Hoorah! I have access to my blog again, finally. All it took was a clean install of WordPress to resurrect it. No posts lost, thankfully!

Oh and it’s official – I’m now on the PCC for our church! Preparing to take over the Anglican Church from the inside… mwahahah…

Feeling much more human now that I’ve had two cups of tea today. Yay for feeling better again.

No tea since Sunday morning. Grrr. Need to get well so I can start feeding my addiction again.

I love living in the countryside.  There is warm sense of satisfaction in seeing tractors parked in the Co-op car park, of hearing cows mooing in a nearby field early in the morning, of the pungent smell of fresh manure wafting from the farm down the road, of knowing that rush hour traffic consists of maybe 5 cars.  However, it’s not entirely complete.  There are a few things missing.  The friends we’d made in Colchester.

So this weekend we made the journey to Essex, the car packed with all sorts of bits and pieces, mostly for the baby, to stay a couple of nights with some dear friends of ours who are still in Colchester.  Saturday was indeed the highlight for me.  We saw Phil and Jenny in the morning, we spent the afternoon in Wivenhoe with Phill and Phil and Anne-Marie and Sarah, and watched Doctor Who in the evening.  That in itself would ordinarily be enough, but in honour of this being our first visit to East Anglia with our baby, and having not seen people in yonks, Anne-Marie decided to make the barbecue one to remember for all time.

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Grrrr. Back ache.

Still feeling a little under the weather. Nowhere near as bad as yesterday though. Details will probably be on blog in due course.

I was taking some photos of our son Samuel the other day, and one of them reminded me of a photo I have of me when I was his age.  So I looked it up and compared them, and just couldn’t resist sharing the result with you all.  The attached picture shows me (top) and Samuel (bottom), both in a similar pose.  Can you tell we’re related?

As it happens, my Dad did a similar now-and-then comparison on his vintage bus blog, showing a photo of him as a lad in the driver’s seat of an old bus, and a more recent photo of him in the same position in a similar bus.  Actually, his blog is worth a read, in a geeky sort of way.  If you like old buses.  Or reading about my Dad.

Incredibly, I can remember the number plates of our old Ford Cortina and our red Austin Montego. However, I can’t remember what day it is.

How long is a yonk?

Just fixed the washing machine, and now feeling supremely clever.

Had about half an hour’s sleep since about 4am this morning. And now I’m at work. Yay.

Service this morning went well. The congregation seemed to take to my arrangement of ‘Amazing grace’! And yes, it will be on the album.

Just realised that MODx can crop and scale images! Yay! How on earth did I miss that feature… #modx

Oooh, MODx 1.0.3 is out. Gonna give that a try… #modx

Erm… why does marsbar.com need my date of birth to view their web site??

Just discovered Nambu, another Twitter client. Actually, this is pretty good… better even than Tweetie! Nice one.

Let me start by reassuring my readers that I have not been cheating on my wife.  I’m talking about pulling of a different kind.

One of the great things about being married is that you also gain a whole new family, and whereas traditionally the in-laws are meant to be evil incarnate I’m pleased to say that I love my additional parents very much.  My father-in-law is one of those sort of people who has everything.  If you need a particular garden tool, he’ll have three.  If you need to rig up some lighting for an amateur drama stage, he’ll have more than enough cabling just lying around waiting to be used.  If it’s raining and you didn’t bring an umbrella, he has nine spares.  It does of course mean that going to visit is a battle of wills – if you even hint at not having something, it’ll have been smuggled into your boot before you’ve left.

And then he offered us a trailer tent.

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It’s finished!  Hurrah!!  Well, at least as finished as it can be.  I’ve sort of run out of bricks.  So it’s as finished as it can be given the limited resources with which I am lumbered.  I did have a brief look online to see what Lego was being listed on eBay, but quickly ran away from that idea – I know that once I start buying Lego I’ll never stop, and then I’ll be skint.  Of course, if people want to give/donate Lego to me, that’s another matter…

Anyway, back the point.  My car is complete.  It took a bit of doing, and a bit of redoing of what I’d already done, but the end result is pretty satisfactory.  If you remember from my previous post, the front suspension was already sagging under the weight of the car, so rather than trying to reduce the weight I opted to increase the strength of the suspension to compensate.  That meant doubling up the springs, using the ones I’d been using for the rear axle and transplanting them into the front subframe.  Of course, that was easier said than done, and I had to make a few modifications to make room for two springs.  But I got there in the end, and the result is a front suspension setup that is twice as strong as it was – still with plenty of movement, but it feels like it’s actually capable of supporting the car now!

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Slowness of work and lack of motivation to find it (no doubt caused by my cold) meant that mid-afternoon today I gave up staring at my computer and went and got productive with the Lego instead.  I say “productive”, some might argue that building a Lego car doesn’t quite count as there is no ultimate gain at the end of it, other than a little self-back-patting.  Nonetheless, my aching back and legs are testament to the hours I spent sat on the floor today.  That and the visible progress I’ve made (photos coming tomorrow now added).

With the basic chassis pretty much sorted I started work on the body, taking some inspiration from a Ford Mustang but generally doing what I could with the pieces I have to make something vaguely resembling a muscle car.  First came the front bumper, which incorporated some cool headlights.  Photos don’t do justice to just how cool they look, especially in the dark.  I’m going for a red body, with a white stripe down the middle.  Making convincing curves with Lego has always been a challenge, and the result is usually a somewhat angular version of the intended curves.  Basically, use your imagination and you’ll see a pretty car underneath.

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