Category: Journal

I’ve replaced the bulk of the lights in our house with the fluorescent energy saving variety in a sort of joint attempt at saving money and doing my bit for the environment. We have fancy touch-sensitive dimmer switches in the bedrooms, and spotlights in the kitchen and upstairs landing, so they couldn’t be changed, but the two big lights in the lounge, plus the two lamps in there, and a new bathroom light that I fitted are all doing their part to save the world, now.

The pair of lights in the living room, equipped with two bulbs each, provide a good standard of light when they’re on, and the warm up time takes away the harshness that regular bulbs have. This is especially welcome first thing in the morning when I switch on the bathroom light – it’s almost soothing compared to the WHAM! effect the old spotlights had.

Unfortunately the bathroom one isn’t really bright enough for me – I went with two energy savers that were the equivalent of 60 watt bulbs, but I think I should have maybe gone with the 75 watt equivalent ones instead. I had figured that if they weren’t bright enough I could just replace them when they ran out, but as these things last for a couple of years it could be a long wait.

Every time I put the lights on now, I’m thinking; “wow… this is saving a shit load of energy.” There are probably guys sitting at the Grid control center, frowning at a read-out and scratching their chins at the sudden excess of power available since I made the switch.

I’ve been wondering about leaving them on all day, every day for a few months just to see if I could get my energy company to owe me money! 🙂

On the way to the garage this morning I passed the old Liverpool Garden Festival site, and was surprised to see they’d demolished and removed the domed structure that was once its centrepiece.

It’s amazing to think of the time and effort that must have gone in to building it all in the early 80’s, only for it to have become abandoned and derelict.

A few years back, Fliss and I stumbled upon the site while we were on a bike ride along the riverside. Curiosity had us lifting our bikes through a gap in the fence and then exploring the area. I find things like this fascinating. It was like the bit in Logan’s Run where they get outside and the world is all over grown and in ruins.

The BBC has some pictures of how it once looked in their feature “Garden Festival – 20 Years On“, with some images of how the site looked in 2004. Compare those with the shots I stopped to take on the way back today of the Garden Festival site as of February 2007, and it’s not hard to imagine that it’ll be all but gone within a couple of years.

Today I woke to find that my cold had gotten worse over night, leaving me with a pounding headache and a constantly flowing stream of snot. That had actually been with me since Saturday, so to find that it was still going strong on Monday morning was at least a show of consistency.

What sucked all the more was that I had to take the car to the garage so that they can repair the damage from the accident I had a week or so ago. Wrapping myself up well, I drove all the way across to the other side of the city to drop the car off at the authorised repair center. I had really wanted to get it done at the Honda dealership that I bought the car from, but couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of organising it all with the garage and my insurer, as the Honda place wasn’t an authorised repair center, despite being part of the same chain.

Once past an overzealous security guard, I navigated my way through a sea of cars. Failing to find a space, I parked my car alongside a row of others near reception and made my way there. It turned out the security guard was just a taster of the kind of customer service I could expect; polite enough not to be rude, but not exactly going out of their way to be friendly.

They took my drivers license to copy it and then sent me back out with a guy called Ian to do a bodywork inspection of my car. He was quite pleasant, and agreed the damage was minor, but since this wasn’t a Honda place they’d have to get the parts in. Knowing the Honda place was but a few miles away, I asked him how long it would take – “couple of days?”