Ok. Now I’m utterly utterly pi$$ed off. Sorry. A humungous moan with a great deal of swearing coming up but I think I deserve it. If you are of a nervous disposition - jump to the bottom…
Utterly utterly pi$$ed off.
Some background.
There is a deadline to doing the office. On the 6th (Monday) the carpet is going down. We booked it safe in the knowledge that we could always delay it if we needed to.
Except we can’t.
We realised that the bl00dy carpet shop is closed until about 2 hours after the fitter will be here with the carpet.
Ok, no problem. Plenty of time over Christmas to get it sorted.
One major piece of work that must be done is plumbing the new radiator in. Mrs Sweetpea had a good surf and found one she liked. It was even “In stock - Next day delivery”. Cool. So we ordered one.
After it didn’t turn up for most of a week Mrs Sweetpea contacted them to ask what was going on.
“Oh, that’s strange, they normally get to the customer the following day. We’ll check and get back to you.”
A day or two later they got back to us. It turns out “In stock - Next day delivery” is actually the modern euphemism for “Ain’t got any - No idea when we will have”.
But now it was way too late to get one delivered by the 6th and no chance of delaying the carpet. plums.
Good old B & Q had a suitable looking one. Bigger than Mrs Sweetpea wanted but I think it’ll look better. Still no chance of getting it here (because we want it in black and they aren’t in stock at the shops) but they do publish dimensions.
Today’s job was to build a wooden “radiator” that will hold the valves in the correct positions and plumb to that.

I really bl00dy hope their dimensions are right.
Except…
We set the house alarm over night. As much as anything because the garage is on it. So Mrs Sweetpea goes to set the alarm yesterday evening… “I can’t set the alarm, the control panel is dead.”
Too true. Completely dead. Blank. No power. The PIRs aren’t working either. But the battery in the control box is new and the alarm hasn’t gone off so it must be a proper failure of the processor box. Really!? Oh, fooookin’ ‘ell.
Today…
So, it turns out that the Aux power fuse has blown. This is the one that powers the PIRs and the control panel. A new one blew after a few seconds.
To cut a very long story short I finally tracked down a short on the PIR supply in the garage. Just a stray bit of wire that had been hanging around for 10 years or more.
Good. Except I don’t have any more new fuses and the only place that has is CEF over the other side of town. There are only 3 roads to that part of town. One is dug up (to work on a bridge, not because they are building yet more housing - makes a change). Another has traffic lights on it (no idea why). And the third goes via the bl00dy moon.
So I thought I’d take the MR2 for a ride. Except the battery is dead. Ok, I’ll jump it off the jump start pack. Except the batteries are dead in that too. ARRRGH! Hells bells! What does it take!?
Stuff it. I’ll just take the other car. It’s only got warped disks to that’s ok.
Anyway, new fuse, fixed alarm, it’s mid afternoon and I’ve done very little to the office.
Another coat of oil on the wood work then.
Hang on. What’s this???

Farrrrrrk! The bl00dy picture rail is coming off the bl00dy wall! What the actual fooook?
By now I’m so fed up I’m actually getting angry.
Remember…
The picture rail hasn't enough wood in it to move and I want to hang pictures off it so I want it solidly attached. It's using construction adhesive.
Well that’s not gone well then. Checked the other bits and at least one is coming off the wall. It’ll all have to come down before it falls down.
So what’s gone wrong?

Well there are a couple of small areas where it’s taken the paint off. But in general it hasn’t bonded to the wall.
This was a brand new tube from a proper manufacturer. It was glued to the bit of the wall that had held the old rail up with no problem. The wood was braced to the wall for a good 20 hours so plenty of time to go off.

It just hasn’t stuck. Not to the wall, or to the wood for that matter.
It had actually gone very hard to the point of being brittle. I flaked it off the back of the woodwork in the garage and the garage floor is now covered in little chippings of glue.
My best guess it this. I was saving the planet.
It was a “no solvent” version of what I normally use. No nasty fumes to kill the ‘ikkle birdies. Or the ‘ikkle humans for that matter, although I’m firmly of the opinion that there are too many bleedin' humans on the planet and we really need a lot less of them.
So the adhesive is kind to us and kind to the environment. The fact that it’s totally bl00dy useless and couldn’t stick nuffink to nuffink is beside the point. At least it won’t harm anything.
This seems to be a trend and it pi$$es me right off.
Low fume “Does what it says on the tin” gloss black paint. Except it’s not gloss (it was barely satin) and it was more of a very dark brown. But it was kind to the trees. But what’s the point of being kind to the trees if I’m just going to have to do it again?
At work they decided to cut the amount of water in the cisterns in the toilets. Saves water, precious resources and all that. Except there wasn’t enough water to actually flush the loo. So they all got flushed at least twice. Once by the person leaving and again by the next occupant. So that’s saving water is it? And to compound the error there wasn’t enough water to flush ’stuff’ down the pipe so they were forever blocked. Which is fine except when it’s blocked on the floor above and you have liquid sh1t running down the office walls.
I drive a hybrid car. It struggles to do 30MPG. My old car could do 37MPG on a good day and had a bigger engine. Why? Dear God, WHY!?
It sound like I don’t care about the environment. Well I do as it happens. At least I try…
All the scrap metal in the garage (including old nails) goes in a tub and into the metal skip at the tip.
I religiously sort the recycling bin.
All the scrap wood goes on the fire for heat or into the wood skip at the tip.
But corporately I don’t think we care. The only reason any of that stuff I sort gets recycled is down to economics, not the environment. If some corporation can make money by recycling they’ll do it. If not it goes in land fill or we dump it on some other country. And the only fix for this is for the government to skew the costs by taxing land fill. Which puts up the costs for the councils who now want me to pay to dump hard core (presumably the economics of hard core have gone down the crapper (which is more than can be said for the curse word at work)). Hang on, don’t I already pay to dump things in my taxes?
So long as it looks like we are doing something that’s all that matters. Whether it works or not is less important so long as somebody can make money out of it.
plums.
Anyway, I’m gluing the picture rail back up. I’m trying silicone sealant this time. If that doesn’t work Mrs Sweetpea isn’t getting a bl00dy picture rail.
plums!
Sorry.
Those of a nervous disposition can rejoin here…
Good night!
James
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