Reggie Thomson’s Diary

Last night, I was in Iraq, a lone soldier behind a long wall, creeping up on the “enemy”. Some of my air squadron colleagues were round the corner. I was put in charge of the prisoners of war. They were sitting on chairs - several hundred of them. We had to move them to another place, well, just across the road. I decided they should march in columns of four or five. Maybe four would be best in case someone tried to escape. They would have to stand in the new location, though some would be able to sit on a low wall. In my dream, I dreamt about “winning the respect of the POWs” and getting recognised for it. The struggle for meaningfulness and recognition eats into even the dreams within dreams.

The shed doors now have a brilliant white sealant round them. I used the masking tape to get straight edges. The tube said it would be sufficient for 14m of 6mm bead. It lasted about ten metres for me, and I didn’t have enough for the top of the board near the wall. Hmm. Let’s see if it has a technical name. OK. It’s a fascia board.

Homebase didn’t have the 3m gutter pipe that I needed. I bought two 50mm drainpipe attachments, then went to Ridgeons for the pipe. The gentleman on the sales desk gave me a 25% trade discount, since I might apply for the trade account. That would be worth having. I usually avoided Ridgeons because it is more expensive than B&Q or Homebase.

On the cycle back, I went into Argos, but decided against purchasing the computer desk. I wasn’t sure if the height was sufficient. Razmik tells me I will do my back an injury crouching over my old low desk.

Back home, I fitted the gutter. This required drilling and redrilling - I still don’t have a good policy of getting it right first time. The drainpipe attachments are too small. Grr.

I was in the middle of cooking my rice with tuna and sweetcorn, when Razmik suggested we go out for a meal. He took me to Margaritas, an Italian restaurant on Magdalene Street. I went for the cannelloni, because I thought the spinach would be good for me. It was. Razmik suggests I could build another room beside the bicycle shed (or replacing it) for around £5000-7000. He can’t comment on the two small cracks in the rear wall, but tells me that Cambridgeshire is notorious for having waterlogged soil.

We stopped in Staples and then the Blockbuster video shop. Decisions on movies are difficult for those who have seen lots and want something new. Decisions on movies are easy for those who have seen few and almost everything is new. We chose Hannibal. It was memorable. I made my famous hot chocolate sauce to go with a bowl of ice-cream. Razmik nearly left the room at the scene where Hannibal cut a piece out of the cop’s brain, cooked it, and fed it to him. “It’s only a movie!” I exclaimed. It’s a story - a lie. Perhaps Razmik still believes the great lie, which works in a photographer’s favour, that “A photo never lies.”

I continued with my prettyHtml routine. It is useful for showing me errors in my html. However, it gets stuck with my email JavaScript, because the html code has a </a> with no corresponding <a href=…> element (it is written in JavaScript.)

In the evening, I telephoned home to wish mum and happy mother’s day.

There was a giant spider creeping over one of my living room seats. I grabbed a towel, and sprung upon it from behind, chucking it unceremoniously out the back door.

I phoned Jonathan to turn down the generous car offer. At £40 per month, it is the equivalent of hiring a car once, which is about all I would need at most, assuming I have some spare income from the house. My current aim, though, is to live off about £50 per month and use any extra from the letting to do essential repairs and refurbishment. It’s the first car offer from Jonathan that I have turned down. “Sorry, I can’t help you out this time,” I said. Of course, the charity was intended to be the other way round. I was supposed to be the grateful recipient of charity.

At last the final coat has gone onto the shed door posts and top boards. The weatherman is threatening to change the weather to rainy.

I’m tired of having to delete spam messages on my guest book, so decided to change the update program so that it shows me all the recent unapproved entries for me to either delete or approve. It works well. Then, I started onto the <font> to class conversions. However, I got sidetracked by decided to flip my double and single quotes in PHP.

I looked at some HTML from websites, and decided I could easily prettyprint my output. So, I’ve added a routine to put an indent before each html element.

With the second undercoat and the first layer of gloss on the woodwork, I felt some of the pressure was off. I was worried that the weather would change. It has been very beautiful recently. Now the wood is in place, and sufficiently protected.

I’ve started changing some of the HTML code to remove my dependence on <font>, which is a deprecated element in HTML 3.2. I need to be fluent in CSS - cascading style sheets.

Because the shed doors were left open, I decided to lock the back gate. “Nobody visits me,” I thought. I was wrong. That evening, Jonathan called.

“Want to go for a spin?” he suggested. So, we drove round town, out of town and back to Churchill college for a drink of orange at the bar. The car is his metro 1.3L, 5 door, 50,000 miles on the clock, two lady owners. I could buy it for £100, if I want, on credit terms of £10 per month. It was tempting.

The insurance quotes turned out to be too expensive, though - around £200 to £350, or roughly £20 per month. Car tax adds another £10 or so. That make’s £40 per month, even though I haven’t gone anywhere. Cars are for rich people.

Air Marshal Burridge gave a report on the filming of two dead British soldiers. He predicted that I would become self-employed. I didn’t predict that he would become an Air Marshal (after his duty as Squadron Leader of Cambridge University Air Squadron). That’s why he is an Air Marshal and I am an unemployable self-employed person.

I think I scribbled some of my diaries.

The botch of the bicycle shed was too much. I cycled down to Ridgeons. They were able to supply me with the correct wood for the rotten bottom of the tool shed door frame, and an excellent piece of redwood without knots for the bicycle shed. The guy fetching it cut his arm finding me a piece. I wanted to return the T-gutter because it didn’t have any fixing holes, but the salesman told me that Homebase doesn’t stock the Osma parts, and their parts weren’t compatible. I was disgusted.

So, I wobbled home and started sawing. This time I measured a bit more carefully. The new piece was fitted and I used the previously cut piece to replace the original above the bicycle door. My measurements were out by almost a centimeter - there’s a level difference at the corner. Once cut, all new wood was given three hurried layers of anti-wet-rot, and then I managed to get one undercoat on. I kept the wood off the walls, so that I could paint both sides. The undercoat is also the primer.

There wasn’t time for my usual bath. I had to buy some more paint. I had given Razmik’s door a second undercoat a few days ago, so there isn’t enough left for a second coat.

At the Barn, Vlasta asked if I would go to the Gulf if required. Had my application to the RAF proceeded (assuming I was accepted), that’s where I would be now. I talked about some of the flying experience. Vlasta offered to take me to Stonehenge one weekend. However, it would cost £10, which is 20% of my monthly budget. I discussed hitching with one lady who wants to go to Scotland.

More shopping. Maybe this was the day I got the wood and the gutters. I don’t know what I bought yesterday. I could check the pile of receipts beneath my desk. It isn’t worth it. I don’t care about truth any more. It was definitely the wood and gutters today. I got from Ridgeons. I only really needed to replace the clips and T, but I decided on the spur of the moment to purchase a length of nicer gutter, the T and two angled pieces.

I sawed the wood after measuring it. One piece, the longest one, was short by about 9 cm. I cut another length to fit in. It looks ugly. The top of the shed was drilled to take the boards. Then, all the wood was sanded and coated with tree layers of anti-wet-rot preservative.

Tonight’s movie was … Hmm. Maybe I’ll recall the title or the plot. Lots of bad guys died.

The Html tidy program has pointed out a lot of failings in my code. I have to put quotes round the attributes of html elements.

I can’t remember what I went shopping for. Maybe it was the first set of wood for the shed.

I stripped the paint off the shed door surrounds. I don’t know if it is really necessary to do this so thoroughly.

After a bath, Razmik brought back a DVD to watch. A prisoner is released, but he goes back to his life of crime. It is bad against bad and the film makers want us to side with the bad. The bad guys win. Everyone can live unhappily ever afterwards. The Smarties were fattening.

I watched the news in the morning before getting started on the painting again. When it was dry later on, I carefully removed the masking tape around the frames and on the windows. In several places, the paint started to lift from the surround, too. I’m a bit concerned about the mastic - it doesn’t seem to have hardened as I expected.

Razmik suggested that we go out for a meal - Chinese or Mexican. Just outside the back gate, the neighbours were snogging. Razmik asked if I would like to drive, and one of the kids said “I will.” “You wouldn’t want to,” replied Razmik. “Nought to sixty in three hours.” There appears to be a belief in the automatic right to the airwaves.

We drove down to the Grafton center. The Grafton center was empty. Footlights didn’t seem interesting, so we went on to the Peking, avoiding someone peeing in the street.

I was a bit disappointed with the decor and size. However, the food was delicious - a sweet and sour pork, a beef with black beans and a duck dish. I discovered some more about Razmik’s background - Armenian and American.

We had a drink or two at a pub later on - a Drambuie and then a beer.

In the evening, I discovered html tidy - a free program for determining problems in my html code.

I think the neighbours had a party or something last night, and then cleaned up at about 1 a.m.

The second undercoat went on in the morning, and it was dry enough to paint over by early afternoon.

Razmik arrived in the evening. I had to warn him that I am an ex-RAF pilot (well, I spent two years in the University Air Squadron) and arguments about Iraq would not be particularly welcome. Also, I restated the ban on smoking in the house (there’s a smoke alarm in every room) and had to put him outside when he needed his fix.

I tried to put the window back in its frame at ten. However, the gloss has not quite hardened underneath, although it felt dry on the surface. I’m afraid I’ve put a couple of smudged fingerprints onto the finish. Grr.

I tried sleeping with the fan off last night, but I don’t sleep so well. However, I am worried about the effect of the noise on my hearing. Maybe I should look into an electronic sea or waterfall noise generator - a CD is no good because of the pause while it returns to the start.

There were a couple of tiny spots that needing filling before I could apply the first layer of the undercoat. While that was drying, I went to Homebase and then Tesco. In the evening, I read my Times, and gave the woodwork a quick sanding. However, I have opened up a couple of spots of the mastic. Grr.

I wonder if this works - a link to the image showing the usage of my website by country:

Records from Awstats show that I’m getting about 500 visitors per day, with 66% staying for under 30 seconds, and approx 2 users staying for over one hour! I scribbled my diaries.