Ageing (dis)gracefully!
Archive for August, 2007
Oil Still Leaking…
Aug 29th
Oil is still leaking from my car. However, after chatting to my dad (who has owned 4 or 5 306’s) and getting advice on the forums at pug306.net, I am now 99% sure its gearbox oil.
Its likely to be either the seal gone on the gearbox or the seal on the driveshaft. Either way, it’s booked into a garage to get fixed on Monday. Hopefully it won’t cost too much. The guy I spoke to at the garage said that if it was the driveshaft seal it would be about ?40 and if it was the gearbox seal it would be a few quid more.
Hard to tell exactly what it is until it goes in though. Watch this space!
Hell Has Frozen Over!
Aug 29th
Something impossible happened on Sunday. The original lead singer of my favourite band in the world (Marillion) reunited to perform one song at the Hobble On The Cobbles festival in Aylesbury. Fish was headlining and they joined him at the end of his set to play their debut single ‘Market Square Heroes’ simply due to the occasion, as it was held in the ‘Market Square’ of Aylesbury where the band formed nearly 30 years ago.
To say I am gutted I wasn’t there would be an absolute understatement! Especially as I was due to go but changed my mind a few weeks ago simply because money has been a bit tight of late (had to buy a new car).
Thankfully the following amateur footage has surfaced on youtube.
It’s a pretty piss poor performance as Marillion were mostly a bit drunk and haven’t played with Fish since 1988 …but thats not the point! The point is they said they would never play together again ….19 years on they finally have.
Put a smile on my face and a tear in my eye ..has to be said.
Rocker Cover Gasket Replaced!
Aug 28th
Over the last week I have noticed a small oil leak on my car. Nothng major, but a very definate patch of oil whenever I park it and come back to it the next day.
Today I took it round Lucy’s parents house and her dad had a look at it for me. We ended up taking the rocker cover off and replacing the gasket. A bit daunting for someone like me as I know next to nothing about cars, but enjoyable nonetheless. All went to plan and off we went.
On my way home though, the throttle kept sticking! Was quite scary as it was literally revving the bollocks out of the car and I was having to keep on the brakes to stop it accelerating ahead! Pulled over and flipped the bonnet up and found that we hadn’t firmly screwed in the 2 front screws on the air filter! This meant that the throttle mechanism was catching on a loose screw and getting stuck! …. pretty lethal if it had gone undetected!
We returned to Lucy’s parents straight away and her dad tightened the bolts up…and normality was restored! … Was a proper heart stopping 10-15 minutes though! Try being in a car that wants to accelerate on its own! ..its not nice!!
Not sure if we fixed the oil leak or not. We determined it was definately not the sump or the screw/washer in the sump ..both seemed fine and there was no sign of oil coming from that direction.
Time will tell I guess!
Suffering From Lack Of Gig-itis!
Aug 27th
I haven’t been to a gig since seeing Marillion in Portsmouth back in early June. Considering I had been to pretty much 1 gig a month since September 2006 I am starting to get severe withdrawl symptoms.
Several gigs have come up that I would have liked to have gone to but haven’t been able to. This is mainly due to moving house and all the hassle that comes with that, not to mention money it (paying for a house) eats up!
My next planned gig is Steve Hogarth in late September up in London. Steve, better known to fans as ‘H’ is Marillion’s lead singer (no, not Fish …the one who replaced him nearly 20 years ago). He will be doing a one man and a piano show which basically consists of him playing a mixture of material from marillion, pre marillion, solo stuff and anything else he fancies playing. He also interacts with the crowd, answering questions etc ….
He has done a few of these gigs before and generally they go down very very well… The gigs are normally in small intimate venues aswell. We are seeing him @ the Union Chapel in Islington.
I’m looking forward to this one even more as Lucy is coming with me. We intend to make a proper weekend of it up in London, staying over on the Saturday night and coming back late on Sunday.
Got a Porcupine Tree gig In November aswell (providing I can get the time off work) and as soon as I find out my shift pattern for my new job I will be snapping up a tickets for at least one date on Marillions ‘Snow-where else’ xmas tour!
Time to get back into the gig going game! 
Sky+ Woes Continue…..
Aug 27th
As mentioned below, our Sky+ box was recently replaced after being diagnosed with a ‘faulty transponder’. Over the last week some pretty major problems have surfaced with this ‘new’ box and what makes it even more annoying is that I am not convinced that the original box was faulty at all!
When the engineer visited last week he concluded that the ‘transponder’ had gone in the box. He reached this conclusion by testing the 2 wires coming from the sky dish…. no tests were run on the sky+ box at all.
No Satellite Signal Being Received
Aug 18th
I got home from work on Thursday to find ‘No Satellite Signal Is Being Received’ when I switched the TV on. After a bit of my own troubleshooting I called the Sky customer services number and we went through a few other things ..none of which cured the problem, so a service visit was booked in for this afternoon.
Prior to this I hadn’t realised how much I enjoy having Sky tv, but a few days without it was enough to convince me! Freeview is shit! Also, our old PVR only has a single tuner so we were back to only being able to record and watch one channel ….. dark times indeed!
An engineer called this afternoon and quickly established that our Sky+ box was faulty. He reckoned the ‘transponder’ had gone. Thankfully the service call was free (its normally charged @ ?65!) and they replaced the box for us …. we’ve only had it since we’ve been in this house aswell, so 2 months max ..as such the replacement was also free.
All up and running again now …..hopefully this new box will last a bit longer!
A Taste Of Things To Come
Aug 18th
As mentioned below, I went to a London yesterday to do a course on Business Objects XI. Went quite well …was pretty boring though and it’s hard to see what I can take from it to use in my new job. If I was using the application myself then it would be fine as thats all we covered …I am now proficient enough to use it.
Maybe the idea is to get an appreciation of what it is used for though. Time will tell I guess! I got a certificate out of it aswell ..so its another nugget for the C.V. if nothing else.
Was a pretty long day, 13 hours in total including all the travelling …perfect excuse to join a few mates down the pub for a few beers when I got home!
