till next Thursday and I'm looking forward to getting the bike fixed and all kinds of other jobs that won't get done.
posted by Alan 2:30 PM[edit]