Sunday, February 27, 2005

Why I am not materialistic

Today we bought a van. Its an L reg (1994) Ford Courier and it cost the grand sum of £899.
The poor old Seat is consigned to the great breakers yard in the sky and we had to get new wheels for him indoors and as he carts about a lot of band gear (both OUR band and his other band) then a van makes sense. Its white, its old, and it is quite frankly great. It isn't new, it isn't top of the range, its a bit tatty, and I am sure it will be a good van for years to come.It has character. Thats what I look for. Character. I am not being all "i can afford the best and i want brand new" but I could JUST about have afforded brand new, but I didn't see the need to buy brand new when I could get a van that has been used to ferry a boys basketball team about and still has carpet in the back with footballs on and a Bart Simpson air freshener and a manual for a Ford Fiesta in the glove compartment. Its a van with a history, a van that has been used for things a van should have been used for. The heater works, the radio works, there are seats in the back, and I can drive it. Its got a long MOT and it just works and I love it. I suggested giving it a name. Him indoors said no, so I am calling it (him) Neville Staples. Although I will only call it that to myself.
It's very exciting really. A brand new van lurks outside! Until tomorrow we are a three car family! Jezebel (MY car) will be jealous.
I have always been a charity shop fanatic (thanks mum!) and a fiend for the second hand, and the feeling of carrying this on in a van is very rewarding.
Second hand rose......... :-)

Friday, February 25, 2005

Filling in the gaps

I have been a combination of busy and can't be bothered recently! I have been reading, and knitting, and my band bought a PA (a pa SYSTEM, not a personal assistant. Although I would like one of those very much!)
DC79 did a couple more gigs, where I helped by being a very drunk sound engineer and falling asleep in the van on the way home.
I got my broadband upgraded to 2mb and went fully wireless at home. I saw a kid run out in front of a car in Morrisons and then watched the same kid hurl the most incredible language at the driver, and the kid couldn't have been more than 7. I would have run him over, but that's just me.
Its been snowing. I sold some more stuff on Ebay.
I got a bass guitar stand. Errmmm, I can't think of anything else!
Oh yes. Shall I dye my hair red? Tori Amos red. Mum, you can't answer this question because you will just say YES.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Time

I don't seem to be able to organise my free time all that well. I have all these great thoughts during the day, along the lines of "I will cook myself a nice tea (when him indoors and his truck are away) /play the Sims2/watch a film/knit a bit/read such and such" and then I get home and I have a glass of wine and eat cheese on toast and mooch about on the internet, have a bath (a bath for me takes about 2 hours, involving as it does candles, magazines, more wine, cheese, Planet Rock on the digital radio, a cat or two etc etc )and I don't DO any of the great things I thought of during the day. Then I get all "oooo I work too hard" (which is rubbish really) and feel guilty because I haven't done any of the good things I said I would.
But then the stuff I do instead IS good stuff in its own right, so maybe I AM good at organising myself.
I dunno, its like I have all this time and I waste it doing nothing especially, but then I LIKE doing my "especial nothingy things", so maybe its not a waste.
It comes down to housework. There is washing to be done. Him indoors can't even open the door of a washing machine, even after nearly 16 years of undomesticated bliss, and the hoover makes his asthma worse (he SAYS), and I just can't get excited about housework. It will all be there tomorrow to do all over again anyway, but I feel sometimes that I SHOULD do more.
Ours in a very very old house, and its slowly falling apart. And I can't afford to have most of it fixed, and most of the time I don't bother because its warm and dry (ish) and I don't live on a pavement, but sometimes I wish I lived in a mobile home somewhere near the sea, where cleaning up would take, oh, 10 minutes and I could shove the washing in a launderette and go to the pub until it was finished.
That's today's rant over.