Monday 2nd November - Reboot-Reload-Restart

Over half-term my car went to the garage to get the rear wiper sorted out (loose connection - fixed in minutes - no charge - thanks!)

That meant unloading my car so that the mechanic would have half a chance of getting at whatever he needed to get to.

I haven't seen my car look so tidy since the day I bought it:

I got everything ready in the hall to put back into the car ready for teaching. That kind husband of mine drove off to buy me a sack-trolley. It's there, with a red plastic crate and a couple of bungee cords at the back.

And in it all went... djembe (in a black padded case), repinique (in the blue bag), red plastic crate, Roland small guitar amp (in the white cloth bag) brand-new lightweight and extremely useful folding sack-trolley. There's also the white plastic crate of car bits and pieces - spare bulbs, first aid kit, instruction manual, tyre-weld canister, yellow hi-viz jacket, but you can't see it behind the djembe.

Front seat: blue bag for choir and ukulele on Monday evenings, pink bag for everyrthing, purple handbag for everything else.

 



Back seats: two bags of boomwhackers (I'm not using them very much, but until the shed gets built there's nowhere else to keep them - oh, hang on, I think he has other plans for the shed...) orange bag with 5 dinky little xylophones, bag with travel rug, bag full of bags of instruments (tambourines, claves, shakers, etc)

 

And off to work I went. Tomorrow I will add a lap-top, but remove the blue Monday evening bag.

That sack trolley was brilliant - the djembe weighs about 6 kilos, and wheeling it in to school (carrying the guitar amp and the purple hand bag and hoping that I didn't need anything out of the pink bag which I left in the car) made a huge difference.

Likewise, loading up the red crate with the blue choir/ukulele bag, guitar amp and pink bag and dragging it across the car park was so much easier than draping everything across my shoulders and plodding like an over-laden donkey....

Somehow I've managed to put everything in so that nothing rattles. I was getting tired of sounding as though I had a morris dancing team in the back of the car the whole time.

Sunday 6th May - Rush Hour Traffic



The Luggage is a large chest which follows Rincewind everywhere.. It is made of sapient pearwood, a magical, intelligent plant which is nearly extinct, impervious to magic. It can produce hundreds of little legs protruding from its underside and can move very fast if the need arises. It has been described as "half suitcase, half homicidal maniac"
(taken from Wikipedia)

On Friday, when I made my dash for freedom-from-piano-teaching, I hit Victoria Station at around 5pm, the beginning of the rush hour. It wasn't packed with "real" commuters then, more like large numbers of people-on-the-move, many towing bags-on-wheels.

This were strongly reminiscent of various adventures I had watched on TV involving the Top Gear presenters and rage against caravanners. Things like "why do caravanners always go so slowly" as yet again I nearly tripped over the towing handle/bar/line separating the person from their luggage. Or "why do they always go too fast" as my shins were viciously attacked by an out-of-control cabin bag which was trying to overtake the thoughtless traction units (aka idiot people) charging recklessly through the crowds.

This uncontrollable urge to take surreptitious kicks at the suitcases and bags in passing was growing so strong that my companion was getting worried. Any moment we were likely to be picked up on CCTV and detained by yellow-jacked security officers for anti-social activities .

It was a near thing, but luckily we made it out of the station before anything really drastic took place. Travelling by bus proved to be a much better idea than battering our way through the tube tunnels. Once I had cleared a path through various obstacles we we able to take our seats. At last we, or maybe it would be truer to say, the luggagers, were safe from further potential incident.

At least, until we got off at Oxford Circus.

But that's another story.