Home & Garden – Seb Palmer

8 April 202310 April 2023

HOME: Malfunctioning Gas Hob Ignition

Oh, but when it rains, it doth pour, eh? Today our gas hob suddenly decided to start clicking constantly, which I suppose is a continual triggering of the ignition(s)?

Sometimes all four hobs were sparking continually, sometimes one or another. But the clicking was, more or less, constant, from around midday or lunchtime, till now (9pm)

Of course I first tried solving it myself. This has happened once before. On that occasion I switched off everything (electric and gas*), and cleaned all the hobs. Cleaning can involve liquids, and liquids can short the spark circuitry! But I got everything as dry as I could. And, lo! Everything worked just fine.

* Or so I thought! Turns out I only knew how to switch the gas off for the hobs. The fuse on the main fuse board only switches off the oven and grill, not the hobs! More on this shortly.

Did the same this time, albeit ultimately spending much, much, much more time cleaning, but no dice. No change whatsoever! Clicking and firing continued unabated. Every now and again it’d lessen or stop. Only to start all over again.

World’s most thrilling video… awesome!

Anyway, having gone back and forth, Googling the issue, and trying very hard to really clean out all the parts – the hobs comprise three components, plus the little (ceramic?) ignition ‘nipples’ – hoping it all might eventually dry out or summat, and stop firing, it was all to no avail.

I called a Gas Safe engineer at about 8.30pm. He arrived around 9.20pm. He determined we had no gas leaks. He also helped me identify the correct power socket for the hobs. I thought I’d done so. But apparently not. Whatever it was I’d found, it was the wrong power outlet!

Once the right power source had been identified, it became apparent that it did (the other lead/wall socket didn’t) have a switch. Mercifully, when this was flipped, the eternal and infernal clicking finally stopped.

I have strong memories of recently packing away another four-hob cooker top. I think with a view to eventually installing it in our mooted Hobbit Hole guest accommodation? I tried to locate that today. But failed! We have way too much stuff, and way too little storage, so most of our stuff is in a cluttered state of disarray.

I wonder, should I find it, would it even fit?

7 April 20238 April 2023

HOME & GARDEN/HEALTH & WELLBEiNG: Bad/Good Friday!?

Phew! What a bonkers day. I had another meltdown today. Outright panick is starting to kick in, occasionally. Not good!

A brief break from home and ‘my shit’ seems a basic medical necessity to me, right now. But our one night away, that we’ve been looking for’ard to for a while (to join in the celebrations of Teresa’s cousin’s wedding), Monday/Tuesday next week, has – like all our other forlorn attempts at holidays in the last four-plus years – fallen through. This time due to not having a road legal car available.

Quite aside from the crap that’s at the root of recent depressions, meltdowns and whatnot, the trip away issues are enough right now to send me über the edge. But sadly communications with my mum have been less than ideal for some time. And, on occasion recently, have gotten worse.

This last development, in a series of straws that have been conspiring to break this camel’s back, really knocked the stuffing out of me. And today that, and the failure to find a way to get to this wedding – plus everything else, frankly – just got to be too much.

So I had a bit of meltdown! Shouting, or rather screaming, as loud as I could, and hurling stuff around. Oh dear! In fact I’ve injured my right foot. Something I only realised much later, when having a bath: ‘Oh, right… that’s why my right foot has been feeling a bit odd all day!?’ I must’ve kicked something quite hard!

Perhaps my recent minor dalliance with Tears For Fears, via Scary Pockets sublime reworking of Everybody Wants A Gladstone Bag, has a deeper meaning for me? They were big into Papa Panov, or whatever his name was (Janov?), the Primal Scream dude. Hence Shout:

Well, having vented a bit, and despite all the shizzle not going away, Teresa and I got a fair amount done. We were originally due to be at Hannah’s today. Whilst we’ve loved and will miss looking after Ali and Sofi – Hannah starts a new job soon, with different hours – being at home this time was actually good from several perspectives, including the vantage point of just getting stuff done.

Utterly against my wishes, we’re preparing to let our spare room. Because needs must. It has functioned mostly as a dumping ground in recent years. Occasionally I’ve done some model-making type hobby stuff in there. But now we’re clearing it out, tarting it up. And, hopefully (!?)* we’ll be generating income with it soon.

* The irony here being that I really don’t to be sharing our home with strangers. But as already stated, needs must.

In order to blitz the guest or blue room clean – numerous previous attempts had failed! – I had to basically do a mega-dump (chortle!), out of it, and into any space nearby. Which meant dumping tons of stuff on the bed, in our bedroom. The blue room is still full of stuff that needs removing before we can think of letting it.

Anyway, we got a lot of stuff out of the blue room, and a good deal of that either up in’t loft, or elsewhere. A fairly large chunk of art related gubbins is migrating towards the ‘new’ art-studio.

This latter is in fact the old shed/workshop. And it’s humongously cluttered, and in flux, as stuff is moved out, in turn, to the newer bigger workshop.

Teresa n’ Chester enjoy quality time, *dans le jardin.*

24 March 202325 March 2023

HEALTH & WELLBEiNG: Weather in My Head / Window to The Soul

The weather right now, as I’m typing this post, is cold, windy, and raining. Perfectly reflecting my spirits.

Or is it?

It was sunny 30 minutes ago. And, perhaps rather astonishingly, it’s going that way again. The rain has stopped. But the dripping continues. And the visible part of the sky, from where I’m laying down, is a clean pure brilliant blue. I imagine there’s a beautiful rainbow to be seen somewhere. Wish I could see it!

That little passing cloudburst reminded me of the Donald Fagen Sunken Condos track/lyric, The Weather In My Head.

I guess I ought to take solace in how quickly that little cold wet blast lasted? So now the Dear Prudence lyric seems more apt: ‘The sun is out, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful, and so are you…’. Much better!

But that said, although my mood is fluctuating a lot. The dark clouds in my mind seem to hang about much longer than those that are currently scudding through the skies.

12 March 202312 March 2023

HOME & GARDEN: Daffodils

On the way home from Hannah’s we stopped in at Season’s Garden Centre. A new business that’s recently appeared (after years of watching construction and wondering what was coming!), between Chatteris and Somersham.

I bought five daffodil bulb sets. Every year as the daffodils come out I long for more at home, in our garden. And slowly I’ve been adding to our meagre stock. But it seems to be taking forever!

My attempts with umbellifers, or cow parsley type plants, are faring even worse! Only the stuff nature plants flourishes. The two seed sets I’ve bought have yielded naught, alas.

These King Alfred are, I think, a bit bigger.

I got four sets of cheaper generic narcissi, and one of a larger more expensive King Alfred variety. There are probably a similar quantity of pre-established daff’s in this particular border.

These are amongst the few from previous years.

We don’t know what the little purple multi-flowers are. We’ll have to Google image search ‘em, I guess. Which Teresa has just done… grape hyacinths, apparently! Or muscari armeniacum!

Believe it or not this long thin flower bed has actually already been weeded a couple of times since xmas! Still haven’t mowed any lawn. Reckon I’ll wait till it gets a bit warmer first. Mind, it’s warmer outside right now than it is inside our home!

6 March 20237 March 2023

MiSC: The Joys of Spring!

Ah, the Joys of Spring!

It has to be confessed that I’m not having the best time of my life right now. I woke up, after some very interesting dreams, felt mighty sick. And pretty shortly thereafter, barfed.

I’m not sure the fish and chips dad and Claire kindly bought us last night totally agreed with me. But the neither am I sure that this was plain ol’ food poisoning.

I’ve been suffering from hyper anxiety and agitation just recently. And a disturbed mind can manifest in many ways physically (please note, this is not an endorsement of Louise Hay’s insane ideas)

Simon, Teresa, and Claire, Sunday evening.

I spent almost the entire day today in bed. Feeling thoroughly wretched. I had ‘cotton mouth’ the entire day, despite eating next to nothing and drinking lots of water.

There’s some shit going down in my life at present that I’m keeping to myself. Maybe just for the time being, maybe forever. But it ain’t pretty.

And today it culminated in a mammoth visit to the A&E at Peterborough Hospital. Mammoth in the sense we were there from 3.50-10.20pm… six and a half hours!

And, glory be to our ultra-capitalist society, not only am I there as an ill person, I also have the joy of paying £9 parking for the privilege of this exhaustingly long visit.

Our Tory Overlords sure know how to milk us Serfs.

But back to the Joys of Spring: acid-reflux, bloated stomach, wind. Eyes red and puffy from a mixture of disturbed sleep and all sorts of other shit. This weird upper respiratory bullshit that’s been bugging me now for three or four years straight!?

It’s enough to make one sooo miserable one feels compelled to write a musical, and make everyone else’s lives a misery as well.

It seems my cup o’erflo’eth with naught so much as bile. Will I even make it through this week? Past evidence suggests I will. But that doth not fill me with The Joys of Spring.

2 March 20235 March 2023

MiSC: Squirrelympics!?

A friend on Facebook just shared this. How great are squirrels? Just watch to learn. A fun and uplifting video.

We have squirrels. We also have a walnut tree, actually in a neighbour’s garden. But overhanging ours. When we moved in here, I wondered, for a while, how and why we were continually being carpet-bombed with empty walnut shells.

Reflecting rather poorly on my Sherlockian powers of deduction, it wasn’t until I was literally sat ‘neath the trees at the back end of the garden, that I twigged. I could hear debris falling around me and I could hear an odd ‘scrit-scrit-scrit-scrit’ sound.

I looked up, and cool as a cucumber, there was a rather ballsy (very literally) squirrel, leisurely enjoying chomping away on his walnuts. I don’t know how many squirrels we have living nearby. The most I see is a couple chasing each other.

As this video demonstrates, it can be quite rewarding to pay more attention to these fabulous little furry critters.

25 February 20234 March 2023

FAMiLY: Taking The Girls to The Park

Looking after Hannah’s girls, Ali’ and Sofi’, my nieces, this weekend has been really good medicine for my troubled mind/soul!

The weather today alternated between gloomy grey overcast skies, with drizzling rain and bitterly cold winds, and rather pleasant sunshine! Luckily we got a bit of the latter whilst out.

I tried out a rather robust netting hammock, of which there are two. It’s fab! We need something like this in our back garden. Sooo relaxing!

The Northstowe park we went to has a kind of open-air public gym. I think all human habitations should have such municipal amenities.

Ali, atop the the rather nice timber climbing frame.

19 February 202319 February 2023

HOME/DiY: Grey Shed Door #3?

It’s Sunday, and I got up very late. Midday! I sold a couple of 200W LED lights to a guy calling himself ‘Danny Fury’. I didn’t get anything like their real full value. But we need to thin down our clutter. I got £60 for the pair.

I’ve also been moving stuff from the grey shed (shed #3!) into the big green shed (#4!). And then I finally got around to what is, I think, my third (or poss even fourth?) attempt at hanging a door on shed #3. I’ve come to realise that this entire shed must be a leaning-to-the-right parallelogram!

The door itself is cut pretty durn square. And the horizontal cladding is pretty durn horizontal. And yet the door seems to lean right, which is most evident at the top and bottom. What this should teach me is to take more care when erecting such structures, to keep all the main members running as straight, true and square as I possibly can.

Anyway, with a much more satisfactory door in place than heretofore (the previous door just kept failing to pieces!), next I’ll be adding a door-handle and locks.

Today was nice enough to eat our lunch outside. Which we did. Plus we had our first fire of the year. Something about fire is so primal! As Tom Waits once sang, ‘all Hallowe’en orange and chim-e-ny red’!

15 February 2023

HOME/DiY: Loft Update

[pic]

Well, several days ago now – ‘twas ‘pon the Sunday last, I do believe? – I finally finished the loft flooring work.

I first put a middle section of board up there three, four, or poss’ more years ago. That was a chequerboard affair of small tile like boards.

Pic

And then, ages later, I did what I’ll call the right or back side, roughly doubling the available floor space. This latest bout has seen me do the left or front side, tripling the original floor area.

There’s still loads to be done up there: partitioning us off from the neighbours (at present) contiguous loft space; fitting electrics, so there’s proper lighting up there; poss’ even turning the resultant space into a proper walled (& insulated room)?

Pic

And quite apart from any of those further shenanigans, there’s the by no means small matter of tidying up all the crap that we have up there, so as we know what we have, and, if need be, can get at it. At present, like everywhere else in our home, it’s a godawful mess!

10 February 202311 February 2023

MiSC: Childminding at Hannah’s

For a while now Teresa and I have being doing alternate weekends looking after Hannah’s girls, our nieces, Ali and Sofi.

This weekend is a first, inasmuch as I’m looking after the girls on my own. Teresa decided to stay home and do homey stuff.

Hannah and the girls were having home-made pizzas. Even though I’d already had a lovely curry, with couscous, at home earlier, I had to have some home made pizza!

Pizza base, tomato sauce, chorizo and cheddar.

Ali disappeared off to her room for a video call, with her friend Ash, who now lives in New Zealand. Hannah, Sofi and I watched Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery. So silly! Mike Myers’ pastiche/homage to the ‘60s (transplanted to the ‘90s) is fab, baby!