http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/election/
Just so's I know where to find it. Last election, the Evangelical Alliance put out a handy pack as well.

Ugh.

Bored.

Falling asleep.

Got a load of claim forms to fill in - been doing it since about 10:00. Most of them don't provide a pay reference, so you have to look it up yourself, write it in, then check it's actually right, and not for their wife or something stupid like that, then assign it an arbitrary code based on what hourly rate of pay it is and whether or not they're in the pension scheme. And some idiot writes all over a bit that's obviously meant to be left blank every single bloody month, and divers other silly things are done by other people.

The chocolates don't work, they just make things worse.

Still, nearly done, and I feel a little better for moaning about it.

Win two tickets for the all-day event ‘Galaxy of Stars’, a Dr Who and Star Wars convention, on 16 April at the Winter Gardens, Weston-Super-Mare. Details at http://www.agalaxyofstars.co.uk/

Look in INsider 50 (March 11), the electronic newsletter that goes out to all staff each week. Correct answers to the two questions will go into a hat and the lucky winner will get both the tickets. Closing date 1 April 2005.

Just send the answers to these 2 questions:
* Who originally played The Master in Dr Who?
* At which theatre and in which month and year, was Star Wars screened for a test audience?
Correct answers will go into a hat. The lucky winner gets both tickets. Closing date 1 April

I could perhaps have got the first one without the internet, had I given it some time - lots of time. Never mind eh?

It was really nice to see Mum and Dad again on Thursday, even though they were both tired. The meal with them and Mark was most enjoyable.

David's been off on holiday since Saturday and seems to have picked up some nasty disease so he's been off ill. Becasue of this there have been a few minor delays. For example an Oil-and-Setup job that needs dismantling to get a mainspring hooked on again is waiting for David to call the customer who "know exactly what the problem is" *sigh*. Before anyone asked why don't I call the customer, Norman insists that David must do that part.

So far I've had a most enjoyable birthday. Mum called, if only to pass the phone to Dad as she was leaving for work. I called Nan myself, having seen the weather reports from Kent, I was a little worried about her, but as usual she's fine. The only slight downside was that Mark was in Swansea, visiting Nicholas when I asked if he'd fancy a meal out this evening. Curse my faulty memory.

Not much has happened so far this week, last Saturday was.. interesting, with two of the experienced staff off leaving only myself, my manager David and the Saturday girl. This it could have been much worse.

It's been rather cold so far, even down in warmish Exeter. As I type this it's snowing outside, rather feebly compared to the snowfalls I remember from one winter in Grenoside, but it will have to do.

I had my first annual review and David has said that he feels a pay increase is in order. Just as well I'd just sent off my I'm-not-earning-enough-to-have-to-repay-my-student-loan form before receiving this news.

Well, since I'm back on the blogging front, thought it was only right to move my blog up from the C list back to the regularly updated... well, every few days is still pretty regular. What do you want from me, perfection?

Although this week is a half-term I haven't found Exeter's City Centre too crowded on my way home on half days. I overslept on Sunday and when I was about to go for a walk it started to hail quite heavily and so I thought 'Okay, I'll do something else'.

I've actually enjoyed this week so far although I'm not looking forward to three straight days of work since David asked me to take on of my half days on Tuesday instead of Thursday. Still I finally manged to cajole him into making an appointment in his diary for me and him to review my performance and hopefully get a pay increase.

I finally got round to borrowing a recipe book from the library, since I fancied baking a carrot cake and don't know the recipe. Thank goodness for word processing programs on computers.

I started this week in a very good mood, Monday just seemed to fly by, I managed to get several (waiting for parts) stalled jobs up and running, repaired a case so the movement didn't wobble alarmingly in the case.

Tuesday and Wednesday just seemed to drag on, perhaps it was because I had no frying pan and so couldn't celebrate Shrove Tuesday in the usual manner. I managed to find a nice present for Mum, it's rare that I find something that I think she'll like. It's nice to see Nicholas blogging again. I was starting to feel lonely.

Hello, I'm back, or at least I plan on being... just did a very brief update on my blog... will try and make it regular but probably not an every day thing anymore. Kinda in a dilemma of too much stuff I want to do to miss out on it by blogging about it... I have the same thing with taking photos on nights out, don't want to disrupt the natural flow of the evening by forcing people (or them doing it themselves) to pose and thus break it up... guess I'm just not destined to be a photo person...

A more frustrating start to the week, with the dreaded cuckoo clocks taking centre stage.

Monday was OK, I managed to get the cuckoo clock in beat (even tick-tock so it will keep going properly). The quality of the mass-produced tat is appalling and my personal recomendation is if you must buy a cuckoo clock, only buy a high-quality one.

Tuesday started badly, David had forgotten that neither Trevor or Norman were coming in and so myself, and the other two staff members were standing out in the cold wind for the best part of a hour. Once we finally got in Trevor called to say that I needed to do a little more work on the cuckoo clock which he had mostly finished off Monday evening. I did the adjustment but then the cuckoo clock started to malfunction again. By 11:30 my temper was beginning to fray, so I moved onto other work.

Wednesday was OK, Two of my E-bay items had sold, but I discovered that the newly-fitted smoke detector was too sensitive, and was triggered by me grilling a beefburger to the point of starting to cook. The only way to shut it off was to unplug it. I think I may need to unplug it whenever I'm cooking, and reconnect it whenever I'm sure the thing won't go off!

Today seemed OK, but for some reason I felt rather frustrated. My repainted clock hands from yesterday had come out well and it was a half day.

One bit of rather good news for me is that now that I have a proper residents account, I can actually use the Internet and download stuff to a CD, but as was recently discovered keeping my anti-virus software up to date is quite and good idea.

A interesting start to the week, I finally got the go-ahead to assemble a mechanical to quartz conversion, and with some help from Trevor was able to get it done to my satisfaction.
I started to work on an American clock of the standard this-was-never-designed-to-be-serviced. I was quite happy to discover that I was able to bush the most awkward holes with a little creative thinking. FYI; Bushing is restoring the worn-out holes in the clock plate so that the gears spin freely again.
Matt, my co-worker was feeling a little ill this week and went home early on Monday to Wednesday, while I missed the company, It was nice to have the workshop to myself for a change.
The next job I did was a part-job to replace the lines for silencing the strike and chime hammers, hampered by the fact that I couldn't remove the clock from the case because the die-cast heads of the mounting screws had disintegrated.

I put a few Playstation games and Strategy Guide up for sale on E-bay, I hope I'll get a nice amount towards a hopefully forthcoming PC upgrade.

Finally had my long overdue resident's review, I spend most of the time talking and as usual rather surprised the staff member with my far-traveled history.

Afterwards I used the new cooking stuff for the first time and made a batch of raspberry flapjacks, although I think I overcooked them since they were a bit dry. Oh well, not bad for my first baking attempt with a cheap plug in oven.

I had a bit of a breakthrough at work, some of my platform-regulated clocks had been consistently gaining despite attempts adjust them. It was suggested that I use a spring one size smaller to power the time train (no jokes, that's the actual term) and it seems to be working. However another clock I started on recently had a spring in the chime train that was under two-thirds of the size it should have been, despite that the clock seems to be a reasonable shape.
My colleague Matt has set a new bushing record for the shop of 35 bushes, that's almost every one in the plates and both ends of every spring barrel. I'm just glad I didn't get that one!

It's nice to be back in Exeter, you can't beat spending time with my family but it's nice to be home again.