Fossil, our cat, only moved out a week or so ago. Yesterday evening I thought I saw something move in the little alcove where he used to have his food. I had a closer look but couldn’t see anything.

Just as I was about to go to bed at around midnight, I see a tiny brown mouse flit from the kitchen into the bathroom. Quickly close the door and consider a plan of action.

Armed with a waste basket and a bit of cardboard I go into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. The mouse is in the corner of the bathroom, so I put a lightbulb box down near him and shuffle about a bit. He makes a dash into the box, which I quickly pick up, only to see mighty mouse leap out of it like he was spring-loaded!

He moved to the otherside of the bathrom, behind the sink pedestal, before making a dash for a whole in the bath panel. Sneaky, but ultimately dumb as there’s no way out from under there.

Fetch screwdriver and take side panel off bath (awkward as it’s as wide as the room) and in the process spike my finger on a rusty nail. Always good to add a bit of blood to the process. There he is under the bath, sitting having a wash and looking at me with cute beady eyes.

Spotting a hole in the plasterboard wall, I put one of my Reef sandals into the hole, preventing Mr Mousey from condemning himself to the doom of being trapped between the wall. Grab the “shiny new torch I bought last week and keep a watch on him.

After about an hour and a half, he’s been into the lightbulb box a couple of times but never for long enough that I’m able to catch the little bugger.

Finally, he comes out from under the bath and I corner him between the bin and the lightbulb box. He goes in and I pop the door down. Success!

Carefully carry the box out to the back garden and let him go free. He disappears into the undergrowth, hopefully to go visit someone elses house.

He had probably come in through the back door which we’ve been leaving open while the weather has been so hot.

Back indoors, I put the side back on the bath and do the screws up, and start tidying away.

Then I remember my Reef sandal. Still stuck in the whole in the plasterboard, now behind the bath panel. Rats! (or Mice!)

Bath panel off again, retrieve sandal, panel on again. Tidy up and so to bed. 2:05am. So much for an early night…

The garage decided they couldn’t repair the van this week, having decided that I was “on holiday” this week so wouldn’t be wanting it until next week. Nibblers!

Dad has picked it up, and has test driven it after re-bleeding the radiator. He’ll be giving it a blast on the M180 tomorrow so we’ll see how it fares.

Some of the folks on Club 80-90 think it might be a cracked cylinder head, so it’s fingers crossed that it passes the stress test.

Glasto tickets have been delivered, though there isn’t a campervan sticker, just a ticket. That’s been looked at.

The packing is proceding in a slow but relentless manner.

We’re both missing the cat a lot. Every time you open a door, you expect to see him there. We should see him when we go and pick up the van though, and Mum says he’s doing just fine.

We set off in the van last Sunday, heading for Cleethorpes. Me driving, Vic navigating and Fossil the cat roaming the back of the van looking perplexed.

Having safely navigated across London and made it to the M1, we thought it was all going very well. After a bit of motorway driving the temperature gauge started to get higher and the red light started to flash, hmm.. better get off at the next services.

Just before the services at Northampton, there was a loud pop from the back end, so I pulled over to find all the coolant flooding out of the engine onto the road. We let things cool a little and crawled to the services.
Continue reading These things are sent to try us →

A few weeks after our last visit by the squirrel, I looked out of the window yesterday to see a pair of the little creatures sitting on the fence, inspecting Binky-Bonk, the neighbour’s cat who was asleep on the deck below.

They weren’t bothered by the cat and he certainly wasn’t interested in them. He just rolled onto his back and watched them, before they hopped back on to the wall and headed off.

After weeks of looking we finally found and bought a campervan! It’s a 1989 1.6TD Volkwagen Devon conversion. A bit rusty round the seams but nicely kitted out.

It’s a bit of a beast to drive, much longer than anything I’ve ever driven before, but we’re hoping that I get used to it (and stop clipping kerbs).

Parking isn’t easy, either, but I’ve managed it once.

It’ll be our home for a couple of months, all going well.
Continue reading We Got A Camper! →

There’s a notice on the Official Glastonbury Festival site saying that a limited number of returned tickets are now on sale.

Just call 0870 060 1030 to buy them. Usual limits (2 per person, debit card/cheque only) apply.

Good luck anyone who is after them.

I’ve finally started going through my stuff ready for the move, and first up were the cupboards full of books and videos in the back room. The shelves are rammed but I really can’t see the point of packing them all up.

I rarely re-read books. But I hate getting rid of them. Once I’ve read a book, it just sits on my shelf, and I can say to myself “That was a good book” when I see it. I never go back and read them again though.

Well now the time has come, they’ve got to go. I’m going to be keeping some and packing them up, mostly some key O’Reilly techie books, and the works of Douglas Lindsay HP Lovecraft Philip Pullman and Christopher Brookmyre

There’s 35 O’Reilly books in my “Get Rid Of” pile. I’ll admit I haven’t read all, or even most of them. There’s another 14 techie books from other publishers. That’s before we get to the fiction and non-techie non-fiction.

And the videos… There are loads of them. Lots of Doctor Who, some Red Dwarf, Blakes 7, dodgy horror films, all of Fawlty Towers and a load of things I’ve now got on DVD. I’m just hoping I can find some people who want them and can pick them up from Brixton.

Vic and I would like to thanks everyone who has sent their commiserations regarding the theft of her bike, especially to those who have offered replacements. I never ceased to be amazed by how many kind people are out there!

You’ll be glad to know that one of Vic’s friends has offered the loan of her bike as she’s leaving the country soon.

Well, I’ve unpacked the boxes and arranged them in the garden, so it’s bound to start raining now. Just wondering where the hell we’re going to put the boxes when we fill them…

The Urban75.net switch over to Exonetric has gone very smoothly, with only one BT DNS resolver refusing to give up the old IP address when it should have. I’ve emailed a complaint but fully expect it to have expired before they even look at it.

Still no campervan, but fingers crossed…

Was woken at about 5am by some noise from our shared hallway. As the neighbours often come in/out at that time I paid no more attention to it. We had to be up early to go view campervans so I went back to sleep.

When I went to the hallway to leave at about 9am, I found the front door open and Vic’s bike and cycle helmet missing. Arse! It looks like one of the neighbours didn’t close the front door properly when coming in/going out late Friday/early Saturday and some scrote decided to take advantage and nick Vic’s bike. It’s unlikely to be covered by insurance (most seem to exclude bikes from household contents, and besides, the door wasn’t locked). The police have been but couldn’t really help much.

So that wasn’t an ideal start and Vic was furious and upset. We headed off to look at the first van abit later than originally intended but caught a train from London Bridge out to Bexley. Sadly the van was a bit too rusty, and was a pop-top so we left that after a quick look. I’ve not been to Bexley before and it seemed quite pleasant and the people on the bus were very friendly and helpful.

From there it was up to Market Road by Caledonian Road tube station as that’s where the Aussies and Kiwis are supposed to sell their cans. Only 2 or 3 there though and nothing that was very interesting.

Feeling a tad disheartened we caught a bus down to Selfridges and went for a beer in one of the nearby pubs, before returning home empty handed (except for a new copy of Motorhome and Caravan Trader which as you can imagine makes fascinating reading).

The evening was very pleasant, with Helen and Cedde coming round for some snacks in the garden, followed by an all too brief venture to The People’s Republic of Disco before they had to depart and by then my back had tensed up so I couldn’t move much.

The packing boxes arrived this morning, so we have no excuse not to get on with the packing now.

Quiet for a whole week, I must try harder. Or I must try to find something more interesting to say….

Up to Bury St Edmunds last Friday for a weekend with the in-laws. Trains etc were all remarkably willing and we had a pretty good time. The weather wasn’t all that, so we didn’t get out much. I spent most of Saturday and a couple of hours on Sunday trying to sort out Vic’s dad’s internet connection which hasn’t worked for a while. The old internal modem had died completely, so I’d posted them an external one, but they weren’t having much luck with that. It wasn’t connecting reliably and was disconnecting randomly, as well as being tediously slow. Switching ISPs from Tiscali to BT Internet seemed to fix the speed thing. Is Tiscali always that slow? The reliablity seemed to improve when I switched the phone line connection to the other of the two unlabelled ports on the back of the modem. As far as I can tell, those two ports (one for phone line, one for phone) are usually connected in parallel so I can’t see why one would be better than another. It now connects first or second time and gives a decent speed. I’d forgotten how slow and unreliable modems are after a couple of years with ADSL. I’m just hoping that where ever I end up living when we get back from travelling has a decent ADSL connection.

On Sunday afternoon, while Vic’s dad and sister were watching the Spanish Grand Prix, her mum took us on a tour of likely places to find a campervan. We went out to Mildenhall, but after a couple of hours of searching, the only van we found was an already-sold Citroen Romahome, less then half a mile away from their house.

We spent some time studying Caravan and Motorhome Trader magazine, and called a whole load of likely entries, but every single one was sold. We’ve now lined up a few to see at the weekend, but I’m not saying where!

The Urban 75 folks have opted for the excellent Exonetric for their hosting. I’m sure the Exonetric guys will provide an great service, as they have for this site since the beginning of April.

Vic’s hired a treadmill from Gymhire for the next month until we move out. I had a go on it at lunchtime, and realised that I’m not very fit, verging on the “walking will make me break out in a sweat” level. We’re going to aim to have a go on the treadmill every day until they come to collect it.

Tonight we went out for a meal, and then on to the “Ritzy for Offline where we met Mike who runs Urban75 and Mr Ski, one of the users, as well as saying hello to a few other folks. A nice evening and the balcony at the Ritzy is a really pleasant place to have a drink (even if they only have Guinness and Kirin at £3 a pint on draught).