There are other tracks on YouTube from the same artist but my boss called as I was doing the necessary prep work (on my walk home, so no, I wasn’t skiving) so instead of walking along, face glued to the phone I was walking along talking to myself (headphone with mic). This could also probably viewed, by the wider world, as a good thing and, instead, I shall leave any investigation of Modulate as a task for the reader.

Work could easily eat up 12 hours a day just keeping up with stuff if I let it (I don’t, I view it as a failure of the project planning rather than a failure on my part as the deadlines zoom past and recede into the distance).

There’s a further 8 hours per day worth of stuff that I’d like to get done to improve things at work which gets crammed into my morning commute, but really requires a table and takes 3 weeks to do a single days work due to the time and setup constraints.

I’m also editing a book for a friend which would only take a week, if that, full time, which I’m also doing during my commute and evenings while The Zozo watches her soaps.

My home time commute is reserved for a few games or watching a little telly. Blogging gets crammed into the walk to and from the station.

Realistically it’s 7:30 by the time I’ve got home and eaten leaving about 2 hours to spend with The Zozo on weekdays otherwise it eats into sleepy times and leaves me tired.

Weekends I quite often get a day to myself which is good for a bit of downtime but means I don’t get to see The Zozo as much as is like. While she is at work I try to go to the gym, play games, sort the house, shop, sort out my websites, go out and take photographs, organise my existing photographs, edit a load of video, work on some personal projects and catch up on my TV. Many of these tasks fall by the wayside, usually starting with sorting the house :S

When we both have a day off The Zozo and I like to go out, do something, see a film, have a meal out and relax at home. We’ve also got lots of places further afield we’d like to visit that require 2 contiguous days off.

I, therefore, propose a plan involving 100 hour long days and 10 days to a week with 5 day long weekends. I’ll still miss my deadlines but I’ll get to see The Zozo more and get my own stuff done

I also discovered that in third at about 4,500 revs there is a tiny bit of grunt in Po’s 1104cc engine which meant I could risk overtaking some of the slower moving vehicles on the drive.

About 90 minutes into our journey we stopped at a pub for food. It was here that I discovered Po had a massive scratch along her passenger door. Some bastard had either keyed her, or run a shopping trolley into her or otherwise injured her while she was parked. Since were not sure when it happened we can’t be sure. There’s me thrashing the nuts off her and she’s injured, albeit just winged.

Despite her wound Po performed admirably over the weekend, if a little thirstily (for her size of engine) as squeezing out that last little drop of performance rather wrecks the fuel economy. Unfortunately the biggest challenge was about to come.

25 minutes from home, entering a little village called Letheringset (fantastic pub there if you ever fancy a meal by the way), we had slowed to just under 30 when a big four wheel drive pulls out of a side road to our right. He’s already made one abortive attempt at pulling out and we’re that close to him that I assumed he was going to pull half way out, wait for us and the car behind to pass and slot in behind. After all, Po is bright red, he’s surely seen us and isn’t going to pull out in front….

…yes, yes he is. Brakes were firmly applied and I wondered if I’d stopped in time or if Po was now sporting a new accessory off her offside front wing.

Now, to give you an idea of the final speed of the incident imagine, if you will, you’ve turned off a roundabout that has two lanes that instantly merge into one. Some tosser has gone round you and is bullying their way in front. You have to slow and they try squeeze in front of you. Eventually both cars stop at close to hitting and the car that can proceed without causing a crash wins. It was like that only in our case there weren’t two lanes going into one, just one small lane that our new appendage had tried to merge into and they weren’t slowing, or indeed doing anything to avoid us. Not going to work.

Anyway, he pulls off into the next little turning on the left and we followed. Not sure what to do, or how to react (he wasn’t the first person to drive at me that weekend, just the most successful) I opened the door to be met by a very apologetic man which rather diffused the situation. The Zozo, being infinitely more practical than I, proceeded to take charge of the situation and organise things like insurance details and the noting down of the number plate.

During the discussion the damage was assessed. Remember that I wasn’t even sure if we’d hit. I’d stalled the car and been a little surprised but during the whole thing hadn’t heard any bangs. The Zozo, on the other hand, tells a tale of hearing the tortured screams of metal upon metal. The reality was somewhere in between. We had hit, but barely. Po was sporting less red paint and more silver paint than before and the other car was slightly scuffed if you knew where to look. I believe the term is traded paint.

As accidents go it was almost pleasant. It’s not something I’d like to repeat, but if you absolutely, positively have to crash then that’s how you want it to happen. Meanwhile we’ll get a quote for buffing Pos front wing and see if we can’t get her scratch sorted at the same time.

The drive North will involve motorways. On a Friday. At night. I have done motorway driving before (twice, the last time we went to North Yorkshire so the drive there and the drive back) but this was during daylight hours at more sedate times of the day. Tonights journey will be advanced motorway driving which is why I’ve asked The Zozo if I can drive. Got to learn sometime

Anyway, if you see a little red Citroën C2 pootling along the A17 or A1(M) cut me some slack… and please don’t drive at 40.

Hopefully Mondays post will be about Zoo visits (due to an uneventful and therefore unblogworthy drive) and not the drive up :S

Say what you will about Mr Clarkson and his chums but I find Top Gear to be hysterically funny (I will probably agree with every complaint you raise about them, only I find these things good things). The Zozo, unfortunately, does not, so in order to avoid inflicting it on her I have the latest series on my iPhone (yes, I know, it’s taken me a while to get round to it).

45 minutes (the length of the train journey, unfortunately not long enough to take in an entire episode) of Clarkson shouting “Power!!!” while driving something ridiculous, May trying to be sophisticated in the face of the other two and failing and Hammond reversing into May all the time is guaranteed to put a smile on my face and mean I’m not in my current killer mood when I get home. In the olden days I would have just sat on the train listening to angry music and seething. Isn’t modern technology grand

After a quick Google I found the perfect match. Two tier, hook to hang the new hanging birdbath The Zozo had got, nice wide base, sturdy wooden construction. Being a man I didn’t read the full set of details (too much like instructions and we don’t need them), leapt straight to the headline figure of 1.6m height, visualised the item in the picture being 1.6m tall and decided it was perfect. Job done.

Yesterday our bird table arrived. It’s… well… big. You see I’d failed to realise the stand was 1.6m tall and with the bird mansion bit on the top (‘house’ doesn’t convey the scale of the thing) it’s about 2m tall. This means it’s all about 20% bigger than expected. One thing is for sure though, it’ll survive a whole flock of bloody pterodactyls

Given the small miscalculation with size the outside area where it’s going needs to be prepared. It’s not our land and is a right of way so blocking it with oversized bird condos will be frowned upon. Chopping back the shrubs and putting it right up against the fence should be fine, it just needs some work one weekend. In the interim the whole thing is being stored out the back in our tiny yard there (and I mean tiny, it’s now full with just the bird table).

Getting the bird table in the house was easy enough. We have a good, wide front door and the table itself was in two bits. Getting the base into the kitchen was more problematic. I had to rotate the whole thing through to get the legs through the door. Getting it out the back door threw up a new problem.

Sitting there, pretending to be dead to sucker me into coming within killing distance, was Shelob. I did what any red blooded male would have done: I ran to The Zozo for help. The Zozo then scooped up Shelob and promptly declared that she wasn’t sure about feeding it to the mice because she’d “grown quite attached to it”. I certainly hadn’t, that’s for sure, so I simply resorted to good old emotional blackmail: save the spider and deny the mice their treat, or show the mice how much you love them and throw the vile thing in the mouse house. That worked. A few seconds later and our very cute mice had descended on the hapless spider and ripped it to pieces with me cheering them on in the background. A glorious moment, I can tell you.

With Shelob dispatched and our wyrmery (with added pterodactyl shelf) stored out back pending assembly and positioning it won’t be long until we’re safe from all mythical beasties for a while.

I’m not great with spiders and anything over a few mm in diameter (including legs) needs to be dealt with using specialist equipment. Medium sized spiders are handled with a glass with a bit of card slid underneath. Larger and more dangerous specimens are handled at a remove with the Dyson. Monster spiders, such as the one we have are traditionally with by small, hairy footed hominids wielding magic swords. Lacking, as we do, a friendly hobbit I am turning to a more modern solution.

The Zozo, you see, is made of sterner stuff than I and will happily scoop up Shelob In Her Bare Hands. This manoeuvre is performed with me safely out of harms way so that should the spider attack, or run, or look at either of us funny I can then run screaming like a little girl out of the house.

Once captured Shelob is then dumped unceremoniously into the mouse house whereupon our cute little meeces proceed to rip Shelob to shreds and devour her.

This is all very well and good but Shelob escaped the attempt to capture her and is still running free. I’ve checked my bag and jumper many times today in case she’s decided to hitch a lift so she can eat me in the office. I’m hoping this is not the case and that I’ll get to watch the latest episode of meeces vs spider tonight.

Undeterred we went further along the coast road and visited a military vehicle museum. This post isn’t about that. Nope, this post is about the pointless ‘Please drive carefully’ signs all over the place, especially on the coast road.

Now don’t get me wrong here, the coast road going west from Cromer is windy¹, narrow and not something to be traversed at speed. By all means drop the limit from 60 to 40 well before the villages, and it’s eminently sensible to have a 30 limit in the villages themselves, or even 20 in some parts where it’s very narrow and has 90 degree corners. But do I really need “Welcome to Coastal Village, please drive carefully” on the 30 sign? No. And here’s why:

Firstly you should always drive carefully. It’s why we have the offence “Driving without due care and attention”.

Secondly you’ve slowed me from 60 to 40 to 30 and in 50 yards you’re going to drop me to 20. I’ve kind of worked out that some care is needed.

Thirdly at the 40 sign on the other side of the village you’re effectively saying “thankyou for driving carefully through our village, you may now drive like a moron”.

No, if they need reminding to drive carefully they shouldn’t be driving at all. What next: “Welcome to Coastal Village, please don’t rape, pillage and murder”?

¹As in bendy, but sometimes, depending on the weather, as in blowy too.

Now in the grand scheme of things £25 may not seem like a lot but you’ve got to remember that I only had nPower providing energy for a month and the house was empty for that month. The gas bill was pence. The electric bill was nothing and they’re giving me money. nPower have actually paid me to use them… and I still wont ever touch them with a barge pole again.

The only downside to this resolution is that I don’t get to write my indignant letter of outrage demanding an apology and recompense, although I may still write once the cheque has come through and demand I get written confirmation that nPower will never contact my mobile number or home number ever again unless they’re going to give me more money.

Today I [eventually - thanks NXEA] got home to a letter from nPower. ‘Finally!’ I thought, ‘A revised bill’. I cheerfully opened it wondering how much the final bill finally was. Oh look, it’s exactly the same amount as last time. Except this time it’s a final demand and if I don’t pay it in 7 days they’re passing me to the debt collectors. Great.

Girding myself I grabbed the phone and headed upstairs to get the old letters and the meter readings so I could tell them again. Phoning the special number reserved for debtors, paupers and criminals I enquired as to why I was holding an unrevised final demand when I was supposed to be receiving a revised bill that I could actually pay. The minion on the phone has a look into my account notes and indicated there may well have been a mistake. Indeed there has. To his credit the minion then suggested we sort it there and then over the phone rather that letting it go back into the bowels of the process to then no doubt surface again in a couple of months with nothing having changed. Agreeing with him I preferred my mobile number so he could call me back at the most expensive rate possible. There was then much being on hold while various departments were called and I was finally put through to another minion in the complains department.

The new minion was armed with my incorrect statement, my final readings and a new, freshly created statement and had the authority to sort everything there and then. He informed me that the old bill was over by 7 units on the night rate and 2 units on the day rate which sounded very low and proceeded to work out the new cost. Instead of being just of £53 the new bill was… just over £51! But as a gesture of good will they were willing to reduce it to £40. Lets just take a moment to let that sink in.

£51 to run a fridge for a month. Which was going to be discounted to £40 to run a fridge for a month.

I informed the minion that I thought that was quite steep given what was being powered then versus what’s being powered now and the relative prices. The minion said that this was now off my meter readings so I grudgingly accepted the £40 offer and paid with my card. I then asked for a breakdown of the bill including the start readings, final readings, amount per unit, final total of £51ish and the final discounted amount of £40 all clearly marked. The minion agreed, the call was terminated and my thoughts turned to dinner (Chinese, yay!) and the stinking letter of complaint I was going to write about the scandalous prices nPower seemed to have charged both The Zozo and I for power. After all, I wanted my £40 worth from them, and I was going to get it.