Holiday activities

It's been a busy half term week. I've spent more time than intended fixing my car which I dented in a skid on the ice some weeks ago. But its done now and it passed it's MOT today with only a couple of advisory notes on tyre wear (and a nail in one of them).



Here's the completed front end rebuild. I've even washed it since this was taken.

Mabel has been away for a few days at my Mum's and we met up at Stonehenge to pick her up. Its been many years since I stopped and went around it. Its much more commercial now, but very low key. Last time I went I am sure you could go up to the stones so it must have been a long long time ago. There were many people there considering it was a cold dark and misty day in February.



We walked right around the ancient construction and marvelled at how it must have been made. Why did they do it, how long did it take, how did they plan it and convey to everyone what needed to be done? Many questions. It must have been built for a very good reason.



It feels quite spring like today. I spotted the first signs of life on the clematis that climbs the fence in the back garden today as it starts coming back to life.





I went on an epic walk on Monday with Millie doing about 8 miles with her on my back. Millie was getting a bit cold and fed up by the time I took this. I don't look too happy either! The dog chased a herd of deer across some land for a good half mile or so before giving up and I've ached ever since! My back is so painful. You can just see the deer in this picture, and some white patches of snow in the background.

Scooby progress

Had a bit of a disappointment earlier as I was hoping to get a Haynes workshop manual for my Legacy, but the only one available is via Haynes' on-line store for the USA model which is quite different from the UK model. I took a trip this morning to Halfords to buy one before I'd discovered this to be the case.



Meanwhile I removed the front bumper and nearside undamaged headlamp so I could see how the mounts should look. I was quite surprised just how much the offside had crumpled when I saw the undamaged side. A few bangs with hammer and pulling with mole grips should see it all straight again. Nothing too drastic, thank goodness. I'll need to paint a bit as some paint has peeled on the damaged metal.

Here's the undamaged side.



And the damaged side for comparison.



After straightening things up, I then offered up the replacement wing and bumper and loosely fitted them, just to check everything is aligned. Thankfully its all coming together. With the extra fog lights that came with the replacement bumper, it will look better when done than it did before.


Replacement bumper loosely fitted.



Fogs fitted.



Wing on, looking so much better now.

Fixing Scooby Doo

I finally managed to get some time today to start getting my Subaru fixed and back on the road.

Last night Kev came around to my house to pick up the replacement panels which I'd managed to track down through eBay (thanks Andy). I didn't expect them to come back painted quite as quickly as they did - amazingly he prepped and painted them and brought them back ready to fit after lunch today!



So, I set to work this afternoon carefully removing the damaged panels. It was harder than I expected it to be as the bent bits covered some of the places where bolts needed to be undone and some had rusted up and some of the plastic screws were damaged. Grrr. Old cars.

Once I'd finally managed to get the wing off the car I sadly discovered that some of the mounting panels were also bent, the plastic undershield is shattered and the inner parts of the headlamp are completely smashed.




More expense. Getting a second hand headlamp should be easy enough, but the plastic underwing mudshield I suspect will have to be bought new from Subaru. Bet that isn't cheap.



You can see the plastic mudshield here sitting on the wheel. Its big and extends under the front of the car in front of the wheel. Getting the bumper off looks like it will be easy enough - that's a job for tomorrow.

We're tough in Bishy

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/search/4106770.Dad_takes_daughter_to_school___in_a_tractor/

We take the kids to school in tractors when the snow gets too much!

That's because it is a 3 cylinder engine Sir.

I've got a hire car at the moment as my Subaru is off the road being fixed. Pretty horrible it is too.

When I picked it up last week, something didn't seem right about it. The engine was very rough. So I phoned the hire company and said:

"This Vauxhall Corsa I hired from you earlier today, something isn't right with the engine. It feels like its only running on 3 cylinders".

The guy on the other end started laughing.

"That's because it is a 3 cylinder engine Sir".

I was very embarrassed.

It's a rubbish car to drive. Truly the worst car I've ever driven. Even worse than a Trabant.

Still at £13 per day I can't complain. 1Car1 is the company I hired it from, and very pleasant to deal with.

Snow in Bishopstone

Its been a strange week. Unusually for England we've had some serious snow. Enough to close the schools and stop me getting into work.

Here's some shots I've taken around Bishopstone over the past few days. Scroll to the bottom and you'll also see a video of Liz on a sledgey sort of blow-up thingy... Plus some video form Mike Barrett skiing.














Liz, Mandy and Lorna having a laugh.

Morris Men Movie - the next big cult?

Its February

I had a very busy January. We've been going through a bit of a re-organisation at work, and my shortish (4 months) venture into leading the customer services side of what we do has thankfully come to an end. Its not that I don't enjoy that type of work, it just isn't what I really wanted to be doing and what the business needed me to be be doing. However we had a hole to fill and I jumped in to do it. Meanwhile the technical side of my work which I really love had slipped and I am struggling to get back into what has been going on. 4 months in a tech company is a long time and a lot can happen.

In addition to that, the world seems to have suddenly realised that knowing where stuff comes from is very important and we've been inundated with massive new projects from a number of global brands so all in all superb news. Plus we're now well funded and ready to launch some very good new technology to our entire user base in the next few days. I'm very excited about the future, and the good we seem to be doing.

Outside work, things have been busy too. Having 4 children takes up lots of time. I seem to have been constantly having to leave early to go to parents evenings, award ceremonies and so on. I've even missed a few BUMMS meets due to this.

Over the past couple of years I've travelled a lot, and this year finally looks like I won't have to do so much. I've been to most countries I wanted to visit now, just a few more which I'd volunteer for if the opportunity arises.

The past week or so has seen me re-visiting some work I did about 6 months ago on helping plot the big organic cotton farming projects of the world on a map. I've even visited some of them, so its great seeing that gradually come to life. Over the next month I'll be doing more on that and soon the site will be officially published.



The above gives a rough idea of what it looks like, but it will also be searchable by crop and not just be for cotton.