Hannah off on travels
Busy day in prospect. Potentially off to Grimsby to buy a CBE switch for the van to drive the tap. Might test the functionality with a normal light switch first. Also need a bigger plastic water container for the sink.
Also going to fit the on/off switch for the fridge. Need to be able to isolate the fridge when it isn’t in use to avoid draining the leisure battery. We are off to Whitby on Thursday so getting the last few bits and bobs sorted.
Simon the technician from Camper UK advised that he would keep the same fridge. Sticking in a new more efficient job is going to be problematic. Venting to allow sufficient air circulation isn’t going to be easy, particularly as we don’t want to cut holes in the side of the van. Simon reckoned we would get 2 or 3 days of leisure battery life when using this fridge. This is better than I was led to believe by the previous owner who figured it would only be 12 hours or so. The clue is to plug the fridge into the mains the night before leaving so that everything is cooled before using the battery.
Hannah is off to Italy today for three weeks. Al Ward is swinging by at 8.30 to take her and Sarah (Ward – her travelling companion) to the station. V exciting. It’s going to be a fantastic trip. They have done a great job organising the travel and the accommodation. Fair play.
I’ve been waking up very early. Today it was before 5am again. You wonder where the line is between just waking up early because you’ve had enough kip and insomnia. I tend to wake up earlier in the summer because of the light mornings, despite having very dark curtains. It’s not a bad time of day to be up.
Last night was a quiet night in. We all sat and watched University Challenge. It’s unusual for all 5 of us (Tom lives in London) to watch the TV together. When I was a kid watching the TV was a communal family event. Nowadays we have so many gadgets that provide the same service that folk watch it in their own space. Anne will even sit in the kitchen and watch stuff on her iPad in preference to sitting in front of the TV.
We are lucky that our house is big enough to fit a family of 6 without getting on top of each other. It’s often difficult to know if someone is even in. We need a pager. A loudspeaker system that calls family members to the phone. Could also be used to call them to the dinner table.
We do make an effort to eat together, at least for the evening meal but often for lunch if we are in. It’s v important, even though it can be a very noisy affair if everybody is at home. Can be v stressful 🙂 Last night we had falafel cooked by Hannah. Very good fair play. It’s our effort to make Mondays a meat free day. Didn’t totally work as we had a McDonalds for lunch but hey… I discovered last night that I like Harissa paste. Why haven’t I noticed this before? A mix of red chilli, garlic and tomatoes. Great stuff.
One of the things about getting up early and sitting at the computer is that the time does go very quickly. It’s all about the Third Law of The Internet. Nuff said.
It’s the start of the Olympics coming up this weekend. London 2012 was brilliant. Rio has had a lot of debate surrounding the readiness, poor state of Athletes’ Village, Russian doping and subsequent bans. One hopes that it will all go ok. It does seem that the Olympic Games are getting to be too big a commercial entity. Lots of sports trying to muscle in on the act, understandably I suppose. Big bucks.
I’ll probably watch a lot of the events. Interesting really that we will sit down and watch the Olympics but never look at most of the sports in the intervening four years. We went to London 2012 but I doubt that we would travel any distance to the games. Prices shoot up. I remember that London was quite empty. Most of the normal tourists stayed away. We did a last minute booking for the Blur gig at the Hyde Park last night celebrations and were able to get the Waldorf Hotel quite cheaply. Lots of unsold rooms.
It’s rained overnight. I need the lawn to dry out today in order to empty the shed and stick the new ex-BHS shelving unit in. Needs reassembling but that shouldn’t take too long (!!!???). The important bit is putting things back in the right place to Anne’s satisfaction 🙂 Also need to get on and progress buying the new network switch (long overdue upgrade to GigE + PoE) and maybe even nail the new CCTV spec I have had suggestions. Hikvision. Need to get the right cost/performance spec.