By Swindon, what a fantastic place?!

One of the reason that we don't like Swindon much is it doesn't have much character or history or culture. Or so we thought!

We were eating out the other night and ended up - for what reason I can't remember - looking up Swindon on Wikipaedia. Turns out it has some quite impressive claims as a town!

Swindon has a few "firsts":

• Of course the Magic Roundabout was the first and, as far as I know, still is the only "multi-mini" roundabout!
• The first recorded railway refreshment rooms
• The UK's first lending library

It holds some records:

• More people have joined the Hare Krishna movement in Swindon than in any other English town.
• In May 2007 Swindon had the highest percentage of households with broadband internet access.

And it has some claims on being the perfect town:

• The health system set up at the railway works was used as a blueprint for the NHS.
• Apparently The Times recently listed Swindon as one of the top 20 places to buy a property in Britain.
• "Swindon is considered to be an almost exact microcosm of the whole United Kingdom in its demographic make-up"
• In 2007 an insurance company reported Swindon to be the second safest place to live in the UK!

However, despite all those amazing things, our feelings about the town are summed up in this little factoid:

The father of The Nice Family (a caricature of a strictly disciplined, dull family) in Channel 4's "Absolutely" exclaims "By Swindon, this is an inspiring tale!" during a particularly boring presentation by a travelling salesman.

"By Swindon!" - now there's an exclamation that I might have to adopt!!

Rats, Backs and not cycling.

It's been a bit of a hectic time of late so I have another backlog of posts to write. Watch this space for some back-dated things that I didn't have time to write about properly when they popped into my head.

Rats

So, our house now smells, quite pungently, of dead rat. At least we think it's dead rat. It stinks a bit, but we're kinda used to it now. They ate all the pest-controller's poison and he came back and re-baited the place, and they haven't eaten any more since that second visit. Which suggests that they haven't eaten anything. Which suggests that they're dead! We've not heard them for a while either so it's all looking good rat-wise.

We've also been outside and plugged up the holes where we think they were getting in. So hopefully that'll be the last vermin we have to deal with for a while.

Backs

I mentioned in passing the other week that I had a bad back again. This all started a couple of days after my post-Christmas "good ride". It started in my middle back, faded after a couple of days, and then came back with a vengeance in my lower back. Crazy country dancing at the wedding the other week didn't help of course.

I've seen the physio twice and all he seems to be able to do is move the pain around, rather than fix it. Looks like everything from my hamstrings to my hip flexors is screwed up and tight.

I've tried doing a bit of cycling with it (as you will read about elsewhere) and that, oddly, seems to help. But it's not going away and it's causing me more pain and frustration. I had a really low evening mid-week where it all got to me, but I've picked myself up again and have been feeling a bit more myself in the last couple of days.

The real improvement seems to have come by doing nothing - no stretching, no cycling, just sitting or lying still for as long as possible each day. I think all the muscles need to just relax themselves. I'm learning AGAIN not to throw myself into things too much and that sometimes I just need to stop.

Not Cycling

NOT cycling is an odd thing for me to be writing about. But I am not-cycling at the moment because of my back. Which means I'm driving to work. Which is, itself, depressing and frustrating.

Most people in Swindon can't live more than a few miles from where they work, yet they insist on sitting in queues of traffic for hours on end looking miserable and angry. It really bothers me. Perhaps they've never considered that cycling or walking is an option? I'd much rather be moving on two wheels than sat doing nothing in a big box on 4. Plus, the globe is warming and petrol prices are going sky-high (104.9 at Sainsbury's!). Why drive? Once I'm 100% well again I'm definitely doing as much not-driving as possible!

I wonder what we can do to get people out of there cars more. It strikes me that if we can't do it in a small town with excellent cycle routes like Swindon then where CAN we do it?

Song 3: Del Amitri's 'Nothing Ever Happens' - Update

MOSTLY learnt all of the words and the chords were pretty simple. It's been a busy week and this will roll on to next week now. Looks like I'm only make 51 songs. :-(

Oh well - at least I haven't bailed out completely yet!

Transformations!

So, when we moved into our house the front room looked kinda like this:

It should be pointed out that the red stripe was NOT our idea. The general mess and clutter was.

Now, Sally has put a LOT of work into the painting. Her approach is very much little bits here and there whenever time permits. Whereas mine is to book some serious time out and do a load in one big go. And so, with great glee, we have taken a weekend off and finished off (mostly) the front room's facelift:

I think you'll agree is looks substantially more charming, sophisticated, pretty, homely, warm, open and a whole load of other things. We appreciate that it won't be to everyone's taste, but we like it a LOT!


In fact, I'm VERY surprised at how different it looks and I feel quite inspired to get on and make the rest of our house "ours".

First few days on the new Bike

So...now it's dry I've been able to have a few days commuting on the Felt (which Sally has suggested be called "Fuzzy"...Fuzzy Felt...geddit?). What's it like?

Well.

IT'S AWESOME. It's so comfortable that it seems to be helping my bad back get better. It's so light. It's so quick.

Actually, it doesn't seem to have a higher top-gear than the Raleigh, but the acceleration is so fast and smooth you arrive at top speed very quickly and can much more easily maintain it.

I have had some more learning to do. I was a bit tentative after my fall on Saturday, but in the dry it does corner OK. I've yet to push it hard and fast round a corner though and the bike does very much want to go in a straight line. I'm wondering if I turned the handlebars too much on Saturday rather than leaning?

The dropped bars are great for the variety of hand positions, but it's sometimes a bit shaky getting between them - especially the one time I actually went down to the drops. How are you supposed to do this? One hand at a time knocks your steering off.

I've also had problems with riding through town. Braking, changing down and indicating at the same time is much harder on this bike, especially while I'm nervously preparing to corner too. The trick with indicating from the brake hoods definitely seems to be to grip tight with the hand on the bars while you do the one-handed thing.

In addition to my little scratches from the weekend I now also have a bit of surface rust (see picture). I don't THINK this is a big deal and I'm hoping it will disappear just with wear. But proof that you should definitely dry the chain off properly after a wet ride.

In general then, I'm very glad I invested in a road bike. It WAS worth it after all, and I'm looking forward for some more dry weather to really take it on a decent run.

Living and learning

On the New Bike - Off the New Bike - Lessons in Wallpapering

Today was supposed to be really exciting - it turned out to be quite depressing. Mostly. It did in fact end on a high - but we'll have to talk about a few lows before then.

I've been very excited about the imminent arrival of "The Felt" - my new road bike.

This week, the CycleScheme voucher arrived in the post, and I called the shop and told them to have it ready for me to pick up today.

So I woke up like a kid on Christmas day - not really able to wait for the short trip to the bike shop to get started.

We ran a few errands in town first. It was a horrible day, and as I left Sally and headed to the bike shop I began to wonder if I should have taken the car to go and pick it up. Oh well, I'd gone so far and I wasn't about to bail out. I'd have to just get it home in the rain and give it a good wipe-down when I got back.

The bike was waiting and after a brief re-fit I tentatively hopped on, expecting it to handle a bit differently to the cheap, old Raleigh hybrid. And I was right!!! Half way home, I fell off. Turns out that 25mm, semi-slick tyres don't like doing 90 degree turns in the pouring rain.

Gutted.

I tore a small hole in my waterproof jacket, put the saddle out of alignment, and I think I put the rear wheel out of true slightly - it was certainly rubbing on the brake pads.

Words can't really express my annoyance. I arrived home, drenched and with a fully-battered sense of pride.

A few photo's of the scrapes the poor thing received. Here's the Tiagra rear mech (derailleur) - which, on inspection, feels pretty sturdy and tough - maybe a cheaper bike wouldn't have survived as well:


And here's the right brake hood:


So, a little gutted, I spent some of the day fixing on the lights and computer and making a few adjustments. While doing this I took advantage of the quick-releases, and whipped the rear wheel out to check it's state of trueness. To do this you have to deflate the tyre to get the"bulge" of the tyre between the released brake pads.

Wheel and tyre didn't seem too bad, so I refitted them and re-inflated. Half way through inflation....HHHHHIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSssssssssssssbother.

That, my friends, is the sound of what I can only guess was a pinch puncture, and my (fairly censored for the purposes of this post) response.

Generally, it was a bit of a crappy start and I was feeling very dejected. I was already beginning to wonder if I'd done the right thing buying it. Part of me knows that I just need a couple of good rides on it and I'll think it's the bee's knees, but right now, I'm pretty worried about how much damage I've done. The puncture is patched and the rear wheel's not rubbing the brake pads any more, but it isn't straight and I don't know how it will ride.

I also know that I've had a REALLY good lesson in road bike handling. A lesson that I was bound to learn eventually and which was much better learned doing 5mph in town than doing 25mph on a wet country road. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise!

In between all that, Sally and I tried wallpapering the chimney breast in our lounge. This was also a fairly spectacular flop and added to the days downcast-ness. The paper dried up and curled at the corners and shrank so that the gaps between drops got bigger and it was generally disastrous.

We pushed on though. We resolved to go and buy another roll and try again. If we failed second time we'd give up and just paint the darned thing.

So we tried again - and it was a success! Or so it seems. Second time round we followed the instructions to the letter. Lessons learned about wallpapering:

• "Sizing" seems to be a good idea - use a diluted paste on the wall before you apply the paper.
• Use pre-mixed paste. It's more expensive but much more likely to work. We bought some of this second time around and it was VERY different to the stuff we mixed ourselves. If you do mix your own, it should be white and of a jelly-like consistency. Oh and make sure you're stirring the water when you add the paste powder and add it gently - it quickly forms lumps if it's not dissolved and mixed properly.
• Put LOTS of paste on the paper. We used to little first time. We applied quite liberally second time around with much better results.
• We're not sure about the best way to trim the edges from the paper once it's on the wall yet, but it seems to us that wet paper is much harder to trim. Soggy paper tears and splits easily!

I finished the day by putting up a new light fitting, which included my first experience of cutting a hole in plaster (not much to say about that - other than it makes a LOT of dust!).

It had been a long, roller-coaster of a day. Excitement, an accident, dejection and worry, failure, success and, as we stepped back and admired the new living room, great joy. We've lived a lot today, we've learned a lot today. Sometimes those set backs test us, and if we push through them we can by much more proud of the results than if it was easy!

Persisting with Praying for Health

Last year was a very difficult year for me, health-wise. Read elsewhere if you don't know why.

I know that sometimes I've overreacted, I know that there are plenty of people with much worse things wrong with them. But I've had more than my fair share of annoying, niggling, painful, exhausting, frustrating things that have kept me from feeling like myself and doing the things I love doing and feel called to do.

As a Christian, one of the big things I have to deal with is the issue of suffering. If I'm doing my best to please God and follow Jesus, why do I get persistent failures of health? Why does God let this happen. Why doesn't God do something about it?

There's no simple way to explain why suffering happens. We just live in a world where things do go wrong - mostly it's our own fault! But I believe that God tries to use those difficult times and brings good out of them.

Most of what I've been through is, as someone recently stated, "just stuff". Some of it's caused by my own behaviour (e.g. bad posture, or cycling too hard and fast). Some of it is just being ill - we get bugs, we fight them off, it happens!

I've learned a lot through the last year. God really has used it for good. I've learned how I cope with illness. How I don't like to stop but I NEED to sometimes, and that's OK, people don't mind (in fact, they positively encourage it!). I've learned to recognise and deal with stress. I've learned about some physiology and a lot of psychology too! It's not been wasted suffering.

But I am very frustrated with it and so I'm taking action. I'm going to ask God if he WILL intervene and help me get better. I think I've had enough and I want to be myself again, and I'm going to get some good people around me really, persistently, praying for good health for me.

Of course, people have been praying all through the year, and I've had various "breakthroughs" as people have done so. I believe that God does sometime heal miraculously. I know that most of the time he doesn't. But I'm going to go and ask him and see what he thinks or says about it.

And I'm not going to stop when I'm better, I'm going to get these people to keep praying that I stay well once I am well.

This isn't a sermon on suffering or healing - I'm not qualified for that sort of thing. It's a statement about my beliefs and intentions.

Let's get praying properly, let's go and nag God a bit, and see what happens!

Song 3 - Del Amitri's 'Nothing Ever Happens' - Key of C

Last week was a bit of a write off week, but I've just about learned the chords to "Angels" including the odd F#m. I've also done a bit of rehearsing Song 1 to bed it into my brain a bit.

This week Sally has challenged me to learn "Nothing Ever Happens" by Del Amitri. I'm not even convinced that this is a well known, sing-along pop song. But the chorus is pretty rousing, so worth a go. I've downloaded from iTunes and the music and words are in one of my books.

At the end of this weel I'll have covered three classes of song:

• Difficult music and difficult words (Fairytale of New York);
• Difficult music and easy words (Angels...well, the chords were easy but I had to do more work to learn them than the words, which were already firmly in my head);
• and Easy music and difficult words (Nothing Ever Happens)
  

Yes, this week is like memorising poetry. Sally doesn't make life easy! Chords are C, F, Am, G, with a few others in the musical bridge.

Sally has pledged to learn to play along on the mandolin, which will make it more fun. Perhaps I should make her learn the words too?

The Voucher

In amongst all the mess of bad backs, leaks, rats, and so on, something very exciting has happened.

My cyclescheme voucher has arrived!! I pick up the Felt Z90 on Saturday.

Yipeee!!!!!

The Miracle of Plumbing that is PTFE Tape

We recently discovered (amongst lots of other things going wrong all around us) a small leak a the point that our washing maching inlet hose connects to the water pipe.

This was a problem when we first moved in and we initially fixed it by buying a new hose and doing it up really tight. So I was a little disappointed to find it leaking again.

I mentioned this on the phone to my dad who said, quite cryptically, "wrap some PTFE tape around the thread".

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's poly-terta-flouro-ethalene" (or something).

Oh well, I'll look it up I thought.

Turns out it's a minor miracle. Why don't people tell you things like this at school? How are you supposed to find out?

Just wrap it (CLOCKWISE...to go with the thread) round the thread a few times, and screw the connector back on. Drips gone!

Song 2 - Robbie Williams' "Angels" - Key of "E"

Last week was fun AND challenging, songwise. I picked a tricky one to start but it's mostly nailed. The trick will be remembering it in a week or so's time.

This week's been a bit of a nightmare with busy evenings, rats, water leaks, a trip to Leeds for work, the wedding at the weekend, and health problems, so I've picked an easy one - Angels.

I already know this song, won't really need to learn the words (maybe a few), and I've tried to learn it before. The only real thing to do is learn the chords properly. A sure fire crowd-pleaser though don't ya think?

Putting God First

A mixed weekend. Mostly joyful with the marriage of two good friends in London and good time spent with our old London church family.

On Saturday I woke up feeling very tired and like I was fighting something off. I didn't think I'd make it through the wedding ceremony, but did , and was then prayed for and, praise the LORD, felt a whole load better.

My back got better later in the week, and then has been suddenly and worryingly worse again today. The pain has stopped being muscular and now feels like a sharp, nerve-type pain. I was literally in tears with pain earlier.

But time with the St Simons church family is always time of being inspired and challenged. The focus of the weekend for me was putting God first. I had some amazing conversations about this with people, heard amazing stories about how people have put God first, listened to God and followed what he's telling them to do. People who seem to have discovered (or are discovering) that when you really put God first, the other things sort themselves out.

Even the sermon this morning, from the first chapter of the book of Jonah, was about putting aside "idols" to do what God wants us to do. It was a real theme.

I could write lots but God was very present this weekend. I'm inspired to pray more, to listen to God more, to talk more openly about what God is doing, and about my faith. The people of St Simon's are so outward focussed, so keen to share what God is doing (and he's doing lots). I take courage from that. And I've had some good times of prayer with others this weekend where the LORD has already spoken.

So despite my physical ailments, lots to give thanks for. I feel joyful despite my pain. I have plenty of theological meat to chew on (anyone want to study the book of James with me?). I have lots to get on and do too.

The LORD is good and I pray today for J & A who got married, that he will bless them with each other as much as I have been blessed with my own, beautiful, loving wife.

Mice? Oh rats! And a whole host of other problems.

So, we thought we had mice in our loft but, after further inspection, a little web research, and discussions with other people about the size of droppings, we've decided we have rats. Booooo!

They seem confined to the loft above our extension and the wall cavities. After calling the council and hearing that it would take up to 5 working days to get back to us, we put poisoned bait down and this didn't initially seem to help.

The man from the council came today though. He was a very helpful little Yorkshire man, who's been doing the job of pest control for about 5 years - though I sense he could actually "smell a rat" if required - probably at a hundred paces.

He identified where they are probably coming in and out (rats have to get food and water, and there ain't none of that in our loft), and put down lots...LOTS more bait. We'll have to wait and see what happens. "They're wild animals", he said, and their behaviour is not predictable.

In the meantime, they've chewed our electric cables, tripping out our electricity, and subsequently causing us to have a non-functioning boiler. No electric, ho heating.

The fuse panel has several fuses and an RCD device. The RCD was what was tripping and this takes out the whole panel. Again, after a few phone calls and chats with other people, we worked out that our fuse box is completely incorrectly labelled, ran around the house flicking fuses and switches until we knew which fuse did what, and have isloated the upstairs lighting circuit (which is why we think it's caused by the rats nibbling cables).

So, we now have rats, and no upstairs lights, but our heating and other electrics are back on.

If that wasn't enough. I've done my back in (so I'm off the bike...AGAIN!), we have a leaky connection at the end of our washing machine inlet hose, which had caused a big puddle to form in our utility room, and our oven broke just before we had 6 people coming for new year (the timer switch, which has to be on for the oven to be on, had burnt out its contacts).

The joys of owning a house!!! Can 2008 have had a worse start?? (Well, yes, we could be in Kenya, which is in a right state at the moment - our problems are kinda put into perspective when you watch the news at the moment).

Good ride today

Haven't done a training ride for a while but went out in glorious sunshine today and did Cricklade and back (16.5 miles) in a fraction over an hour. Not bad going. Must get out and train more often - I loved it! :-)

Oh yeah, it was a bit of a test of some new clothing too. I got some "Seal Skinz" waterproof and windproof gloves. Brilliant! Not as breathable as I'd been lead to believe but my hands weren't soggy. The key thing was windproofing. My hands were VERY warm - even more so than when I wear ski gloves. It really is the wind that gets you cold.

Song 1 - The Pogues' A Fairytale of New York (Key of G)

I just know I'll regret this...it's already taking over my life. I'm almost embarassed to write anything because I'll be writing my resignation post before I know it. Still...let's give it a go.

Week 1 of the new year's challenge. Learn a popular song every week for a year.

There were various discussions about which to do first, but I've decided on Sally's suggestion of The Pogues' "A Fairytale of New York". Pretty simple music, mostly Gs, Ds and As with a few Bm's, but with some interesting words. It helps that the words kind of tell a story as it's easier to remember.

The choice of a male/female duet may probe interesting too.

I've actually spent more time trying to learn the words than the music. That will have to change. The problem is that it's one of those songs that I've heard a million time and I think I know some of the words from what they sound like. e.g. I always thought the chorus bit was:

"The wise and the unwise singing (something) were singing going (something)"

when it's actually

"The boys of the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay"

which makes a LOT more sense.

In other "52 songs" news, I've using technology to help me! I've started downloading some popular tracks from iTunes at 79p each. I'm going to create a "52 songs" playlist to help me along, and I have a folder for keeping the tabs (guitar chord music) in.

Anyway...off to learn the music! Report back - and a new song! - at the end of the week.

Mice again

Bother it...we seem to have mice scuttling around in our loft. How annoying. I hate them. I lay awake worrying about them terrorising me and taking over my house. Which is stupid because they're pretty harmless.

I've set traps.

Mice...

and Elephants...

Grrrrrr.

Cleaning the bike

I got a chain cleaning box for Christmas (thanks Sarah and Guy!) and I've invested in some proper bike cleaning brushes so gave the cheap hybird a good clean over (with the help of Cycling Plus' Winter Cycling Guide recommendations!), and replaced the front brake pads before heading back to work tomorrow. A job well done, even if I STILL have black hands a few hours later.

There was a LOT of crap on my chain and cassette (the cogs) and the deep clean has really made a difference. Well worth the investment in both cost and time. And getting into a cleaning routine should help me keep the bikes in good nick and running smoothly.

Still awaiting the new bike though...should be here soon!!