The Aftermath of Achievement

Just to say - Mr. Barlow exceeded expectations! Unusually the AECC was bouncing and the crowd were on their feet from start to finish. I certainly enjoyed my little night out - and ironically after last nights blog it turns out I'm getting some more precious 'me time' next Friday too (although technically I'm not sure if it counts as the children are in bed anyway!) I'm heading up to see the new cinematic production of Les Miserables with the girls from the village. Looking forward to it!

I didn't even have to ask for any special babysitting favours as BB had already cornered his Grandma and asked when he could get another sleepover, and it turns out the night in question just happens to be the night the ladies are heading to the cinema. I'll be staying too though as we have an early rise to get BB to his swimming lesson back in Brechin.

Today didn't consist of much. I had to take mum to the train station and drop off BB at his pals as he was walking with them to the swimming lesson. We ended up back at their house until 2pm.

I decided on a whim, after my marathon walking efforts in the morning, that I would tackle fixing the handle lever on the pram. It's not much fun trying to push it in a straight line with the handle half up half down, and fully down is too low and hurts my back! I gathered my tools and once the offending lever was taken apart I realised that the metal shim indeed had slipped out (as suspected). I then opened up the opposing side to use it's shim as a template to make myself another one. I used some plastic packaging I had reserved for the job from some xmas pressies, and cut it to size. I had to glue a couple of pieces together to achieve the required depth, but once that was done I assembled everything back together and Bob's your father's brother it works again!

Having started on the pram though, I couldn't let it lie there! The front wheels have been bugging me for months as they had so much stuff wrapped around them (hair and grass as it turns out) that every walk feels like a bit of resistance training. All in an unreachable part, therefore more stripping was required. I took apart as much as I could and managed to cut away the offending foreign objects. It took me a good few hours in the end. The wheels were then attacked with WD40 to free up the mechanism. I managed to get one spinning quite happily, but rather frustratingly the other was completely ceased and no amount of brute force or lubricant was freeing the baby up! More annoyingly once I had re-assembled the wheel, the fittings made it even more stiff. I couldn't work out if I'd actually made it worse? (surely not!) Anywho's I feel a somewhat sense of achievement, but I've left a bloody mess at my heels!