Archive for the ‘Traffic, Travel and Transport’ category

Henry and the brakes

Thursday 30th August, 2007 @ 9.21am BST Europe/London by Pandammonium

Yesterday, I was about to overtake a couple of lorries on the A14, when the one I was closest to pulled out right in front of me to overtake the other one. I so hate that. I braked rather sharply, as you might expect, only for a clunky-something’s-snapping thing to happen. I pulled into the gap left by the inconsiderate lorry, and stopped in the next layby, which had a handy SOS phone box. Less handy were the cockroaches living inside it, and even less handy were the lorries that kept going past drowning out everything the man on the other end of the phone line said.

Nevertheless, the AA was informed of my whereabouts, and about an hour later, I was attended to by a bloke in a non-AA van (I’d been phoned and told to expect him), who was very nice but said he couldn’t do anything, and asked for a recovery vehicle to be sent out. I had to wait a further forever for him, but eventually he came. He transported me and Henry to the garage, where they discovered they didn’t have the parts in, but they ordered them for delivery first thing in the morning, then they gave me a lift home, which I was very glad about because it’s tiring waiting about on a layby with nowhere to sit (you’re not allowed to sit inside your car) in the sun.

The highways people were very good - they kept phoning every so often to check on progress and to make sure everything was ok.

posted in Traffic, Travel and Transport | Tags: A14, AA, brakes, breakdowns, garage, Henry | No Comments »

Bureaucracy

Friday 18th May, 2007 @ 3.16pm BST Europe/London by Pandammonium

I received my shiny new V5C in the post today! That means I can now get my car MOT’d and then, hopefully, taxed. I’ve even renewed my car insurance. Still plenty of time before all the end of May deadlines, too, although it’s really not been my fault this year. Not totally, anyway.

posted in Life(style), Traffic, Travel and Transport | Tags: bureaucracy, car insurance, car tax, deadlines, Henry, MOT, V5C | No Comments »

Chastised

Wednesday 17th January, 2007 @ 11.30am GMT Europe/London by Pandammonium

I got wrong off a policeman yesterday.

Apparently Trinity Street is one way, and it applies to cyclists as well as cars, and if you’re caught going the wrong way, you have to pay a £30 fine.

I pleaded ignorance, and he let me off, although I had to walk my bike the rest of the way to Sidney Street, feeling very sheepish.

posted in Traffic, Travel and Transport | Tags: Cambridge, cycling, police | 5 Comments »

Holiday

Tuesday 2nd January, 2007 @ 2.55pm GMT Europe/London by Pandammonium

It was fairly traumatic this year. Nana died the week before, so we had to go up for her funeral just before Christmas. We played Spot the Relative, which was useful, as I found out who some of the ones on the wedding invitation list that I didn’t know were.

Came back down again for Christmas itself and to see Puss, who we’d left to her own devices with lots of food and water and a litter tray, which she only uses when we’re away. She prefers to go out to do her business, which is fine by us.

Henry sounded particularly unwell (the exhaust, going by the noise) during the latter part of the journey up north, so I rang the doctor’s and arranged to take him in on the Wednesday after Christmas. On the way back down, I was just accelerating away from a roundabout on the A1, when I heard a different sort of noise. A metal-trailing-on-tarmac sort of noise. This sounded bad, so I pulled up onto the hard shoulder, got up and looked underneath the car. Yup, that would explain it: the exhaust pipe was hanging off.

One expensive phone call later, and the AA man came along and patched Henry up enough to take him home, then to the doctor’s, when they reopened. That wasn’t cheap, either. Still, it could have been worse: there was one car which was going to be sent to the scrap yard because the new part it needed was worth more than the car itself (a Mitsubishi Lancer) and one car which was worth the same amount as the new head gasket it needed plus other work and a tow to London. I wonder what its owner decided to do in the end.

On the Thursday, we went back up north to visit the families, starting with mine, then up to Scotland, then back to mine. The journey up to Scotland was to be the Grand Meeting of the In-laws, in a pub in Alnwick, which is roughly half way between the two sets. It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be. C’s brother wasn’t there, though, as he’d elected not to visit his parents this Christmas. Can’t imagine why.

The cat came with us as far as my mam’s, and stayed with her while we were in Scotland. She did her usual interminable miaowing all the way up and all the way back down again that drives C up the wall so. Henry behaved himself, though.
New Year’s Eve saw us back at home, doing absolutely nothing special to celebrate it. Now, C’s back at work, and everything’s getting back to as normal as it can be.

posted in Life(style), Traffic, Travel and Transport | Tags: A1, AA, Alnwick, breakdowns, cat, Colin, events, family, Henry, Scotland, The Wedding | 2 Comments »

Organised? Who, me?

Monday 4th December, 2006 @ 4.16pm GMT Europe/London by Pandammonium

I nearly got up on time this morning. I got up an hour later, instead, after dreaming of PopCap games, which I was playing last night. I made a cuppa, but had no breakfast because there wasn’t enough milk for cereal (someone didn’t buy any more when he went to the shop yesterday) and there wasn’t any bread (because someone keeps eating it), although there was a bun left (because I wasn’t quite so gluttonous as someone else), so I made that into a pate, cucumber and home-made cranberry sauce butty and made a bit of salad to have as my dinner (lunch) at Uni, seeing as I had to go there for a meeting to discuss a paper.

After that, I went back to bed, and dreamt that I lived in a house that was overrun with wildlife, including dead and rotted mice (Dusty was rubbish at mousing) and there was mouse poo everywhere, and there were hedgehogs (which say, in a creaky voice, “iiiiiih!”) and there was a grey squirrel, which I picked up whilst wearing gardening gloves and put firmly outside.

Then I got up and showered and got ready, and printed out the paper I was to discuss, that I hadn’t read yet. Looked at the clock, and discovered that if I left any later, I’d be late for the meeting! Shocking. So I left for the meeting, getting petrol on the way. I got a fright at one point, along the A14, because I looked in my rear-view mirror, and there was this police car right behind me, its lights flashing away. I jumped a mile, sped up a bit to get past the lorry and the van I was overtaking and pulled back in. It shot off ahead, not after me at all, because I hadn’t been speeding!

I got to Uni just before 1 o’clock, and went to use the pay and display machine, but it wouldn’t read my card. Downright refused to, it did. Cheeky thing. A woman came up behind me, and I told her what was happening. She tried hers, just in case, and she said it sometimes happens that they don’t work, and we went to try another one. I said I was late enough already, and she said that it only ever happens when you’re late. It’s going to happen to me a lot, then!

I couldn’t remember what room number my meeting was in, so I had to go to a computer room to access either my email or my Google calendar to see. The nearest one (might be Lab A) had a few computers free, but none of them worked. I had to find another one, so I went to Lab G, I think it is. There were free, working machines in there, so I eventually found out where my room was, although I wasn’t certain how to get to it from there, what with it being on floor 5A. You have to be careful which staircase you use to get to floors 5A and 5B. I was on floor 4, so I went up a flight of stairs in the nearest staircase, which took me to 5. I went a bit further up just to see which floor was above, but it was 6, so I exited the stairwell on 5. I came into the space where you get stairs up to 5A and down to 5B - success at finding the floor! Next thing to do was find the room itself, or at least a sign with suitable numbers written on it and a handy arrow. I did find one, so I followed it, and the next and the next - very handy, although then I decided to find an empty seminar room to quickly scan at least the introduction and the conclusion of the paper - I never said I’d had time to read it yet, did I?!

I went in a room along a different corridor, scanned set parts of paper, thought sod it, I’ll really have to go; looked at the time; it was about 10 past. Shit! I thought, I’m awfully late! Turned out it wasn’t a problem that I was late and that I hadn’t read it anyway. I doubt I’d have understood it if I had read it, so that was ok, and after all that room-hunting, we went down to Louisa’s office anyway. We went through the paper together, with Louisa explaining bits and pieces of LFG to me - what do I know about LFG? I really should read the book I have about it. Next meeting (which will be next term), we’re going to discuss the PFM paper that she did in parallel to this one. They’re two parts of the same work, really. I have a much better chance of understanding that one.

After that, I had a mocha with chocolate sprinkles and a Wensleydale and cranberry sarnie (not bad, but not what I was supposed to be eating!) with Kakia, one of Louisa’s students, who I knew from our MAs, who satisfied her chocolate craving with a chocolate eclair and a cup of hot chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. Then, I went back to the first computer room I went to today and emailed Giorgos, telling him in my own way where I was. Then I texted him to make sure he knew I’d emailed him. He called me sarcastic and bossy. We’re off to the SU bar.

posted in Academia, Dreams, Food and Drink, Language and Linguistics, Traffic, Travel and Transport | Tags: A14, breakfast, Essex Uni labyrinth, friends, games, police, punctuality, studying, tea | No Comments »

Car tax

Wednesday 24th May, 2006 @ 1.10pm BST Europe/London by Pandammonium

All done (later the same day). I have my nice shiny new tax disc just waiting for the end of May.

I do think it’s a bit daft though, that you can’t display the new one until the old one runs out. It’s like you have to run out at midnight the night it expires so that you can change them over.

posted in Traffic, Travel and Transport | Tags: bureaucracy, car tax | No Comments »

Car

Monday 22nd May, 2006 @ 10.24am BST Europe/London by Pandammonium

This month is one of my most expensive month: I have to pay my car insurance, my car tax and my MOT all by the end of the month. I’m usually most tardy at doing this, but this year, it’s all in the bag. The MOT has been done (pass - woohoo!), the insurance documents arrived this morning and so all I need to do is go to the Post Office for the tax disc. I tried the online thingy, but it didn’t work because I renewed my car insurance too recently for it to be on the system. I don’t mind this, as I believe we should use our Post Offices more, not less. I just mind going out into the manky weather.

posted in Traffic, Travel and Transport | Tags: bureaucracy, car insurance, car tax, Henry, MOT, Post Office, punctuality | No Comments »