Long Weekend

[shermarama]

Things that have happened so far this weekend:

• A large filling has fallen out of a molar
• I've moved almost all my remaining stuff from Mile End to Holloway Road
• I've got a sixty quid parking ticket for being in a bay for about four minutes too long
• I've been to IKEA

All of these things have involved various levels of pain. I've never been to IKEA before, see, and I was quite keen on keeping up the record, but we needed a bed and we had a van and the Friday night before a bank holiday weekend, when they're fully stocked but hardly anyone else is there, was kind of a sensible time to go. Only it led to me having to get up in time to move the van before the residents-only parking bay kicked in at 8.30am on Saturday, which I did, but not quick enough for the tastes of the Civil Enforcement Officer who was standing next to it at 8.32. They're supposed to observe it being in the bay for five minutes, which she in no way did before I got there, but my mistake was in trying to explain that it didn't have a visitor's permit on it because I was about to drive it away. Rather than trying to explain I should have just driven off sharpish before she stuck the ticket to the windscreen, but I had some notion that they could then do me for trying to evade parking ticket justice or something so I was trying to make sure it was all right first. They take pictures to prove you were parked there, and in those I'm plainly in the act of driving away, and since the van hire only cost 41 quid while the ticket will cost sixty, I'm minded to try and challenge it, but it seems unlikely that I'd get anywhere. I think I'll take sixty quid as the price of learning to just drive away.

The moving was quicker than I expected, not least because the van hire place were going to rent me a Ford Connect, a smallish van, but its battery was dead so they offered me an Astra van and I said it was smaller and I didn't want it so they offered me a Transit for the same money. It was ancient and battered, but it ran perfectly well and meant we could move the whole lot in one van load. Jon came down to help and repay some of his housemoving debt, and my cunning skate what I made proved very useful for filing cabinets, if not quite ideal for slightly squidgy boxes. Putting it all away is going gradually but effectively; my fabric stash has actualy been something like organised, there are crannies in the lounge for things like my sewing machine, and having a bed that things can be stored under makes life so much easier. I genuinely don't get why anyone buys a divan bed.

The filling falling out is mainly blithering inconvenient. It doesn't hurt but it fell out on Saturday night, when the next time I can get to a dentist is likely to be next Friday, what with spending three days of next week up at Labman again. Chris told me of the existence of temporary filling stuff that you can get from chemists, though, so I'm sat here trying not to play with the stuff as it sets right now, and contemplating soup for lunch. Hopefully this will get me through the week and then hopefully the university dentists will be able to take me on, because actually it's only half a filling that's fallen out, the top middle bit, in a tooth that's been so extensively rebuilt already that if this filling can't be reconstructed I suspect the whole thing will have to come out. Nyurg.

Umm, and the bed we got from IKEA is rather comfy and was, well, kind of satisfying to put together given that it's me, and I was pleased with the paper tape measures, and the meatballs were quite tasty too. Ain't going there again any time soon, though.

Comments

[mzdt.livejournal.com]

I normally take against those who make a point of challenging perfectly good parking or speeding fines on technicalities, when they were actually illegally parked or speeding, they just think they should be allowed to do that... but you should challenge that one, if you can be arsed (my usual problem with such things). If the ticket is timed earlier than 2035 then you have perfect proof it wasn't 'observed' incorrectly parked for five minutes, and even if not, the standing there waiting to pounce is hardly ethical policing of parking; traffic wardens are there to keep streets clear that should be, or allow those to park who need to, not to raise revenue. No, I'm not naive, even if it sounds like it...

[shermarama]

On the ticket it says that I was observed from 0830 to 0836. That wasn't the time by any of the clocks available to me, and I know she wasn't stood there that long because I could see both her and the van from my bedroom window and I ran out to the van as quick as I could once I saw her, but it's my word against hers and they're not going to believe me.

But yeah, it's not really in the spirit of the thing. If I'd come downstairs with a visitor's permit in my hand (there was one in the windscreen from the day before, I did have some) then she might have let me off (I'm not sure how good her English was, the only thing she said to me in the whole nearly one-sided conversation was 'where is your ticket?', but I didn't because I was going to move it, not continue to park it.

The other reason for not bothering to challenge it is that the hire company will charge me a £25 admin fee if they get served with a Notice To Owner from the council, and I'm not sure a challenge would get through in the time to avoid that.

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

uh, i think everytime i said "stockwell" tonight i meant "vauxhall". there is no real logic to my frequent word-substitutions. Stockwell = where i live, almost. Vauxhall = big concretey bus station, nasty condo-type riverside flats with butterfly roofs, and gay strip. (as in area, rather than stripping).