Odyssey 2010: The Annual British Science-Fiction C

The end of the work on the flat, that is.

Things that are doing well:
- about 3/4 of the purged books are gone, thanks to Mr Porcupine. The remainder are stacked up in the lobby, waiting for collection by a company who come and take them away (if there are more than 200 of them) and sell them, with (iirc) 40% of the money going to a charity of your choice
- the spare bedroom is now all re-arranged (which is good, although the process of doing so was less so: when we dismantled the corner Ivar unit to move it to the other end of the room, we realised that two of the five shelves were so horribly warped that the heads of some the screws attaching the shelf-proper to the piece of wood that's attached to stop it from warping had, um, popped off. Oops. So Mike said he'd go to Ikea and get some replacements, and then we thought that he might as well get his new desk while we were there, so we went to Ikea and bought a desk, and a pedestal unit, and then thought we might as well get normal shelves, which take up less space, rather than keep the corner unit, so we got those too. So we came home, and we put the big Ivar shelves up in their new position, and then we went to put an extra small Ivar upright and shelves where the corner unit used to be, but the corner unit design means that it takes up about a cm less space than a normal shelf unit, so we had to move all the existing shelves a cm along, so we had to take all the remaining books off them and shuffle them along a bit, and then put all the books back on, and then Mike assembled the desk and then we gave up. This morning, he assembled the pedestal unit and we moved the filing cabinet from the living room into the spare bedroom and I did things like making the bed up, because the reason it Had To Be Done is that Mike's mother is arriving to stay for a few days...)
- my replacement mirror arrived and is much better than the old one (see below)
- Neville bloody Johnson are coming for what is hopefully their final visit on Wednesday (see below)

Things that are less good:
- the newly-exposed paintwork in the spare room, above Mike's desk, is not only pink and covered in marks but also bizarrely shiny in some patches and not in others
- my replacement mirror arrived and is much better than the old one... but the design is still off centre. And, even if it wasn't, the hanging hooks on the back are also off-centre, so it couldn't just be hung on the fixings that The Handyman put up for the original one. Sigh. Have asked for a refund and instructions about how they want me to pack them both for being picked up on Wednesday afternoon. I think I might go and buy a mirror in A Shop, you know?
- Neville bloody Johnson are coming for what is hopefully their final visit on Wednesday: one of my sets of drawers is (apparently) a non-standard width, so it had to be specially made. It never closed quite so easily as the others, but then one of the drawers stopped quite closing properly and another started falling out when you opened it, so the man came to look and said that they were slightly too wide and he'd get them re-made. The wood had better match so that they don't have to do it *again*.

Things that we're not sure what to do with:
- the space where the filing cabinet used to be. We could get another Billy in it, but then the gap next to it where the spare dining chairs live would be too small for the dining chairs. It's a puzzler. We might ditch a Bento (do I mean Bento? Benno, maybe?), which would give us enough space: we have two of them, both about 3/4 full, and we hardly ever listen to CDs except in the car, and the only ones we buy are Sylvian and Sakamoto, and half of those are in fancy boxes that don't fit on the Bento anyway....

Things that are free to anyone who takes them away:
- three Ivar uprights, and about 20 shelves (with metal bits). They're the narrower ones: 30cm, maybe? Please, someone take the damn things away. Also, the three not-horribly-but-slightly-warped 50cm corner shelves. They're currently stacked up in the stairwell, which is sub-optimal (although, to be honest, if someone does complain to the management company about it, I shall take great delight in writing myself a sternly worded letter telling myself off for making the place look untidy), because the lobby by our front door, where we would normally put things like that, is entirely full of books to be taken by the charity people, bags of clothes to be taken to Eastercon and forcibly given away, and a chair. Actually, if I put the chair in the garage, I can probably get the shelves in the lobby. Hmmm.

... and I can already feel my headache moving into new and exciting places in my head. Still, it should now pass in a day or so. I think I like them.

Walking up to collect them, I saw the Canada Water cob going after a goose, who tried various double-back techniques but eventually had to give up and fly out of the water, at which the swan gave a satisfied bum-wiggle and preened himself. There are three coot nests on the canal, at least one of which had at least one little ball of fluff trying to get out of the wind under mother.

Monday's riding was on Fran, who was being a silly mare: there was a gust of wind, and then a fox, and then some noisy kids, and then a dog, all in roughly the same place, and each one just added to the fact that the others had been there until we were spinning around on the spot debating which way we were going to go.... Apparently, all the horses were a bit spooky, though, so that by the end of the evening they were just using one end of the school. I suspect that the foxes are out having sex and making worrying smells, or something.

Today's was on Danny, which was slightly nervous-making as a concept but actually he was a sweetie, and was going really well after he'd warmed up. Worked mostly on things like sepentines, and a bit of sitting trot. Had a good lesson, Toni says my leg position is getting good, which is always nice to hear ('good' being an improvement over 'better', iyswim).

Tired. Not sure I approve of this working business: yesterday was a long day, and I may have been doing a couple of hours this afternoon, too. Oops.