Various

What have I been up to in the past few days?
Well, last Wednesday I took our car in for repairs -- the
ignition heating coils of the diesel engine had to be replaced
as the engine was misfiring. To my surprise, I found out that
the garage business will be closing in about 18 months' time.

It was a small back-street business in Mapperley, run by a
father and son, until the son left the business all of a sudden,
to work elsewhere. His dad has looked at various options,
such as selling it as a going concern and renting out his
premises to incomers, but in fact it will be more profitable to
sell off the property as development land for town-houses.
I'll be sad to see them go, as they've been very helpful and
have provided an excellent service -- a lot better than some
of the larger service garages where you never get to meet
the mechanics, and where you tend to pay a lot more for
work which can be of variable quality.

I've spent a few days sorting through mountains of paperwork
in this study/office/bedroom -- three large boxes of clutter
still left to sort out. Mrs C wants to use a spare table
alongside me to do some sewing (by machine), so I've had
an incentive to get on and make some space for her. I'll carry
on with the sorting when we get back from a week's holiday
in North Devon, that we're having next week.

I spent a good part of yesterday with a couple of my mates
in Nottingham. Every month we get together for a "jammin'"
session, playing electric guitar and singing some of the golden
oldies (from the early 60s onwards)... some of the singing
and guitar playing gets very loud. Although I've been playing
guitar since 1989, my playing is crap compared with my chums,
but they don't seem to mind my rubbish playing and my chatter.
I do enjoy our get-togethers, and our chat during and afterwards
-- we go off for a pint and a light lunch afterwards (usually to
the Sir John Borlasse Warren, if we're playing at Steve's). I've
mentioned this before, but the words "Last of the Summer
Wine" spring to mind, when I think about us.

I've been looking into RSS feeds, and I think I've managed to
enable this site for RSS ... would one of you let me know if
my RSS is working? I've had a look at Google Reader and
Bloglines for reading aggregate feeds. I wasn't very impressed
with GR, as it appears to let me see only their selection of
sites -- I want to personalise a reader for my own blogroll.
So I've had a look at Bloglines instead. I've yet to set it up
properly (email verification didn't come through last night, so
that will have to wait until we get back from holiday).

My next blog will be after we get back from holiday (c. 9 April).