Cornwall - 14-17 Sept 05

We spent a few days down in Cornwall, staying in the Talland Bay Hotel. The hotel was pleasant, if a little formal, though since we were only there to sleep, it didn’t matter a great deal. Food was very good; well breakfast was, I can’t comment on dinner since we took the cheaper option and ate out. The owner looked like the sort who was very concerned about the quality of the food, and to be frank, we aren’t that concerned.

We stayed overnight on the way down at the Exeter Travelodge, and arrived early afternoon having diverted onto the edge of Dartmoor to find a pub for lunch. Very nice pub, only slight annoyance being that on returning to the car I found a puncture and had to play for the first time with the jack and such, lucky indeed that I got the jack handle from Peter else it would have been very unfortunate.

The spare proved to need balancing, revealed to be a loose balance weight inside the tyre of all things when I bought new front tyres on our return, but other than an annoying vibration at 70, it went well. We dropped back into Looe for a bit of shopping and then returned again for dinner, using the Indian that we had used before.

Friday the weather cleared to be bright if a little chilly and we set off for Truro and lunch. We were supposed to meet Annie, but she cancelled, which meant that neither of us ended up meeting our friends, but that’s how it goes and maybe in the future we will be luckier. Pub lunch once more saw us take the road to St Maws and ferry. The town is nice but very dog unfriendly so we skipped up the coast a bit for a walk and then returned to the hotel. Back to Looe for the evening and a rather dodgy appearing restaurant was all we could find for a snack that wasn’t smoking. Food turned out a good deal better than expected, better than lunch as it turned out.

Saturday we returned, a pleasant enough journey, broken for lunch at a country pub that was considerably off the route once more, but at least no puncture this time and the food was of an excellent standard. All in all we agreed that taking lunch like that was much more pleasant even if it takes a lot longer as we rarely leave any roadside eatery without feeling vaguely unsatisfied.

Saturday was pretty unexciting, about the only highligt was that Portia and Bobby chased a deer in the woods. Today was also slow but I got some shelves up and started again on the lounge cupboards.

Went round to Peters after work and we pulled the engine and gearbox from the Traction. Interesting as its the first time for me. Pretty simple, not that I expected otherwise and Peter regaled me with a tale of pulling the engine and gearbox from a Light 15 in a campsite on a rally. How they lifted it out I don't know! Of course the list if things that need replacing just got longer and longer as we worked.

Now its out, we have some more stripping down to do, but really now there is some very messy cleaning to do, followed by repainting etc. This is actually a good thing as it was pretty grotty under there and now it will allow me to get a head start with the engine bay detailing

Peter wants to drive over to CTA in Holland weekend after next and I am scheduled to go with him. Thats causing me problems with Laura as the weekend after I am in Barcelona and she is going to be sitting at home. Roll on the pet passports clearing in a few months so we can start driving abroad again

Busy days - lots of small tasks expanding to overfill the day. Don't seem to have the edge to concentrate enough to clear them out of the way. At least the breadmaker works well - if I had bought it then it would take a hell of a long time to clear the cost out of the savings. However, what it does do is give control over the content of the product and it looks like some experimentation will allow some variety to the bread - all the basic recipies seem simple enough.

Got to break this cycle of late to bed, late up. Problem now is that I am only just getting tired now, but then its too early up in the morning and so not sharp enough in the day. If I can get up early enough tomorrow then with a bit of luck I will be tired earlier in the evening.

Got pulled up by the Sales Manager today for not giving a positive enough spin on the years results, so I reckon that I really do need to shift to an upbeat position. Yah! OK lets see what tomorrow brings

OK, another wasted day. Well not quite, but lets see if we can get a balance here between optimism and pessimism. On the upside, we saw Mum for the first time in a while and I had a very pleasant chat. She seems well and the presents were great - can't wait to try out the breadmaker. Trouble is the guilt, she has spent a lot of money on us and we didn't even give her anything even though I have a much greater disposible income than her. We are giving her an old PC so that she can get online and she will need a lot of my time to get up and running, so maybe there is a trade-off. I can't really afford to spend more money on her but I can afford time (especially if I can get my life sorted out).

Something else I can do for her is to detail her car, even though she doesn't think that she needs it I think she will be pleased with the results and if I finish it with Autoglyms SR then the finish should last for a while By then I should have some pads and products so I may finish with the Clearkote carnuba wax for some instant pop.

So, on the upside then an old lesson relearnt - you should spend what you have, if you have time spend that, if you have money then spend that instead. Receiving gifts gives pleasure to the giver so that was good but there needs to be some balance.

On the downside, another wasted day and again a factor was a late start. As a penalty I kept to my rule that if I did not wash the car before taking the dogs out then I don't get to detail it.

We still have to start the wish list - maybe I should start that in a minute. I should already be packing up and moving upstairs to get ready for tomorrow but I will push it out for another 25 minutes. Target is to finish off down here, start the list and make an action plan for tomorrow.

Not much material acheived today - looks like a pretty gloomy blog now I look back at it. Maybe its a result of my natural outlook - I guess it is, so I wonder if it can be changed.

Had an interesting chat with Lucy about things but knowing our past history I doubt if it will make any changes, so I suppose its up to me to follow through.

Fitted the draught strips to the front door - thats what 18 months to do? Yuck, where is life going? Hmmm, gloomy again, maybe tomorrow I should start looking at the bright side of life...