What's made you grumpy today?

[The Panda Nut]

My 1.2 Fabia is now 6.5 years old, so I was bracing myself for a cambelt change next January. Maybe not. Only on 39000 miles now.

FYI. Our Leon 1.4 is now 19 and we have had the belt done religiously every 4 years. So far every one has looked like new when removed and with no real signs of deterioration. I must say its is currently well overdue but its going to be moved off the its make before too long, as Parts are no longer available from Seat. Its around 130,000 miles and suffers from a very noisy cam lifter but that's not getting done either. Just brakes and steering on the list now.... It really need mew calipers all round as they are getting sticky and I am fed up of keep stripping and cleaning etc. 19 years motoring for £7000. That'll do!

 

[The Panda Nut]

more females tend to. - sorry girls, just what I've observed

OMG!! Jock your so dead mate.... It was nice knowing you!! They WILL find out and then .... well frankly you've had your chips.

Cant click like for this or I would be dead too, and it would be a long slow painful death too. My youngest, well shes just waiting for me to get older so she can beat me for what I've said to date, and, this would just move me up her agenda!

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

They WILL find out and then .... well frankly you've had your chips.

My youngest, well shes just waiting for me to get older so she can beat me for what I've said to date, and, this would just move me up her agenda!

I'm afraid I'm not heavily into political correctness and Mrs J regularly bashes me over the head - and sometimes worse - if she thinks I've stepped too far out of line.

My daughter used to berate me something terrible but now she's much older (married with teenage children of her own) she seems to have settled into just accepting me for what I am - a silly, but harmless, old F**t!

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

OMG!!

Cant click like for this or I would be dead too,

OMG? Some kind of genetically altered food? - Ho Ho, just joking

Oh go on, grasp life by the horns and just do your own thing. :shrug:

 

[varesecrazy]

Thursday morning a neighbour lets our panda driver know that a few cars locally have had their windows broken.. turns out one was ours

Im at work.. so lots of messages back and forth.. agree to use the Insurances 'Glass Cover'

Arrangements are made for a Temporary Repair on thursday evening..cancelled by them at 20:00 no operative in area

Assured it would happen Friday.. it didnt

Made a vague attempt ourselves..bag and tape

Chased their repair.. car needs to cover 110 miles for next week..
No agent available... they get a breakdown agent to attend.. nice fella

'Youve done a good job..Ive got nothing better'.. but I will add another layer


Saturday
After 4+HOURS on the phone trying to get a properly equipped person to attend

Im told that 'using your own clingfilm will be good enough'

So.. that is 3 days and @8 hours on the phone to discover:

We cannot give a reglazing date

Fix it yourself

:shrug:
I now know why they no longer appear to trade as .......'National Windscreens'

Im now off for a breezy drive to buy some clingfilm..while not sitting on broken glass.

 

[StevenRB45]

Im now off for a breezy drive to buy some clingfilm..while not sitting on broken glass.

See if you can get some "crash wrap" or the protective film decorators put down from a hardware shop its significantly thicker than cling film.

My grump..Amazon...you recently bought a pressure gauge..do you need another? Yes, I need one for each tyre.

 

[The Panda Nut]

OMG? Some kind of genetically altered food? - Ho Ho, just joking

Oh go on, grasp life by the horns and just do your own thing. :shrug:

I do and yesterday my youngest said

"you live to vex, you've been an irritating old B****** all my life and don't try and deny it" Its good to k ow I'm a huge success at something!
I always say what do you think my dad would hae said if I'd spoken to him like that. She says she's only going to give me a little beating when I'm to old to defend myself as most of my vexing has been more or less forgiven....

PS I'm off to change the coil pack on her car now.... FOC of course.. NOW THAT IS VEXING

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

PS I'm off to change the coil pack on her car now.... FOC of course.. NOW THAT IS VEXING

Oh yes, goes without saying, Dad's Garage FOC parts and labour inclusive!

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Today's grump. Went into my garden shed to get the half empty container of coolant I knew I'd put in there after renewing the coolant in the Panda and Punto. I was going to take a picture of it to post up for Panda92 in his thread about cooling/antifreeze. While I'm digging around in the chaos which is my shed I slowly become aware of a high pitched buzzing sound. Then a wasp swoops past in front of my face and I look up to see a wasp's nest about the size of a football hanging from the roof near the back of the shed with lots of wasps crawling all over the outside of it and lots more coming and going through a small hole in the eves! I didn't know I could actually move so fast, but within seconds I found myself at the other end of the garden!

My immediate thoughts were to buy a puffer of wasp killer and spray it with powder. I've had success doing this in the past but never with such a large nest. Thought I'd go on line and check out local eradicators and turned up a wee local business who are coming round tomorrow at around midday who will spray the nest and remove it entirely for £40. (maybe plus VAT?) I'm happy to pay that so I don't have to go to the back of my shed in with the wasps to spray the powder and probably get stung! Another £40 cost I could have done without though. My neighbour tells me £40 is cheap for this sort of thing though.

 

[The Panda Nut]

Today's grump. Went into my garden shed to get the half empty container of coolant I knew I'd put in there after renewing the coolant in the Panda and Punto. I was going to take a picture of it to post up for Panda92 in his thread about cooling/antifreeze. While I'm digging around in the chaos which is my shed I slowly become aware of a high pitched buzzing sound. Then a wasp swoops past in front of my face and I look up to see a wasp's nest about the size of a football hanging from the roof near the back of the shed with lots of wasps crawling all over the outside of it and lots more coming and going through a small hole in the eves! I didn't know I could actually move so fast, but within seconds I found myself at the other end of the garden!

My immediate thoughts were to buy a puffer of wasp killer and spray it with powder. I've had success doing this in the past but never with such a large nest. Thought I'd go on line and check out local eradicators and turned up a wee local business who are coming round tomorrow at around midday who will spray the nest and remove it entirely for £40. (maybe plus VAT?) I'm happy to pay that so I don't have to go to the back of my shed in with the wasps to spray the powder and probably get stung! Another £40 cost I could have done without though. My neighbour tells me £40 is cheap for this sort of thing though.

£40 A BARGAIN INDEED. Covid K as she be known from now on had about a dozen nests in the roof her house when we bought it. Mostly little ones the size of a tennis ball, medium sized one the size of a football..... and the monster wasps nest from hell the size of a wheel barrow and a big one at that. £250... As it happens these were all inert apart from the little one but there was no way on earth I was going to find out. The Pest Controller reckoned 40,000 wasps minimum on that big one. You can get a spray that you inject into the nest but this needs to be done at night when they are asleep in bed. I have tried these and also spray foams that are almost instant kill. Its a shame they can't just live in peace with us, but I am not prepared to share my home with them as they are nasty viscous things, and not in an oily sense. I don't like-um.

 

[jimboy]

For some reason I have two tubes of wasp killer powder, had this stuff for years. We do tend to have wasps at this time of the year. Initially I used the powder on a nest, but all you had to do was get the powder on one wasp at least to take into the nest, this was enough to kill off the whole nest. Still kills off wasp now. £2.39 from b and q price tag on one of the containers.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

I've dusted a number of wasp nests over the years and killed them all. One was in the cavity of the wall under the kitchen window, they were going in and out of a very small hole in the mortar under the sill. Squirted the powder in the hole and ran away very fast. one application finished them. I've had several in the shed but all small ones which were not much risk doing. The worst was in my roof. they were getting in and out of a slightly too large hole where the overflow pipe for the roof tank exited through the eves. We realized something was wrong when we kept getting wasps in the bedroom and when I went up into the loft there was a pretty big nest of them completely covering the space between two timber joists and sort of molded round them. It was actually quite beautiful to see but I couldn't see any way of making a quick exit so decided to squirt powder into the hole by the overflow pipe. Borrowed a neighbour's ladder and, with the bravado that only youth can give you, climbed up and quickly gave it two big squirts before shooting back down the ladder and running away to the other end of the garden. Lots of wasps came out and flew around for a while but after a while it all went quiet again. Two days later there was much reduced activity but still some going in and out so I "squirted" it again and that seemed to do the trick. About a week later, with no sign of any activity, I went up into the loft and had a good look at the nest. Boy it was some size. I actually just left it where it was and over the years it's pretty much collapsed into what now looks a bit like a heap of shredded tissue paper. Shame really, it was a beautiful thing to behold.

On reflection though I think I was really stupid to climb up that ladder - two storey house - in just a T shirt and jeans. If they'd figured out what I was up to and even half a dozen of the thousands which must have been in there had attacked me I'd probably have fallen off the ladder and landed on the concrete slabs I'd recently made a new Patio with. When you're young you lack imagination though, don't you? This one in the shed just frightens me too much so I think it's going to be £40 well spent. It is cheap though isn't it? It's going to be interesting to see who turns up in the morning and how they deal with it!

 

[jimboy]

I’m a tight git Jock when ever the situation arises :

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

It's probably just you can't hear an idling petrol 3 streets away.

I think it's more the stench TBH

There's a button on the end of the indicator stalk, I think it uses the same horn as the angry steering wheel one but at a lower volume

Oh thats a good idea, surprised others haven't done similar.

 

[portland_bill]

... I look up to see a wasp's nest about the size of a football hanging from the roof near the back of the shed with lots of wasps crawling all over the outside of it and lots more coming and going through a small hole in the eves! I didn't know I could actually move so fast, but within seconds I found myself at the other end of the garden!

My immediate thoughts were to buy a puffer of wasp killer and spray it with powder. I've had success doing this in the past but never with such a large nest. Thought I'd go on line and check out local eradicators and turned up a wee local business who are coming round tomorrow at around midday who will spray the nest and remove it entirely for £40. (maybe plus VAT?) I'm happy to pay that so I don't have to go to the back of my shed in with the wasps to spray the powder and probably get stung! Another £40 cost I could have done without though. My neighbour tells me £40 is cheap for this sort of thing though.

Many years ago, a work colleague had wasps in his house, more than normal. At the top of his road was a small newsagents, from who he got a wasp spray. These were cheap, and faulty, once the nozzle was pressed, it would not stop. Killed the wasps, but had to be dumped into the dustbin until empty.
A few days later, his daughter's bedroom was swarming with wasps. He saw them coming and going through a tiny hole at one edge of the ceiling. He popped his head inot the loft space, saw a large nest, about the size of a football.
He spent a lot of the next morning phoning around for a pest controller. Best offer was 3 weeks away, and over £100. This was in the early nineties.
Light bulb moment. Stopped off at the newsagents, bought three faulty sprays. Up on a ladder, started one, lift hatch, and threw it into the roof like a grenade. Repeated with the other two. He left it a couple of hours, listened, no noises at all. Lifted the hatch, all quiet, lots of dead wasps everywhere. Dropped the nest into a carrier bag, put it in the dustbin, vacuumed the loft, job done.

Now, where can you get a cheap faulty iinsect spray when you need one, or three?

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

That's a wonderful tale PB. It conjurs up a wonderful image of that chap lobbing the canisters into his loft. With as much insecticide as that blowing around I do hope there were no after effects for his daughter?

The only thing about your post which is really worrying me - and I do tend to be a "worrier" - is that £40 seems to be very very cheap from what everyone I've spoken to is saying. On the other hand the nest is in my shed so at worst it'll be £40 quid wasted if they turn out to be a load of jokers? Mind you I did spot another site offering to do "simple" nests for £50. So maybe there's too many companies all chasing business up here?

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

I suppose I should be posting this in the "smiles" thread, but as I started the subject off here I'll just wrap it up here too.

The Wasp man came at 9.30 am and commented that he thought the nest was bigger than it looked from the number of wasps coming and going. I immediately thought "is this going to be a ploy to pump the £40 up"? I was very impressed with the way he dealt with it, first spraying it with his own insecticide mixture which was an oil based liquid to saturate the nest and quickly knock down the majority of the wasps. After a wait of 15 minutes he went back in to knock the nest into a large plastic bag for removal. He'd only been in there for about 30 seconds when he muttered an "expletive" and reemerged with the nest in the bag and a sting on his hand. Ok, said he, that part of the nest is done but they've got under the roof felt and built a thin flat wide nest between the felt and the roof planking.

Two ways to do this now. Either tear off the felt - and probably get stung again - so he can spray the liquid spray on the nest directly or spray powder up it inside where the wasps can take the powder in with them and spread it to the others. The roofing felt is in good order so I went for the powder. He tells me the powder he uses is very similar to the stuff you'd buy in supermarkets/garden centres only about 3 times more lethal. I've used the DIY type powder several times and it always kills them so I've no doubt this approach is going to work.

Don't go near it for the next 3 hours and if there's still any sign of them tomorrow just give me a ring and I'll come back and retreat FOC. He's not expecting to return though. Before I could ask him what I owed him - I was sure it was going to be more than the £40 as he'd used two different products and been here for nearly an hour and had to shift a lot of my junk out of the shed for access - He said "So that'll be £40 please" I gave him enough extra to ensure he could buy a couple of good drinks for his trouble and he seemed genuinely surprised. I'm very impressed with this chap indeed so think it's worth giving him a recommendation for anyone around the Edinburgh area: http://www.edinburghwaspcontrol.co.uk/

Hardly had he gone out the front door than our plumber turn up, as arranged, to service our boiler and living room gas fire. He's an absolute gem of a find (friend of one of our neighbours) who does a really good job at a very affordable price. While he was here he noticed our downstairs loo was difficult to flush and pointed this out to me. I know exactly what's wrong, it's a common fault, the plastic diaphragm in the syphon is ripped. My loos are close coupled type so to do this job the water supply has to be isolated and the pipe disconnected. Then the screws holding the cistern to the wall removed, the wingnuts holding the cistern to the pan undone and the cistern lifted off the pan completely so access can be gained to the nut holding the syphon into the cistern. The problem with this particular loo is that the builders plumber installed the water pipes (fitted with a gate valve which is useless for this sort of isolating function) before the waste pipe from the pan and, yes you've guessed it, he's put the gate valve right behind, and hard up against, the large diameter waste pipe so you can't actually operate the gate valve even if you wanted to! So the only way to do this one is to block the cold outlet from the roof tank and try to bleed out as much water from the cold pipes as possible before undoing the union on the bottom of the cistern. Lot's and lots of old towels on the floor will be needed. As you might imagine I've been putting this off and not at all looking forward to it. Anyway, I heard him operating the flush handle a few times to get it flushed and when he emerged he said "you need a new syphon on that you know". I told him I knew but had been putting off for the reasons stated above. "Jock, I'm not all that busy this week, really simple job for me, I could have that done for you in less than half an hour if you want and I'll install a syphon which can be partially dismantled in situ so that in future you can change the diaphragm without removing the cistern from the pan". Price of the syphon and a half hour's labour? I almost bit his hand off accepting this kind offer.

So probably one of the most satisfactory mornings I've had in a long time - knew I should have put this in the smiles thread!

 

[StevenRB45]

Now I often get a stern telling from the other half regards being careful while I'm out and about and the response is generally a rather put upon "yes dear" or alternatively "OK I'll keep it under 120 or awww I was planning on taking him base jumping today", because as you may have noticed..I can be a bit of an arse.

But this is one of the jobs she was involved with: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58030205

Obviously at the time there was not really any context like there is now a car had a head on with a van leaving a toddler dead. It did affect her at the time as certain jobs hit closer to home.

As it was it appears this woman has brought about the death of her own child by being ridiculous and killed a family member and nearly killed a van driver in the process.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Now I often get a stern telling from the other half regards being careful while I'm out and about and the response is generally a rather put upon "yes dear" or alternatively "OK I'll keep it under 120 or awww I was planning on taking him base jumping today", because as you may have noticed..I can be a bit of an arse.

But this is one of the jobs she was involved with: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58030205

Obviously at the time there was not really any context like there is now a car had a head on with a van leaving a toddler dead. It did affect her at the time as certain jobs hit closer to home.

As it was it appears this woman has brought about the death of her own child by being ridiculous and killed a family member and nearly killed a van driver in the process.

That’s pretty horrific, I’m not sure even in the circumstances 3 years even begins to scratch the surface of the sort of punishment she should have gotten. The sentence should always be seen as a warning to others that might do the same. In this instance she will probably be let out in 18 months at worst, she may even argue the depression as a reason to be let out sooner.

In health care everyone will have a similar story they have been involved with. I know of friends who have done CPR while a person is still on fire, I had a friend and work colleague who’s 3 year old was run over (actually the truck ran over her) while she was playing in her garden and a builders truck reversed into her. That was so bad many of the A&E staff got PTSD from that.
The most annoying thing is how easily prevented these things are. There is never normally an accident with this level of devastation where someone wasn’t doing something really stupid.

 

[StevenRB45]

The most annoying thing is how easily prevented these things are. There is never normally an accident with this level of devastation where someone wasn’t doing something really stupid.

Definitely, in this particular case, if she'd not been driving uninsured/unlicensed it wouldn't have happened. If she'd not been driving erratically it wouldn't have happened. If the car had been safe she may not have lost control of it and it may have stood up better in the accident (although no idea why it failed the mot but given age of car I'm going to guess either suspension/brake issues or structural corrosion are good bets).

To compound the whole thing she then had 6 people in 5 seater car, with the small children not in child seats and the bigger ones not wearing seatbelts. Just to make sure whatever happened was an absolute horror show.

In some ways no punishment would match killing your own child with stupidity but you'd get longer for tax evasion.

You couldn't pay me enough to do what my wife does or work in A and E, it's bad enough her telling me what she's dealt with the night before rather than dealing with it directly.