Quick daily posts

[SteveM]

This week to save money my employer has been shutdown and everyone sent home (we can choose to be unpaid or use up holiday time). My wife was at work today and I was home with the kids and a bunch of things to get done. Some people speak of wearing multiple hats, but today I was wearing multiple outfits. When painting trim I would slip into a set of old clothes covered in paint splatter, when out finishing up some vehicle maintenance I would change into more generic "work" clothes that are a bit tattered and stained, and when in-between in the house I would change into a clean set of clothes. All day long I was changing from one to the other and back again. I wonder what the neighbors think of my fashion show.

[fccs]

All day long I was changing from one to the other and back again. I wonder what the neighbors think of my fashion show.

I hope you’ve been practicing your runway strut.

[Roland]

Roland, what Serinde said. Your doctor ought to suit the medication to your circumstances, not just prescribe the standard medication even if it is no good for you. I hope they will find something more suitable and helpful for you!

The alternate medication would cause more serious pain, and possibly do permanent harm in the process.

I have decided to look on the bright side.....I should be losing weight. If I don’t I’ll be living on chips and cookies for the rest of my life.

The medicine is helping. Though I am suffering some side effects, the initial pain is almost completely gone. But I am so tired. Napping a lot.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Here's to a good night's sleep Roland!

[poppy]

As we are short of entertainment at the moment, Steve, that was something for your neighbour to watch out for. What is Steve going to wear/do next?

Sorry to learn that you are not feeling too good Roland.

Today I picked my first home grown courgette and made ratatouille with it. I am new to growing vegetables, so I was quite chuffed.

[richardandtracy]

Did you hear of the train spotter who fell on the track in front of a steam train? He was chuffed to bits.

Sorry, couldn't resist that one.

Roland - hope things improve for you.

Regards,

Richard.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Poppy, rightly so - ratatouille with your own courgette is somwthing to be proud of!

[wendywombat]

We have just come home from a friend's house. We sat out in their garden in the shade and ate lunch. Homemade pizzas which were cooked outside in a wood fired oven. Totally homemade even the crust, thin and crispy. Delicious. Good to be able to get together at the required distance and eat a great,well cooked meal.

[Mabel Figworthy]

That sounds lovely Wendy! I do make my own pizza dough but so far have not managed to get a wood-fired oven

[richardandtracy]

Today I have done plumbing.
I have not succeeded, but I have worked all day at it.

I needed to do two jobs. Stop a tap dripping and unclog a u bend from the same sink. Sounds simple, doesn't it?.

Well, I got the u bend off relatively easily. The clot of hair, bacteria and sludge came out relatively easily, about 6" long like a cat fur ball. It was putting it all back where the problems started. The rubber seal between the sink and fitting had hardened so I needed to tighten the fitting to the sink a good deal. And I stripped the plastic thread. So needed a new one. And needed a new u bend to fit the different plug hole fitting I could get. The new fitting relies on a nut deforming a rubber ring tight enough to seal against a thread around the waste pipe. There is no space to tighten the nut adequately, and I simply can't get it 10% the tightness I needed. Simply put, the new design is stupid and designed to leak unless a gorilla can tighten it - and a gorilla can't get tools in a space for a midget.
So that went well.
I need a new part available mail order only.

Next job. Stop the tap dripping. We live in a hard water area. So hard that all plumbing seems to grow stone protuberances over a year or two. Now, stone and threaded joints don't mix well. They seize up. Which doesn't help when dismantling a tap to change the washer. The other thing that doesn't help is that the sizes for spanner fittings on taps are really poorly sized, with a stupid amount of slop. I have good spanners and they fit nuts and bolts accurately, but not badly made taps where the corners round off easily due to the poor quality of the hexagonal shapes for the spanners. I rounded the hexagons and slipping spanners dug deep gouges into the chrome plated brass tap. Eventually I was just strong enough to dismantle the tap. And found that the tap washer had been chewed up by a gouge in the tap seat - caused by corrosion of poorly mixed cast brass. The unmixed zinc had corroded away from the brass, leaving a wormhole gouge in the tap seat, this then chewed up the washer when the tap was turned on and off. So I had to cut a new seat in the tap. Naturally, the tap washer was a non-standard size and I had to trim off about 1.5 mm from all round the washer to get it to fit. On reassembling the tap I discovered that the force I had had to use on the tap had shifted it and the sealing washer on the underside of the tap between it and the sink had shifted so it doesn't seal any more. To fix that, due to the impossible lack of space under the sink, I'll need to take the water supply off the tap so I can use a box spanner to tighten it up properly, and you can't use one of them if the pipe is there. As I need a new waste pipe part, I'll wait to next weekend when I re-fix the waste pipe fitting and get a tiny amount of extra space then.

The whole infuriating saga will, with luck, only last into next weekend and not any further.
It sounds stupid that 'unclogging a u bend' and 'fixing a dripping tap' should turn into a 1 week job, but it has.


Have I ever mentioned that I hate plumbing? Or is it taken as read?

Regards,

Richard.

[Serinde]

Now, Richard. What you have failed to grasp in your herculean plumbing efforts (and I feel your pain on this) is that you are not meant to repair anything. No. You are simply meant to replace the offending article. Simples. To be a good little citizen consumer. That's why nothing is made to last. (And I will keep schtum about substandard parts for fear of causing offence to "manufacturers".)

[richardandtracy]

Serinde,
I do understand about the idea that I'm not meant to repair anything, but what infuriates me even more than that is the bad design of the new parts that makes it certain that leaks will happen. And reduces the probability of the part ever working in the first place to almost zero. In the case of the waste pipe, if I can't get the part mail order in the next week, next Sunday is going to be the day when I modify the new basin waste I had to buy so it'll do the job properly. I have a piece of 3mm brass plate, some brass bar, a lathe and a mill that will let me do it. I will need another canister of gas for my blow torch to solder bits together, and it shouldn't take more than a day if I've got the design sorted before I start.

The manufacturing quality of the tap.. Well, it was unspeakably bad. Had the company I work for (making transport and storage boxes for expensive bits of kit like spacecraft) produced goods that shoddy, our customers would reject them in an instant. Every casting we use has to be X-rayed (for voids), dye penetrant tested (for cracks) and etched (for uneven mixing) before we can use it. They also get upset by lumps in the paint, which we have to filter through a 0.1 mm mesh because the suppliers can't supply paint that lump free. We even get complaints about uneven colour anodising (even though it's determined by the homogeneity of the metal in the extrusion and we have no control over that - and neither does the extruder). What we produce looks amazing right up to the moment the box is first used - when it gets abused because nobody cares two hoots about the box.. It's only a box after all.

Regards,

Richard.

[wendywombat]

I agree with Serinde....But!!
There is such a real sense of achievement when something can be repaired!
We had a paper jam in our colour printer recently! We spent hours un-jamming as the printer had recently had new print cartriges so it seemed a good idea to try to get it going again.Unfortunately it was beyond saving! It now resides at the local recycling dump!

We have had some sucesses though. When I cleared out my dad's house we found a bread maker. Daughter wanted one so we took it to her. It worked once then the old dried out drive belt broke! You-Tube to the rescue. We found a 'how-to' easily repair using a dremel and Bingo once new belt inserted and the bottom of the breadmaker glued back in many happy hours of bread consumption was once again enjoyed.

I hope you can get a satisfactory plumbing repair, Richard.

[Serinde]

I agree with Serinde....But!!
There is such a real sense of achievement when something can be repaired!
We had a paper jam in our colour printer recently! We spent hours un-jamming as the printer had recently had new print cartriges so it seemed a good idea to try to get it going again.Unfortunately it was beyond saving! It now resides at the local recycling dump!

We have had some sucesses though. When I cleared out my dad's house we found a bread maker. Daughter wanted one so we took it to her. It worked once then the old dried out drive belt broke! You-Tube to the rescue. We found a 'how-to' easily repair using a dremel and Bingo once new belt inserted and the bottom of the breadmaker glued back in many happy hours of bread consumption was once again enjoyed.

I hope you can get a satisfactory plumbing repair, Richard.

Oh, don't misunderstand me. I'm all in favour of repair. However, TPTB typically are not.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Richard full marks for effort, and for wanting to repair. I agree with Serinde that generally we are not encouraged to do so but to buy, buy, buy. Well, tough! So long as there are brave an undaunted souls like you out there, we will fight the throw-away spirit of the age!

[Serinde]

Hear, hear!

[wendywombat]

There is a real satisfaction in making those repairs as well!
I do hate this 'throw away society...just because something is 'out of fashion' or the wrong shape/colour!

[richardandtracy]

Have to confess that fashion & I are entirely unacquainted with each other.

I wear clothes if comfortable and do the job of protecting me from the elements. Once they get worn enough not to protect me (ie the holes get too big) then I need new ones. It's also the point at which my clothes are no-longer repairable and are in far worse condition than a charity shop will accept. I refuse to buy uncomfortable clothes.

The thought of changing my clothes because some trivial fashionista somewhere needs to feel they are important and tell me what colour/cut/shape to wear to keep up with all the other trivial people I care nothing about... No. Simply No. It's not going to happen. I get irritated when my preferred comfort cut or colour become unavailable. That is when I search out old stock & buy one or two spares. I try to go for long lasting clothes where possible, shirts need to last 10 years minimum, and trousers longer if possible. I have one pair of HJ Hall's 'Indestructible' socks left from school. I got them age 16 and now am 55, and wear them in rotation with my others pretty much every 14 days or thereabouts. All the others bought when I was 16 wore out and I want to replace them, but I can't get any more. The sizing changed and my feet can't fit in the 6-11 size HJ Hall now sell as opposed to the 10-13 size they used to sell, even though my feet are nominally size 11.

Regards,

Richard.

[Mabel Figworthy]

DH has one pair of socks left from his school days (longer ago even than yours, Richard ) and they are the only pair which I will darn for him as they are practically Antiques Roadshow material by now.

Coming from an extremely tight-budget background most of my clothes were second-hand (often family hand-me-downs - I have 28 cousins) or made by my mother. The oldest items which I still wear date back to 1985, the two jumpers (with bat wing sleeves) bought new (gasp!), the two skirts second-hand when I got them so I have no idea how old they are

When I wore one of the jumpers to our church's teenager group one of the girls said "wow, what a lovely retro jumper, where did you get it?" I explained that I had retro jumpers because I was an old person....

[wendywombat]

You made me chuckle again, Richard!
My D/H comes from the same stable as you I think!! When he buys something new it's not unusual for it to stay in the wardrobe/drawer until he gets used to the idea of it! His clothing style hasn't changed for many years and airs on the 'relaxed/ comfort look'.
The only thing that has changed since retirement is that he no longer needs or will wear suits and ties and refuses point blank to wear grey/ black or dark blue socks!! All his socks now are bright plain colours or bright striped!

Yes Mabel, my clothes are worn until they fray. I wept for hours when my favourite cream jeans suddenly ripped! I had reinforced the lower hem several times at they had frayed. Those jeans were 16 years old!!