For the past month or so my car has been making a few odd grinding noises when setting off. Nothing major, and only when lifting my foot off the cluch to go into gear. I think something has finally worn off because just as I was pulling up to Amy’s house tonight my car emitted an awful screaming sound when in third gear. This went away when I drove back home, but while going down the motorway my car suddenly shot out of gear.

So I’m shooting down the motorway doing 70-odd MPH and all of a sudden I’m not in gear and effectively coasting to a halt … on the motorway. Fortunately it’s dead at night and with nobody behind me I drifted onto the hard shoulder. After checking I could still get into gears I drove off down the hard shoulder, built up speed and merged back into the flow.

It did it again about four times during the rest of the journey, but being wise to it I now knew just to stomp on the clutch and put my car back into gear.

I’ll ring the garage tomorrow and get it booked in. I hope they have courtesy cars, if not I’ll be catching the 7am bus to work. I’ll see how it drives to work tomorrow too, I think I’ve worked out what’s going on - gradual acceleration and gentle gear changing seems to help.

All rocked out

Yesterday was the second day of the East Riding Rock Festival and tonight’s bands seemed better. Less screaming and shouting, and more … music. I’m not back home yet, but I think I’ll be looking around iTunes later for some new music to buy

While sat in the bar area me and Amy found this poor mite. He’d been out doing his thing quite hard earlier, and sometime around 10am ran out of Star Power.

His supposed friends hadn’t, and went off to find some marker pens to decorate his face. It’s not as mean as it might seem, the victim had just endured ten minutes of people shouting, hitting and jumping on his chest… with no reaction other than a bit of vague muttering and hand waving. He was out for the count and so, under the laws of events like this, fair game.

Star Power Active

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Spambots have found my Twitter account, so if I chat to you on IRC feel free to abuse my autoposting script.

Yeah! Tonight and tomorrow is the East Riding Rock Festival in Hull. It started at half four, but at half four I was just leaving my house ready to go and collect Amy. We got there for somewhere around 8ish, which was fine.

I have a green wristband and a curious photo of the toilet with a worrying warning sign stuck to it.

Tomorrow I’ll take my camera and get some better shots.

The place was quite cool. Imagine a town hall full of leather clad, t-shirt wearing people waving their arms in an approximation of rhythm. It was wonderfully Emo and kiddie free, most people being over 20.

Asbestos, in my toilet?

Sorry LJ readers for the sudden mega-spam, normal daily updates will resume.

It was school’s open evening tonight and I decided to go and make an appearance just to see what’s going on.

Today I did some very mundane and traditional weekend things. Me and Amy woke up sometime around 10ish, had bacon, eggs and kippers. Then, after washing up I did some gardening. Later there was a trip to Sainsbury’s followed by a visit to Bradford to see some friends.

Doing this stuff every weekend would bore me stupid, but it’s nice to do ‘normal’ things every so often. It mildly irritates me that I lack the correct tools to neatly trim my hedge. I can do a much better job than what I’ve done.

I know it’s not right to go on about how much money you have, but it’ll be a long time before I have a monthly wage as high as the one I’ve just had. I won’t add numbers, but let’s just say that I’ve been paid the equivalent of three months in one.

Why? It’s all down to our government’s bribe golden hello paid to new teachers when they’ve successfully completed their first year of teaching. And given the effort and hassle I’ve had over the past few years, I think I am entitled to jump around a bit

Bills will be paid, money will be saved, and I think I need an iPod Touch.

RECAPTURED: Frankie Mouse

Master escape artist defies five foot fall and finds way into kitchen.

Frankie Mouse, renouned escape artist has confounded the authorities again by escaping from his tank for a second time. Towards the end of last year, before his counterpart’s untimely demise he was part of the great tank escape where a clever use of the water bottle enabled him to escape onto the roof of his tank. Fortunately this was noticed and no actual escape happened.

This time though sources believe once again the waterbottle trick was used, this time when the lid was removed to air out the tank.

Frankie not only managed to escape his tank, but then survived a five foot fall to the ground before disappearing. Shortly after his escape was discovered a one man search party began methodically searching the living room for any signs. The search was widened to include the kitchen after no trace was found in the front room. Several slug trails were found and this has been noted for future study.

He fell down there

After a few minutes searching in the kitchen, a pair of beady red eyes were spotted underneath the vegetable basket. Using a combination of a mixing bowl, patience and a rich tea biscuit the escapee was recaptured and returned to his tank.

After his exploration, Frankie is now enjoying the remainder of the very biscuit that aided in his recapture.

I had some phone spam yesterday from some American company doing an opinion poll.

Once I worked out it responded to buttons on my phone I spent a gleeful five minutes prodding random buttons. Then, tiring of this I hung up… but the other end didn’t… for ten minutes until an operator came on to take my details so they could send me my winnning prize.

So I hung up on him instead, which seemed to clear the line.

Next time I may respond with “Autorisation code please… what? how did you get this number. Forget you ever called and never call back, this is an unlisted number”

Amy made a roast chicken with garlic, butter and honey. I have half of it still to eat at work tomorrow.

Yum