Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

My internet connection keeps cutting out. That’s not all, a lot of things in this house are breaking or broken. I have a list, if you’ll indulge me.
(please note, these are not in chronological order or severity, just in the order they pop into my head) (also note, the hyphen “-” indicates breaking, the asterisk “*” means totally busted) (final note, these are all the things in our house that’ve been acquired in the 22 years of by life and the 10 years before that that my parents have owned this house, we’re not rich people who can afford to buy tons of stuff, we just can’t be bothered to get rid of the old stuff)
1 - The door of the old fridge is falling off, you have to push the bottom and lift it every time you close it (it has come of once or twice)
2 - the pilot light in the boiler doesn’t always come on, so we have to get down on the floor and ignite it by hand (I don't mean with a match or anything, with the little ignition button)
3 - the problem with the boiler affects the oven (it’s gas, we can’t abide electric (I’ll leave a note about my last encounter with an electric oven at the end, I don’t want to loose the flow here)) when the boiler’s on the stove refuses to light and when it does it’s a pitiful flame (I tried cooking partially frozen fish fingers once, took 3 hours and they were still cold)
4 * the fridge freezer (yes we have a second fridge (it’s been there since before I was born), I think one or both of them were second hand, as were a lot of things my parents got early on, that we ended up keeping) so, the fridge freezer (fridge on the bottom, freezer on top) hasn’t worked for a while, the freezer part broke first and the fridge followed, I don’t touch anything that’s been in that fridge (same goes for the freezer but more so) we need to clean it out at some point
5 * the old freezer (yes, we had a second freezer too, older than the other one) that broke years ago, we’ve never gotten round to getting rid of it
6 * the washing machine broke a few years ago, we’ve never replaced it or gotten rid of it (it’s not the first one we’ve had, but so far it’s the last) we use the laundrette
7 * the DVD player won’t work, not sure why (it’s our second)
8 - every time a moped goes passed (it’s happening quite a bit tonight (this morning technically)) the TV goes funny, like it’s about to cut out but doesn’t
9 * my old PC (my first one, windows 98) been broken for ages, Napoleon’s removed the hard drive, we just need to salvage anything useful and dispose of it
10 – this PC (like I said, the internet keeps cutting out, don’t know why, my printer is somehow disconnected and keeps trying to reconnect every time I turn the PC on, even though it fails every time ((tried reinstalling it and failed) oddly enough it can still print, I just change the default printer, but for some reason the change won’t stick so I have to do it every time I print)) and it’s been giving me an error message saying the memory it too low for a couple of months now but there’s nothing I can do to change that it seems.
11 -/* not quite sure if it’s breaking or broken, the hoover keeps cutting out after short periods of time (that’s why we haven’t hovered in ages (that changed last weekend, mum bought a new one, this one’s super powerful, I wonder how long it’ll last though (we have a bad track record with hoovers)))
12 * an old CD player/cassette player/radio Napoleon bought mum several birthdays ago (the CD tray stopped opening a short time after getting it, now it’s just large thing in the corner of the room, being used as a kind of table on a table)
13 – the mouse wheel of my computer mouse, the wheel refuses to scroll up and is starting not to scroll down either
14 – water leaks down from the bath into the kitchen, it’s getting annoying because no matter what we do to try and patch it up it won’t stop leaking(I stuffed clingfilm around the edges will little or no effect and the shower hose leaks when it connects to the taps)
15 - the water pressure in the kitchen sink, hot tap, is practically nonexistent, meaning it makes washing up even more or a chore than usual, it also runs out quite quickly (we don’t have a dishwasher, why would we? We have no room, it’s another thing to break and flood the kitchen, you have to clean it (I’ve seen the Finnish dishwasher cleaner adverts) it’s not worth the hassle)

That’s about all I can think of. It’s not really important, it’s a list I’ve been compiling in my head for a while now. Maybe I’ll make a list of something more cheerful next time, my list of goals to complete perhaps (a list of goals instead of a new years resolution, I think they’re pretty dumb, I’ve never kept them up, and besides, if there’s something that you want to change, like not smoking or going on a diet or any of that crap people make resolutions about, why wait until the new year? Do it now and you’ll live longer) I say it’s a list of goals because not all of them have to be achieved this year (I’m realistic about these things, no point setting goals you know you can’t or won’t keep), so maybe that next time, instead of “I don’t want to write a backdated event but I don’t want to put nothing” thing again. It’s kind of daunting to write the backdated events because I have to really think about them, get things in order and it’s hard to write up something that happened a while ago (unless it’s something really big, life changing even, that’s been stuck in my mind ever since)
Anyway, that’s all I can think of to say now.

Oh yes, my last ebcounter with an electric oven. It was when I was in halls of residence 2 years ago now and, naturally, the ovens were electric. Now, before that point I'd never used an electric oven, but I'd heard the stories like because there's no flame it doesn't show you that it's on so people get burnt because they touched it thinking it was off or checking to see it was on. So, just once, I decided to have beans on toast, cook the beans in my adorable little saucepan (I figured since we'd got it for uni I might as well use it at least once (it's had a lot of use since I've been home though)) Little saucepan, little single serving can of beans, I was there for about 3/4 of an hour cooking them and by the end they were'nt that hot, just warm. Perhaps I was doing it wrong. But I was told that it was a crap oven anyway, so maybe it was a bit of both. At least with gas you can see the flame, and you don't need to wait for it to warm up.