Trend Setter

I met some people today who didn't know what a blog is. And some of them were considerably younger than me. Surprising. I wonder if this means that I am a trend stetter? I told them all about my blog and, if they happen upon this rubbish, then welcome...

Twang!

Well, it had to happen. My carefully fettled repair to the car windows broke. The sequence was "Up - Down - Up - Down - twang - Down - Down - Down".

Not good. Fortunately I was at home, and performing stress tests on the thing, and so we weren't stuck any where. So I regrouped, did some thinking and now I can present my infallible "how to fix the windows on Rob's car" guide:

1. Remove entire door panel, whilst muttering to yourself under your breath that "You didn't think you'd have to do this again, darn, darn, darn"
2. Remove window winding mechanism and note that the cable has come out of the handy homebrew ending which you made out of an old terminal block and which turned out not to be strong enough. Reflect on how poor your forward planning was.
3. Take entire assembly into garage and ponder on how to improve matters.
4. Decide to double loop the cable around the block to produce an unburstable and solid fiting which cannot be removed.
5. Do this.
6. Find that you have not threaded the cable through the outer sheath and spring fitting prior to fitting unburstable end.
7. Say a naughty word.
8. Remove the fitting which cannot be removed, lacerating one finger whilst doing this.
9. Refit the irremovable fitting again.
10. Reassemble the drive cables and find that you have put the outer sheath on wrong way round.
11. Say another naughty word. Twice.
12. Find that you can't get the cable through the sheath any more because you have bent it about so much that the end is frayed. Lacerate thumb whilst doing this.
13. Get out wire cutters to make clean new end.
14. Remember that your wire cutters don't actually cut wire. They are just two pieces of crushed up silver paper which are labelled wire cutters.
15. Reflect that you don't get a very good 100 piece toolkit for 10 quid.
16. Recall that the next door neigbours, from whom you borrowed the wire cutters last time, are now in Amsterdam.
17. Finally cut the wire and fit everything together. Lacerate other thumb whilst doing this.
18. Put the entire thing together and make the window go up and down successfully twenty times.
19. Refix door panel, and put a small wedge in the glove box so that if everything breaks when we are out I can always wedge the window up.

Demob Happy

This is my last day in work for a while. I'm having a week of well earned holiday with my loving family (editors note - some of the preceding sentence is actually true).

A Must See

Book now for the latest summer blockbuster. One of America's finest actors in a tale of a man forced to choose between the passion of his life and doing the right thing. Set in the frantic world of girl's football a referee must choose between his heart or his head. After a blatent professional foul does he show her the red card, or keep her love for him alive? Al Pacino stars in "Sent off a woman".

Bad for my Blood Pressure

Spent a huge chunk of yesterday evening and all of this morning sorting out the electric windows in the "big car". Wot fun. Turns out that the cable had rusted, jammed, and then destroyed itself winding round the pulley. I can imagine the design meeting in France around 10 years ago:

Engineer: "I 'ave used the stainless steel in the weendow regulatore to pull the weendows urp and down".
Accountant: "But eef you use the cheaper steel wire eet will save a couple of euros per auto and make us reecher."
Engineer: "Oui. But wire ordinare will rust after a while and jam up, causing the weendow to get sturk."
Accountant: "Eh bien. Then the customere (or suckere as nous can call him) will then be forced to spend boucoups de cash with us to purchase a replacement. I put it to you that thees is a good idea."
Engineer : (thinking about his femme, kids and le mortgage and what would happen to them if he loses his travail) "OK. Have it votre way."

There is no way I'm going to spend 220 smackers just because the people that made my car used cheap materials. Particularly as they are the ones that get my cash. So today number one son and I spent literally ages fighting with the stupid device to replace the broken wire inside with two nice shiny ones originally designed for bicycle brakes. Cost six pounds in all.

It took a lot of effort, lots of heartache, skimmed knuckles, swearing and numerous twangy failures. But now we are pretty sure we've fixed the window. We just daren't use it....