Category Archives: Life

Life observations

Security Light Blues

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You know what it’s like when a job that ought to be really simple just ends up going wrong for no reason of your own.  This is what happened to me when I tried to replace a security light on our garage over the weekend.

Our garage is at the back of the house at the end of a long alley.  I have to back the car all the way up the alley, and in the winter time it’s rather muddy there, and for that reason plus to deter intruders, we have a security light on the corner of the garage.

However, although the security light comes on ok after it gets dark, it no sooner goes off than it comes back on again immediately, all through the night, which not only runs up the electric bill but annoys us and the neighbours as well.

So, on New Years Day, having purchased a new security light, I tried to fit it, which ought to have been a simple process, but unfortunately my luck never works out that way.

I went out to the garage mid-morning with good intentions, and began to disassemble the old light, having turned off the electricity to the garage.  I hadn’t spent more than 15 minutes on this, and had removed the light, when it began to drizzle.  So I put the lamps and tools in the garage, and went back into the house to wait for the rain to stop.

Instead of stopping, it just got heavier, and during a break I went out to the garage to retrieve the light and tools, since the garage roof, which is made of corrugated metal, was covered in condensation, and the constant drips were enough to ruin the light and to make everything rusty.

After that the heavens opened, and it rained continuously until well after dark.

The following day was bright and sunny, with no rain forecast, and so I endeavoured to try and complete the job. 

Where the wires came out from the concrete wall of the garage, I had noticed as soon as I had removed the old light the day before, that a horde of wood lice scurried into the hole and disappeared into the garage, and so prior to fixing the new light I thought it prudent to put some sealant in the hole to try and keep the electrics dry and free of bugs.

I had a tube of caulking that I had only part used a year before, but unfortunately the cap was full of dried up filler, and it took me a good 30 minutes to clean this out so that I could use it.   Into the hole the caulking went, but unfortunately the added pressure I needed to use because the caulking was old caused some of it to ooze out of the bottom of the container, and all over the caulking gun, which was virtually brand new.  

I tried to clean this, but  it was pretty evident that at best I could only do a bad job, and so with regret both the tube of caulking and the caulking gun went out into the trash.

Fortunately the new light looked like it was a newer model of the old one, and had the same shape, but were the holes to mount it in the same place?  Of course not!  The old light had holes in the top left and bottom right, the new one had them top right and bottom left.  So now I had to drill holes to fit the thing as well.

I have some good new masonry drill bits, but my drill is not an SDS one, and with the wall of the garage being made out of concrete blocks, it took me most of the drill battery to drill one hole, and the second one just didn’t want to co-operate, until such point where not only were my hands cramped, the battery went flat.   I changed battery, but guess what, the spare one was even flatter than the first, so I had to put that on charge, which takes about 24 hours.

So that was the end of that, and today after a long break for the holidays it’s back to work, with no light in the alley, and during the night and day terrific wind and rain.

The task is now going to have to wait until this coming weekend, when I will be armed with a couple of fresh batteries, and hope that my not so trusty drill will do the trick this time.

I don’t know why the simplest of tasks have to prove so complicated, but it’s the story of my life unfortunately.  Somewhere where has to be someone who has the opposite side of the coin, so I hope that they are grateful for my taking on more than my fair share of problems so that they can have an easier time of things.

Is this something that you can relate to?  If so, I would like to hear what you have to say, so please leave a comment.

Today Seems Kind Of Odd

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With this being the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend in the USA, it seems rather weird for me being in the UK, sitting in an office working, when I feel that I ought to be relaxing at home with family and friends, or at least out grabbing some shopping bargains since it’s Black Friday.

Yes I’m English, but I moved to the USA in 1994 and lived there for 15 years, only returning to the UK in 2009, so as well as now being a dual American/British Citizen, I had 15 years to adopt the American lifestyle and to get used to spending the last weekend in November having a much earned break.

You would think that by being in the UK for over 2 years I would have got over this feeling by now, and I am sure that I would have, if it were not for having many friends and contacts who live in the USA, as well as my two daughters, whose Christmas presents I was shopping for Thanksgiving Day online to try and get some good deals.

In addition to this, I have been creating lenses (pages) on Squidoo that are related to the Black Friday sales, and reading lots of other pages about how people celebrate Thanksgiving, so it’s difficult to cut yourself off from everything that’s happening across the pond.

So here I am sitting in an office, on a day that’s not terribly busy, a lovely sunny day too, which is fairly rare for November in the UK, and I wish that I could have been at home so that Debbie and I could have gone for a lovely walk in The New Forest.

We are planning to do that tomorrow, but the weather man already said it’s going to be a chilly night tonight, and knowing our luck it will also be cloudy as well.  At this time of the year in the UK you have to pick your moments, you can’t always afford to put things off until tomorrow, because the weather might not be on your side.

Well those are my thoughts for this day after Thanksgiving.  I hope everyone that we know in the USA had a wonderful day yesterday.  Meantime instead of wishing that we too had a 4-day weekend, I am going to think ahead to next Easter, when we get our 4-day weekend, and in the USA it’s just another 2-day one.

Football: The People’s Game

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I don’t know how many readers of this blog are into football; I’m sure some are and most will have friends or family who have the disease. At its best a football match is a contest between two able and sporting teams, striving with skill and passion to win the game. Play in a stadium like Anfield, home of my club, Liverpool FC, and you play in a cauldron of noise with witty and fanatical supporters. Beat us and we’ll likely applaud you from the pitch, and not many can say that.

There’s a history behind great clubs, a line of managers and players who’ve come, strived and departed. In years past they’ve been mainly from the same working class roots as the fans and indeed the players. There’s a tale from the early Sixties where a message was sent to the lodgings of the young Ian Callaghan – “you’re playing this afternoon”. Ian duly got his boots and kit and went out to the bus stop where LFC fans called him forward – “come on Callie, you’re playing, get to the front of the queue.”

It’s different these days: nowadays players are told to leave the really flash cars at home so most turn up in black 4x4s with tinted windows (illegally tinted but police allow it so as to avoid disturbances when the cars are not in motion). The only people richer than the players are the owners. American millionaires in today’s climate are overshadowed by Russian oligarchs with more security than the Libyan President. Fans on minimum wage have learned of leveraged buyouts and corporate governance and hedge funds and the rest of the financial gobbledegook that is used to hide the greed and malpractices of a shady few.

Over all of them hover the Sovereign Wealth Funds, the conjoined wealth of Arab clans and Maoist governments. Inbred regimes buying respectability and publicity by purchasing chunks of English history and planting golf courses in deserts. Ex Thai Prime Ministers with corruption charges against them and god knows what else sniff around: if Noriega was alive he’d probably be after Newcastle United. The financial chancers sniff around, as LFC found out to great cost in recent years. And quietly in the background Rupert Murdoch counts his billions, a fortune driven by Sky Sports, driven by The Premier League.

Look at a new stadium today: corporate boxes abound – business bigwigs on tax-deductible blowouts (our taxes that is). Tiered seat prices, carefully calculated by the demographics experts to extract the last penny from fans who’ll go short elsewhere to buy a ticket.

And do I go to games regularly? Of course I do, I’m a supporter. God help me.

The author has recently published a Squidoo lens detailing Liverpol FC sites on the web. Drop by and watch for the link to Alan Edge’s great article on Bob Paisley’s grandaughter.

We need sad songs

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Sad Songs: why do we love them?

I think we all have our favourite sad songs – songs that we turn to when we’re miserable and songs that make us even more miserable – but we can’t stop ourselves. It might be a chance playing on the radio, a snippet overheard as a car drives by, a random selection on the iPod. It might be a deliberate playing – curled up with a mug of hot chocolate or a glass of wine, the door still shaking after the row and the lover walking out – we have to put on music that suits our mood – misery needs feeding and a sad song is the best food for sadness.

Mind you, a song doesn’t have to be about lost love, it can be about anything going wrong. From Eric Clapton’s tears for his dead son to a lament for a lost cause, it’s sad if it makes us sad, it’s good if it makes us cry. Memories get stirred up, sometimes old hurts are brought back to be picked at until the blood runs. We’re daft to do it but the soul needs misery as well as joy.

I picked my ten favourite sad songs for a blog a while ago. I chose Janis Ian’s At Seventeen, I chose That’s No Way To Say Goodbye by Leonard Cohen. There’s Harry Chapin on a father’s neglect of his son and the loss of any relationship, there’s Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand with a majestic You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore. They’re all about loss and they’re all about self blame – we failed to control a bad situation or we just let it happen. Perhaps that’s why we like sad songs: they let us pretend we were steamrollered by life when really it was our own fault for not spotting the signs and acting.

Or perhaps we just like a good wallow: it reminds us that our lives aren’t too bad after all, that we can turn off the music and let the sadness end. For a time anyway. For a while we had a partner in our misery, someone who’d suffered like us, now we’re moving on. Until the next time.

Time to rack up Leonard Cohen and Dory Previn, time to put Tracy Chapman on endless repeat, or to play “our song” until the neighbours complain. Break out the booze or the ice cream, slob out on the couch – misery wears a ratty dressing gown and slippers – leave me alone, I have my sad songs.