Mark Dalton

After being Duty Manager last weekend I had Friday off as a day in Lieu and thought I would book Monday off and enjoy a long weekend. I dropped the car off for its annual service first thing Friday morning and then headed into town for a coffee and some window shopping. I sat in Costa Coffee for about two hours, chilling out with the laptop and looking at potential holiday destinations, but didn’t arrive at any conclusions. I then wandered around the town, only buying another 500 GB USB Hard Drive, before walking home.

It wasn’t particularly warm but I did enjoy the walk. One of the problems with commuting every day is that I don”t really have the energy or time to get any real exercise, and this time of year only really see daylight out of the office window. I had a couple of PodCasts to catch up on so wrapped up warm and plugged into my iPhone

After a spot of lunch Mum dropped by as I had agreed to go TV shopping with her. She had seen my new Samsung and set her heart on one. So we headed up to Curry”s only to find that they didn’t have any in stock but said they could order one for delivery, but there would be a delivery charge. I asked if they could order it in and we would collect it but they said they couldn’t, if it was ordered it had to be delivered. Mum had really set her heart on walking away with the TV, so we headed over to Comet. They also didn’t have any in stock, but said they could order one and have it delivered Sunday with no delivery charge. It wasn’t walking away with one, but at least she would get one before the weekend was out. Mum then dropped my back at the garage to pick up my car. I drove home not noticing the software update they had performed to the Engine Management System, as they said I probably wouldn’t.

Saturday I got on with the normal chores and started to make a list of the job”s that need doing around the house. This weekend was supposed to be the weekend I started getting people round to quote for some of the bigger jobs, but after a crappy couple of weeks, I just wasn’t in the mood, so settled on writing lists. Saturday evening I was sad and ironed while watching TV.

Sunday I headed round to Mum and Dad”s to setup the TV on the promise of a roast dinner. The TV was delivered around midday and I was set straight to work setting it up. Now I believed that it had a Free View receiver built in, but quickly found that it didn’t. I then spent several hours trying to get it to work with there existing Thomson Free View box. In the end I was pretty sure it was the ariel but Mum came up with the idea of trying the portable ariel that she uses in the dinning room. This quickly proved it was the ariel and once we had swapped out the ariel cable, the setup was a breeze. We tided up and I connected the TV to their home network and showed them the Internet interaction, and then connected up the DVD player and tested that out by watching the BBC”s Earth Series.

Today I enjoyed a nice long lay in and then popped round to Mum & Dad”s as Mum looks after Eleanor on Mondays, and I hadn”t seen her or Katrina for a couple of weeks. Returning home I did the last few chores before plonking myself on the sofa where I spent the rest of the day.

So with the number of jobs starting to mount up at home and winter just around the corner I decided I needed to take some time off work and generally catch up.

Well it hasn’t been an exciting two weeks per se, but I have managed to get most of the jobs that needed doing, done, and even started planning some of the big jobs that are on the list for next year.

It hasn’t been all work however and I have enjoyed a few long lay in’s, long lunches, and a few beers here and there, including a few with Gary Clarke, an old school friend who I hadn’t seen for 10 years. It was a nice evening picking up more or less where we left off and catching up with the latest gossip. It turns out that we have been working around the corner from each other for several years now and hadn’t bumped into each other.

I also managed to catch up with the jobs I had promised others I would do including building a Windows 7 tablet for my sister and finally setup a wireless network at her house that I have been meaning to do for months. I also managed to setup WiFi for my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin, and configure an old NetGear SC101 NAS box for my parents as a backup device for there two Vista laptops.

I feel rested and ready to tackle the world again next week, safe in the knowledge I only have six weeks until I have another two weeks off over Christmas. I still have a few little jobs to do but these involve shopping something I think is best done on a nice day when I can walk into town and finish in a pub.

Like most people who haven’t won the lottery I have the pleasure of buying my home via a mortgage. well for last few years I have taken out a “fixed rate” mortgage. Well as most of you will know the economy has gone to the dog’s and the interest rate has followed. The great thing with a “fixed rate” mortgage is that if the interest rate goes up your payments are “fixed” at the rate agreed, the problem is that if rates fall your payments also stay at the rate agreed.

Like most investments you have to study the market but eventually there is a little gamble involved. This gamble is usually based on sound research but it’s still a gamble. A “fixed rate” mortgage is in essence a gamble against interest rates going up.

Now one thing that nobody ever really predicts is the economy going into recession, and if they do they rarely tell anybody. The first thing the controlling bank normally does in this case is to reduce interest rates and that is exactly what has happened, to the point that the current interest rate is 0.5%.

Now when a “fixed rate” mortgage comes to the end of its agreed period it automatically reverts to what’s known as the “standard variable rate“. This is usually fixed at an amount, usually 0.25% above the base rate. So with a base rate of 0.5% you would expect the “standard variable rate” to be 0.75%. So to say I was somewhat surprised to receive a letter from my mortgage company when my “fixed rate” mortgage ended and they advised me that I would now be subject to there “standard variable rate” of 3.5%.

What? Well as it turns out that the biggest losers of this recession are the banks. Yeah you know the ones we gave billions of pounds too. Well in order to help us out they aren’t passing on all of the cuts, well they have a business to run you see. While they are grateful for the money, without them we would be even worse off. So it wasn’t so much as a handout, it was a investment in our own futures. All that money they have taken in bonuses doesn’t count. You see that was just the right amount they needed to pay in order to ensure they recruited the right people. The people that landed us in this mess right? No not at all, that was our fault.

Any way, you get the idea. The sad fact is the change is actually saving me money on a monthly basis as my “fixed rate” was actually at a higher rate, but I can’t help but feel cheated.

I have spent most of today researching mortgages and the financial markets trying to figure out what I do next. Obviously paying less is a preference but I also have to consider how much longer this will last. More thoughts on the subject to come.

The week started out as busy as usual. All the normal escalation’s and expectations, but by the end of the week things had quietened down. The normal jesting took place as Mark R was duty manager and while there was some high profile work taking place it all had been reasoned out and confidence was pretty high.

I woke up as at 06:00 on Saturday morning, you get used to waking up at a certain time and I think the body just gets accustomed to it, but decided to go back to bed for a couple of hours as it was Saturday and Mum and Dad weren’t due until 09:00. As I lay there thinking about the day ahead the door bell went and Dad was standing on the door step. Bugger! I had set the alarm clock, I just hadn’t changed the setting that restricts it to workdays only (Blackberry). After letting him in, having a quick smoke and a glass of juice I hit the shower and was ready by 09:30. Mum had popped out for lunch provisions and had taken Dad’s work shoes with her so we weighed up what we were going to do and it what order. Time was passing by and we set about clearing the piles of branches I had built up from last weekend into the skip. Mum arrived about 15 minutes later with provisions and the missing shoes and immediately chipped in with clearing the decks.

Once all the debris was cleared we agreed that we would take one tree at a time (starting on the left of the picture). The first tree was the “test” as we hadn’t really got into any kind of pattern, but after a little trimming with the “loppers” and a “bow saw” Dad had with him we were able to get a clean cut and it came down missing our heads by at least a millimetre. We broke it down and carried it through the hallway that Dad had covered with sheets while I was in the shower and threw it into the skip trying to use the space as well as we could.

As we moved through the line of trees they got a little smaller, we all put on our expert gardener hats and summarised that these hadn’t got as much space as the ones at the ends, and coupled with a lack of sunlight hadn’t grown as much, thankfully. We worked hard bring each tree down, cutting it up and throwing it into the skip.

We were probably two-thirds of the way through the left hand row when the chain saw threw the chain and everything came to a halt. Well, not quite everything as Mum continued chopping up the last fallen tree and carried it through to the skip (My Mum’s a hero but wont admit it). Dad and I eventually took the chain saw to bits and managed to put it together again and agreed that we would need a new chain after the last tree.

So I ducked out to B&Q picked up a new chain, together with some more chain saw oil and a new set of loppers. After having the chain saw apart once it took about 5 minutes to replace the new chain and refill the oil.

We had by this time taken all the tree’s down on the left hand side and had also filled up the skip and started to pile the reminder on the drive.

At some point we had stopped for lunch and Mum as always managed to come up with some beautiful ham salad rolls that were inhaled rather than eaten.

We continued through the afternoon attacking the trees that were growing along the back fence. To start with they were pretty simple as they were quite thin.

As we got the final three trees things started to get interesting. Not quite sure why, but guessing it was due to the ground underneath, but the trees were leaning backwards and were top heavy. When I say to heavy of course they were top heavy in one direction, the wrong direction. There was a large tree that was right over a neighbours green house and the fear was that one wrong move and I would have a very expensive glass bill. There wasn’t much choice however and my Dad eventually put the ball in my court.

“We can do it but their might be some damage. Got the cheque book handy?”

Not much I could say really, they needed to come down and if they didn’t, the situation wasn’t going to get any better! So I said yes and we went for it!

The greenhouse was safe, but there was one branch that must have been seven foot long that as we took down I just couldn’t get a grip on. I yelled out to Dad and there was nothing we could do. As luck happened he (the neighbour) had some bamboo canes in to support the growing of runner beans, and the branch rested nicely on the top of the supporting structure. Dad made the final cut with the chain saw and it was free. Between the two of us we were able to wrestle the branch straight up and back into my garden. Phew!

The final tree was before us and we once again had to figure out how we were going to tackle this one. There was one “really large” branch that reached over into another neighbours garden, and there was no way the tree was coming down where we wanted it to without taking the branch off first. So we worked out our positions, I was going to take the weight and Dad was going to cut!

As the last buzz of the chain saw echoed the branch parted from the tree and I was lifted clean of the ground. I am not fat fat but it lifted my 12 stone clean. If you can, picture me holding on to a tree branch that is pivoting on the top of a fence panel with my knees bent. Dad dumped the chain saw and added his weight an between us we were able to lever the branch back over to my garden and land it.

Hell we were tired and if we weren’t so close to finishing I think we would have called it a day at that point!

Now for the final tree. We had done as much as we could but it was still going to be tough. It was leaning in the wrong direction, was heavy, and we were tired. We went for it!

As discussed Dad started a horizontal cut, starting high on my side and working down. As practised so many times before this would cause the tree to slip down where I could throw my weight behind it and direct it. As we reached the final part of the cut I called out moving stuck my weight behind it and pushed the tree in the direction we had discussed.

As the blade slipped through the last two millimetres the weight of the tree shifted and so did I automatically. I moved my right leg back to take the weight and my left leg forward straight into the path of the chain saw blade.

“STOP” I yelled, and Dad took his finger of the power. The chain saw had gone through my trousers on the inner left thigh, with my grubby hands I pulled the material out of the way. It didn’t look to bad, just a little bloody so I said let’s finish. Dad finished the cut with the chain saw and we brought the tree down. Then my leg stung!

I limped back to the house, dropped my trousers, and Mum grabbed the first aid kit. It was a messy wound but not deep so we stuck on a padded bandage and Mum went to get her car to drive me to the hospital.

I was seen my the triage nurse who said it would need cleaning out and stitches and then my the doctor who administered some local numbing magic. A nurse came in a spent 40 minutes washing it out before I was stitched up and sent home.

Mum had come back up and dropped me off at home before heading off out for a fish and ship supper. We were all to tired to cook and I don’t think any of us enjoyed it when it did arrive. We were all very tired and the adrenaline had worn off, so we had a beer and then I headed home limping.

Today I had a really long lay in and have spent the day resting with my leg up, but looking back we achieved a lot and I really am thankful for Mum & Dad’s help. The garden looks so much bigger and has really got me thinking about what I am going to do next.

But that is another story!

So following on from last weeks Duty Manager shift I had this Friday off so a nice short week. Of course that is a good thing but not without its own problems, as I still have the same amount of work to get through. The evenings therefore were pretty much a write-off as I just didn’t have the energy or the inclination to do anything more then eat and vegetate in front of the TV. The thought of a long weekend however kept me going.

Thursday night I met up with Chris Scott, and Leon, part of the crowd I went to Mumbia and Goa with. We had a few beers at the Globe on London Wall. We chatted about the Mumbia and Goa trip, and the time Chris and I had spent in India. We talked about there plans to climb Kilimanjaro this year, only teasing Leon a little about some of the nasty things that could happen. The guy’s tried to persuade me to join them, but I managed to change the subject (Lucky Escape).

Friday, after a little lay in, I got on with tidying the house up a little and caught up with some paper work. I finished running the new Cat 6 cables in the study to the new Gigabit switch and finished tidying up some of the cabling, although I am still not 100% happy and will need to do this again once I have picked up some cable ties.

Saturday I had arranged to meet up with Dave Birkett for a few beers so walked into town. I have been looking for way’s to hook up with Sony SR7E HandyCam to use as a web cam with my iMac so headed into the iStore and the Sony shop to see how I could do it. The guy’s in the iStore seemed to think it could be done via a simply USB connection but didn’t know what cable I would need so I checked with the guy’s in the Sony store. They explained that the camera couldn’t be used in that way as it didn’t support it, but did say it would be possible with some form of external device that allowed you to take the feed straight off the sensor and encode it in real time. So back to the drawing board on that one. Feeling dejected I set off to meet Dave and lets just say several hours later, and a lot worse for wear I made it home.

Today is another house catch up day with a bit of relaxing mixed in before work tomorrow. Next week however I really have got to start on sorting some of the bigger jobs out at home.