A full day

After the usual morning routine of coffee, chicken liberation, emptying of dogs and breakfast I gathered my helmet, gloves and jacket and accepted a lift from 30% over to Redditch Motorcycles to pick up the Honda. I'm becoming accustomed to their somewhat disorganised approach and it came as no real surprise that, whilst the bike was MOT'd, serviced and had a new set of tyres, it wasn't actually there ...

... basically it had been MOT'd at a workshop in Alcester and needed to be collected. There was no point getting wound up about this so I chatted to Chris as he opened up the shop. Eventually his assistant arrived which meant that Chris could give me a pillion ride over to pick up my bike. Whilst I was loitering I did attempt to throw my leg over the BMW 1200GS in the showroom but the cruel shark of reality surfaced in my pipe dream of ownership, there was no way a short arse like me would ever be comfortable on anything that tall.

It was great to have the bike back on the road and, as I headed back to The Pile, it felt much more planted with new rubber. I may well have the Ducati serviced there if I can't get a response from Moto-vation as Chris is now happy to work on these complicated Italian V Twins.

Back at home I rang PtP and asked him to come over and check out yet another bloody leaking pipe.* I really can't believe our misfortune as I have noticed that another of the pipes in the bathroom has a slight weep from one of the compression joints ... at the moment it looks like everything in the house is dripping as both T&M have come in to season too. PtP advised that he would see if he could pop round later on to have a look and I reassured him that it wasn't urgent as it was a weep not a leak and could wait if he was busy.

Having got the important things out of the way, I finally sat down at my laptop and sent my CV over to Mr O&L to see whether any of the Management at Neat & Tidy Piano Movers would be interested in procuring my services. I then settled to work.

It was the normal disorganised nonsense and the political wrangles about who owns my current project continue. I am stuck in the middle of a bunch of Execs all chasing a win bonus but they can't all own the Engagement. It is fair to say that a couple of them are going to be quite pissed off in the next week or so as the hand-over workshop I was asked to run is likely to be cancelled.  This basically means that we are going to keep it rather than hand it back to the Account Team ... This will, without doubt, be an interesting spectacle.

I pushed a few rocks around on the latest project and started to sequentially arrange ducks but I was well aware that it is Friday and, quite literally, could not be arsed to start anything huge with the weekend imminent. Instead, I pottered and kept busy sorting out the Honda's Road Fund License and tweaking my to do list.

Late in the afternoon PtP popped round and examined my pipework. His verdict was that I really should find another Plumber as it will be a pig of a job ... we laughed and after a good natter he promised to pop around on Monday unless a more lucrative job turned up over the weekend.

It was fair to say that Paul's visit created a natural end to my working day and TP and 30% arrived home shortly thereafter. After greetings and news I headed out to the garage and made a start on my new work bench and within an hour had much of the timber cut and had made  a start on the joints to fix the top rails to the legs. As I finished trimming the final rebate 30% summoned me and we headed out for the final job of the day ... we nipped over to see Sally to collect our reupholstered dining chairs. She has made a superb job of them and they look fantastic now they have been cleaned, polished and recovered in a Sage Green leather.

I'm guessing that we may actually get to eat in the Dining Room this weekend.

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* in the same area as the ones he fixed last week. This one will be a complete and utter pig to fix as it sits behind the soil stack and is far from accessible.