The sun is out, the sky is blue...

... and I am sitting in a little room at the top of a tall house with the curtains closed typing about it. I am overly mediating.

 

M and I are two thirds of the way Up North and stopped last night in to see C and Wire the dog. We experienced the finest curry in Cheshire (probably) plus a rollicking live set in the pub next door afterwards. "Pulled into Nantwich, was feeling 'bout half past dead"... Cracking.

 

But we are feeling very much alive, specially after the Staffordshire oatcakes. And it's onwards to (hopefully sunny) Lancashire. Not sure what connectivity options there will be, so I have set my brain to receive birthday greetings telepathically.

 

joella

Gonna use it up, gonna wear it out...

The above is my New Year's Resolution, though it's possibly more important or indeed urgent that I shake my body down.

It's a good resolution, being a) aligned with the zeitgeist and b) something I haven't got much choice about, as my personal finances are bumping along the bottom at present. That's a year of working three days a week without drinking noticeably less for you.

I've been doing the use it up part for a while already. I'm managing well on one giant bottle of shampoo and one of conditioner (ok, so I buy my hair stuff at Neals Yard, so not the cheapest, but that's not *quite* what this is about) at a time, which I carefully decant into smaller bottles for the shower, for swimming and for travelling. I am also running three simultaneous tubes of moisturiser, but I bought them on a 3 for 2 and I got the 2 on my Boots Advantage card points, so that was £75 of facial product on the back of years of previous feckless purchasing. Go me!

And there's something very satisfying about using stuff up. It's going well in the kitchen too, though I did chuck out a rock hard box of Aunt Bessie's pancake mix the other day. I am not sure who bought it, but I suspect it was someone who doesn't live here anymore.

Wearing things out can also be very pleasing. I have worn out my pillowcases! I've never done that before. I've also worn out my orange pyjamas. I've never done that before either. (This gives some indication of how much time I spend in bed, which also needs to be addressed, but one thing at a time). But I think my underwear drawer took my resolution too literally, as in no time at all after I'd made it holes appeared in pretty much everything.

There was nothing else for it: I had to Go Bra Shopping. Fortunately, I had some M&S vouchers lurking in my wallet for just such an occasion, so I girded my loins and headed for the lingerie department.

My word, buying bras is a whole different prospect these days. Last time I did it seriously, they were all still in boxes, with the little cups on the top of the display and the big ones on the bottom. I shared gloomy looks of solidarity with other large breasted women as we crawled round on the floor scrabbling for that elusive E cup that didn't look like it was designed in Soviet Russia.

It's all changed. Racks of multicoloured flimsiness stretch into the distance. A disturbing amount of it could have been tagged 'slutty', and an astounding proportion of the bras were padded, even the big ones, but I persevered, and emerged from the changing rooms with four suitable garments, two very comfortable, and two slightly less comfortable but presentable enough to be worn under things that might show them a bit.

Given Jeremy Paxman's complaints about the quality of M&S underwear (and the hundreds of people who seem to agree with him), I wonder how long it will take me to wear these ones out.

joella

Losing my Cherry

No, not *that* cherry. I've already covered that. *This* Cherry:



The good looking one is my sister. The big red one is Cherry. The one with 'who let her walk the streets with that hair' hair is me, aged 23. The balloons are celebrating my return home from a year's backpacking with my Significant Ex.

I missed my family. I missed my friends. I missed my dog. And I missed my 2cv. I missed other things, like big jumpers and hot baths and pints of beer, but these were the important things I missed.

I got my 2cv when I was 18 and I sold her when I was 32. And Charlie is absolutely spot on (see comments on previous post) to link this with my newfound desire for a Tata Nano.

I loved that car far more than was healthy. In the time I had her, she received a new roof, a new chassis, a new front bumper, new kingpins (whatever they are), two new wheels, new seat belts (in the front: there were none in the back), a new floor, multiple new exhausts and tyres, endless new spark plugs and handbrake pins and god only knows what else. By the end I was sourcing parts off the internet and carrying them carefully down to the endlessly patient Oxford French Car Centre to be welded into place.

The windscreen wipers had two speeds: on and off. The maximum speed I ever managed was 75mph (or thereabouts - the needle was juddering against the end of the dial so it might have been faster, there was just no way to tell), downhill on the middle lane of the M6 screaming my lungs out. The lights were hopeless, and prone to flickering, especially in the rain, when the tape deck would also slow down as water dripped through it. At such times, I would be thankful for the rusted through parts of the floor, as they provided valuable drainage.

In the winter, you got nowhere without a can of WD40 and an ability to judge the precise combination of choke and accelerator required to avoid a) flattening the battery or b) flooding the engine. I once had to ask a policeman for a jump start in the car park of a motorway service station. It was 6am and I was wearing a T-shirt that said 'Trust me, I'm a condom'.

I always carried fuses for the lights (actually, only once the brake-light, headlight and indicator fuses had blown and my Significant Ex and I had to drive 10 miles in thick fog with him hanging out the passenger window shouting directions and me using 'slowing down now!' hand signals), the aforementioned jump leads, a torch, a big fluorescent waterproof and a telescopic wrench for getting the wheel nuts off. I had cause to use them all. The anxiety was lessened a bit once I got a mobile phone and could afford to join the RAC. A lovely man came out to me once when my accelerator cable jammed on the A34 -- I had to pull off the road with Cherry roaring like a stuck pig and I was a bit embarrassed, but he said he loved coming out to 2cvs because he could always fix them. He emerged from his van with a spring that looked like he'd nicked it off an anglepoise lamp, and I was on my way.

An article in the Times stated that they were the least safe car on the road. This prompted my only ever letter to a national newspaper, where I pointed out that at least in a 2cv you know you're not safe, so you drive accordingly, while your Jaguar/Volvo/Saab owner (these were the days before the invasion of the 4x4 bodysnatchers) is far more likely to drive like a twat because s/he feels invincible. So who's safer there, then? Huh? If we all drove 2cvs, I concluded, the world would be a better place.

And you know, when it comes down to it, despite the fact that I offer silent thanks to the car I now drive (M's 10 year old Mercedes A Class) every time the heavens open (or the wind blows or the frost bites or the motorway stretches out endlessly before me) for being so comfortable, so reliable, so unlikely to break down or blow up or kill or maim me in some unpredictable way, so *likely* to get me from A to B without incident, basically, a large part of me still believes the conclusion of that letter.

If you own a 2cv, and especially if you drive it in anger, you rely on the goodwill of humanity. I loved that about it even as I found it terrifying. But I also loved the romance of entry-level motoring: you, your tunes, alone with your thoughts or your boy by your side or a car full of friends, with the roof off (does the Tata Nano come in convertible?), the tape deck up to 11 because you'll never hear it otherwise, rolling cigarettes at red lights, groaning up hills, swooping down them, finally getting what they're on about when they talk about the open road. The fact that you're only a wing and a prayer away from getting the bus home makes that freedom taste all the sweeter, and the fact that most people simply can't see the point of that is the cherry on top. That's not why I called her Cherry though. That was just her name, as soon as I set eyes on her.

The Tata Nano is the closest thing to living that dream I've seen in a long time, though the Smart Car came pretty close before it went all kitsch. I like to think I haven't moved on into mid-life crisis car territory (for girls I think this probably equals MG or new-style Mini or Beetle) -- but the fact that the only other thing I have looked longingly at recently is J the plumber's ancient Land Rover is kind of reassuring.

Who knew I had that much to say about cars? I certainly didn't.

joella

So wrong but yet so right

I want a Tata Nano! I want a Tata Nano! Can I have a Tata Nano for my birthday please?

joella

Inside information

As I am a) a bit geeky and b) a bit anxious, I read P&HE Magazine from cover to cover. It's more interesting than you might think. No really, it is.

So I knew about this baby scalding case a while ago. The mainstream reporting on it is a bit wonky, which is understandable, as what happened (or at least what the plumbing industry body thinks happened) is a little complex to explain.

But let me try, in case you have a water storage cistern in your loft and a small child (or a large child, or yourself) in a bedroom under it and this story has worried you.

The water was not heated in the loft, but, like most stored hot water, in a hot water cylinder, probably in an airing cupboard. Most hot water cylinders have two ways of heating the water. The main way is via a coil, which circulates hot water from the gas boiler, but for back up or top up there is an immersion heater, which is powered by electricity and works much like a kettle element. You turn on the immersion heater and the water heats up until it reaches a certain temperature, when the thermostat turns it off.

If there is no gas then there might just be an immersion heater. This is a pretty expensive way to heat water, especially if the cylinder isn't well insulated, but it does happen quite a lot.

Cylinders heated in either of these ways are vented. As the water heats, it expands, and there is a pipe up into the loft space to allow for expansion. This ends over a cold water storage cistern (tank). This cistern generally stores water for the cold taps, though these can also be fed directly from the mains, and also feeds cold water into the hot water cylinder as hot water is drawn off via the hot taps. If steam rises up the pipe, it will condense and drip into the cold water cistern. But cold water is being replaced all the time as hot or cold water is used, so that water should stay pretty cold.

Unless the immersion heater is on and the thermostat fails. In which case, over time, that water will get hotter and hotter. The water in the cylinder will boil, go up the vent pipe, condense into the cistern, more water will be drawn into the cylinder from the cistern, and it will go round and round. In extreme circumstances, if no water is drawn off (which would bring cold water into the cistern from the mains), the whole system could reach scalding temperature.

Which is obviously potentially lethal. *However* even if that happened, if your storage cistern is compliant with the Water Regulations, which stipulate what material it should be made out of, what type and size of platform it should be sitting on, and what kind of covering it should have, then it should not fail in the way that this one did. This one was apparently on too small a platform, and was overlapping its edges. This doesn't matter if it's not hot, but once the water heated up, the plastic warped and the whole thing flipped, with dreadful consequences for the baby sleeping underneath it.

So, brothers and sisters. Don't ignore a dodgy thermostat, is the easiest thing to do. And make sure your plumber isn't like some of the guys on my course, who didn't write their names on the front of their copies of the Water Regs to make it easier to sell them on when the course was finished. You know, like doctors sell their anatomy books. They'll never need *them* again, right?

Just felt I needed to say that.

joella

Come into the garden, Maud

It's been interesting being upfront about my grown up UTI. When I was a child my teachers were more embarrassed than I was about my special toilet paper and special need to go to the water fountain. Special needs were something to be ashamed of. Some of that rubbed off on my young adult self, but not that much: I could tell you which of my friends had an STD, an eating disorder, a spotty back, or an unplanned pregnancy in their late teens (not that I *would* tell you, of course) -- nobody advertised these things, but you needed someone to bear witness to them. A problem shared really was a problem halved, so long as you chose the right person to share it with.

But something happens as you get older. Maybe it's that you feel the things that go wrong with your body or your life are more your own fault, maybe it's that we retreat into couples and talking outside that feels disloyal or inappropriate, maybe we just embarrass more easily at signs of our own flaws or fallibility.

I don't know what it is. But I decided not to make a secret of the reason I was so Very Pissed Off over New Year, and it was a great decision. I have had a tremendous outpouring of sympathy and empathy (mostly, but not exclusively, from women), plus some interesting prophylactic advice.

And if you give, you get. I had a hilarious exchange today with a friend who first offered urinary tract solidarity, and then asked for my opinion on bikini line management, prompted by the fact that hers is receiving close attention for the first time in a while.

It depends what you're dealing with, I said. And what he expects to be dealing with -- I know mores change on these things, that's why I go out with someone from the 1970s. No, he's cool, she said, he's at the Capability Brown end of the spectrum rather than the Zen garden end. But there are limits. We're talking rainforest here.

Fair enough, I said, and offered the phone number of the lovely E, who for the last 10 years has been in charge of removing what body hair I ask to be removed while diplomatically passing no comment on the rest.

But I was very taken with the idea of Capability Brown pubic hair. Seemingly natural but in fact carefully designed. I shall pretend that's what I'm up to from now on.

joella