Finally my computer is now back up and running. I have in the last few years gone through more hard drives than any one I know. It would appear they fall to bits just days after Microsoft updates and have to be either re-formatted or binned. Either way it stops me from compiling my blog and adding photos of events that have taken place. The fact that my old faithful machine is back up and running is in no small part due to Roger Moor. Armed with only a bagful of second hand spare bits and a bottle of Buffalo Trace we set to work rebuilding the mighty Green Meanie and only managed to finish when the bottle was empty!
So what has been happening over the last few weeks and months? I along with Bean Counter and Ted Magnum stayed at my brothers one weekend in May and I took Ted along to the Dukes pass. Photos and a detailed description of the event should appear in the travel section in a few days. I also went camping to a HUBB meeting at Ripley and again another write up will appear in the travel section as soon as I can upload the photos.
Rhonda has been given a service with some replacement parts and photos and details to appear in travel. I finally believe she is ready equipped and with all the modifications I require for long distance unlimited travel. Indeed it has been some time since I last saw anything and thought I need one of those.
More work has been completed on the house and Animal has replaced some of the plaster on the hall stairs and landing that had come away from the brickwork. The rear windows are in the process of being stripped back to the wood and stained and should be finished in around another four days weather pending. The garden is looking great after much sweat and toil and the greenhouse is positively blooming.
All of this sounds so positive what could go wrong? Well I keep finding things that require either work or money spending on them. Last week I decided that the bathroom needed tidying up and came up with a cost of a couple of hundred pounds and within the last two hours the garden shed has become damp again despite the new roof and guttering. The cause has been tracked down to a leaking ball cock valve in the toilet cistern. As it is a non serviceable item it will have to be replaced and usually this is not a big job. The cistern though is not in a usual place it is so high up the wall access to the inside of it requires a feat of contortionism.
I still have hopes of having the house completed by the end of September this year and ready to go on the market for Easter of 2011. This will in large depend upon financial events around the world as the UK has set a large austerity budget with massive cut backs. The cut backs may not affect my own job but if the jobless total rises then people will not be in a position to buy houses and those who are employed may be put off by the fact they might lose their own jobs at some point soon.
I am not alone in this position; a few people that I met at the HUBB meeting in Ripley are in the same boat. They have had houses on the market for a few months with little sign of them shifting at all. I fail to see why the bankers who caused most of this doom and gloom are not the ones picking up the tab for this mess. Instead the governments of the world have bailed them out, they are still awarding themselves massive bonuses and it is the little man on the street that is paying the price for it all with job losses and loss of spending power.
We may have a new government but as far as I can see nothing has changed at the top despite the assurances of transparency. What is absolutely transparent is that as usual the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Nothing changes does it?