Impossible?! Never. But sadly, this time it's true.

Some time ago, I decided to try and find a legal cycling route between home and work which allowed me to avoid every single traffic light on my way. The original post where I set out the challenge is here and here is a follow-up post where I successfully reduced the total to five (or six, but then it hardly matters if it's not zero).

In the past few days I've been working tirelessly to solve one particular vexing problem: the iron curtain around my workplace. You might get an idea of the situation by peering at this Google Map. My workplace lies in the center of the map, and home is north by northeast. The blue place markers indicate intersections that are controlled by traffic signals.

Unfortunately, a careful survey of all the possible (legal) crossings seems to show that my challenge is impossible. It appears that a rectangle bounded by the A501, A420, A401, and A400 is a nearly inescapable trap, at least for any cyclist hoping to avoid all traffic signals and still ride legally (one apparent possibility is actually pedestrian-only). Today I tested my last hope, a circuitous route heading southwest (indicated by the blue line in the above-linked Google Map). I did manage to get across the A400, but only just. It takes me to the massively nasty traffic system around New Oxford Street, High Holborn and so on, the last place a traffic signal avoider wants to be.

So this is a challenge that must remain unsolved, at least until some of the traffic signals are removed.

A gazillion days ago I mentioned the Glasgow Necropolis, and that I'd write about it soon. I just have to stop making statements like that. Although I've been busy, I could have dashed off an entry or two about something other than necropolises (or necropoleis for those people afraid of sullying the language by using English regular plurals on Wörter borrowed from other Sprachen). Anyway, today I bring you a few words (and fewer pictures) about the Glasgow Necropolis.

The term "necropolis" really just means "cemetery" (preferably large, fancy and ancient). The Victorian craze for impressive burial monuments led to an enthusiastic adoption of the concept, and wealthy Glasgow was no exception. In 1831, land near Glasgow cathedral was converted into a cemetery, modeled upon Père Lachaise in Paris. Some 50,000 are now buried there; I believe 100% of them are dead. At the top of the hill stands a monument to John Knox, hero of the Reformation in Scotland. Built 253 years after his death, it features a brief summary of his anti-Popery heroism. Broken floodlights around the monument are a not-so-subtle reminder that not all residents of Glasgow are pleased with this substantial monument to anti-Popery.

On our first day in Glasgow, we were too late to visit the Necropolis; large iron gates prevented us from crossing the Bridge of Sighs to the Necropolis itself. But we were very eager to get there... here's a picture I already posted, featuring Mrs. Dunce's enthusiasm for the Necropolis. The Knox monument is at the top of the photo.


But once Sunday morning came, we had time to visit the Necropolis. We had it mostly to ourselves, at least if you only consider the living. On our rambling way up the hill, the less serious of our group felt compelled to pose before a particularly impressive monument:

There was quite a view from the very top:

 

As we were looking around the Knox monument, we were further reminded of Glasgow's sectarian heritage: the sounds of a drum and fife band began playing somewhere off in the distance, probably warming up for the Rangers match later that day. No, we weren't planning to be anywhere near the Rangers match, but were instead using our few remaining hours to see the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (I'll try and convinve Mrs. Dunce into writing a guest post on that topic. I think she probably has more to say than I do).

I took a bunch of pictures at the Necropolis too (all the above are from Mrs. Dunce) but have somehow misplaced them. Par for the course, really. Fortunately others have succeeded where I have failed; for example, there are some very nice black&white photos here. And a very good (brief) article by Glasgow Necropolis expert Ronnie Scott here. Or there's always his book. Or even his very recently unveiled theory that the Necropolis itself is a giant Masonic emblem, symbols within symbols within symbols (article link)

Another substantial delay, sorry about that! Work has been frantic lately: I've been centrally involved in setting up all sorts of new experiments with various different people. I'm feeling quite productive, but little time is left for frippery. Especially since I've also been fighting off a nasty cold/flu sort of thing (my immune system should really get in gear). Anyway.... back to Glasgow.

We took a morning train from London, somewhat loaded down with a bunch of posters/flyers/information sheets for my work presentation. The trip to Glasgow was pretty quick, less than 5 hours up the West Coast Main Line on a Pendolino train. Once we ditched the luggage, we scrambled up the hill for some quick touristic activities before closing time. First stop was Provand's Lordship, Glasgow's only surviving medieval house. But just across the street from Provand's Lordship stands Glasgow Cathedral, so we had to make a quick visit there as well. And of course its surrounding churchyard. We Dunces always seem to find ourselves wandering around churchyards, graveyards, cemeteries, and this was no exception. The graves surrounding the cathedral were quite substantial, and many were surrounded by iron cages (perhaps this was to protect the recently dead from the bodysnatching craze?). One of these cages also contained a Dunce.





But wait, there was more. Up on the hill above the cathedral was a the Glasgow Necropolis! Mrs. Dunce was almost uncontrollable with excitement:


But we were too late to explore the Necropolis (without scaling fences, tunneling or some other similar non-standard means of entrance, so we would have to wait. We took a detour back to the hotel (where I met with my Deaf colleague for a briefing about the next day's event), then made a beeline for the pub. The Babbity Bowster is quite well-regarded (and was quite near the hotel), so we made it our first stop. It's quite small, with fairly minimal decor & lots of hard surfaces which made it noisier than we might have liked. But we managed to get a small table which was no mean feat on a Friday night. Decent ale, and quite good pub food (including vegetarian haggis, neeps and tatties). After that it was a very short wander to another pub, the Blackfriars. This was a much larger place, with quite a mix of people and a larger range of beers (many of which we'd never heard of). There's a smoking ban in Scotland (unlike England, at least for the moment), so the pubs weren't smoky either. Everything was quite pleasant; we didn't see even a hint of trouble, much less the famed Glasgow kiss.

The next day our paths diverged: I spent the day working, and Mrs Dunce hit the museums. Our next joint venture was navigating the complicated and overcrowded Glasgow subway system.


St. Dunce: Patron Saint of the Glasgow Underground:


After a quick drink in a nice enough campus pub, we made our way to dinner. Much to Mrs Dunce's delight we were headed to the Ubiquitous Chip, a very highly-regarded restaurant. Or more accurately, restaurant-bar complex, as it's subdivided into various separate entities, including the Restaurant, the Upstairs, Big Pub, Wee Pub, and Corner Bar. We ate at the upstairs part, which had a sort of fancy gastropub menu, not as expensive (or as unusual) as the restaurant proper. Again vegetarian haggis made an appearance, but the highlight of the meal was probably Mrs. Dunce's smoked haddock salad.

After dinner it was back to the Blackfriar again (told you we liked it). This time we tried some of the unusual bottled beers. Most of them were from the historic ale range by Heather Ale and contained unusual (but historically accurate) ingredients like gooseberry, pine, seaweed, or heather (not all in the same product, thank goodness). We had a good window seat, so we were able to see the Saturday night street traffic. Loads and loads of people out on the town, but we saw nothing even remotely resembling carnage.

The next morning we headed over to the Necropolis, which probably deserves its own entry.

Mrs. Dunce and I spent the past weekend in Glasgow, my first trip to Scotland. I was representing my workplace at a large Deaf event, trying to spread the word about the research we are doing, and to possibly recruit some Scottish BSL signers to participate in some of our studies. It was also a really great opportunity to practice my signing.

But I discovered something rather unfortunate when I started introducing myself to people. In BSL, as in many other sign languages, people often have "sign names", sort of like a signed nickname used in place of fingerspelling someone's actual name. My own sign name was given to me when I first met with a group of deaf researchers, after suffering an unfortunate broken-glasses incident which left me peering through the one remaining lens. It looks exactly like this: LINK.¹

In the southeast (including London), this sign also means "to peep" (as in peeping through a keyhole, and maybe something like a peeping Tom). Perhaps with a vaguely naughty connotation, but nothing too extreme (unless everyone has been having a laugh at my expense....). In Scotland, however, this sign means "pervert", and not a nice, amusing sort of pervert either. When I introduced myself to a Scottish signer for the first time, I got a classic double-take. He asked me if that was really my sign name. When I told him that indeed it was, he proceeded to explain that I should really think about changing my name (maybe something more like "tea", a similarly shaped sign, but at the corner of the mouth. Or maybe something more like "monocle", which is in front of the eye, but with a more open hand). The Deaf equivalent of "Bill, or George, or anything but Sue", I suppose.

Other than the embarrassment of introducing myself "Hi, my name is Pervert", things seemed to go quite well. I chatted to lots of different people about our research and the different things people here are working on, maybe 3/4 of the time in sign language, and only 1/4 of the time in English. I'd rehearsed quite a bit of my patter about the research, but was most worried about not being able to understand people (especially unfamiliar people, in an unfamiliar setting). But as my co-workers predicted, it was no trouble at all.

Next time I'll write about Glasgow itself; we thoroughly enjoyed our long weekend there.


¹A curious coincidence: this same handshape positioned on the forehead means "know-nothing" or "dunce". But I got this sign name before I chose the name of "Dunce" (that only happened when I started up this blog, and found myself faced with the difficult challenge of coming up with a title which, I felt, had to fulfill certain characteristics).

This week is another hectic one at work, as we're being moved into a new lab/office zone on Friday. So we've been scrambling around packing and labeling years' worth of important items. And noticing that the important:junk ratio is impressively low. But because we didn't have much notice of the moving date, it's much more a matter of throwing everything into cartons, and sorting out the junk later. At least we have professional movers to actually sling the cartons around, so it's not as bad as if we'd been moving things ourselves (in our recent house move, there was some discussion of the merits of moving versus leaving things like dirt [or "compost" if you like. We should have moved the compost {dirt} after all....]).

During the preparation for moving, an interesting difference between British and American English surfaced. One of the PhD students asked whether the movers would take care of our pot plants, or if we should move them ourselves. In US English, this question has a very different meaning, which might not be so appropriate to bring up so boldly in a workplace discussion (I know, this is academia. But still!!!!). You see, pot plants look like this in Britain:


But American pot plants are a little bit different:


In Britain, the term "pot plants" simply means "plants in pots" (unfortunately I don't discuss gardening enough to know what sort of plants can be considered "pot plants" if they're placed in the appropriate receptacles, nor which sorts of receptacles "pot plants" are allowed to be in). But in US English the term is dominated by "pot", an especially common American slang term for marijuana¹ (more often called "cannabis" in British English, and let's not get into the minefield of slang terms [I think you could probably select just about any word and claim it's a slang term for cannabis]). So if an American hears that a grad student is wondering about moving pot plants around, they sure won't be surprised. But if that student is talking about it at a lab meeting, they must be high.


¹Etymology of "pot" in this sense is unknown, according to the OED: Origin uncertain and disputed. The most popular theory explains the word as being derived from the supposed Mexican Spanish words *potiguaya or *potaguaya (cannabis leaves), or *potación de guaya, (literally ‘drink of grief’), supposedly denoting a drink of wine or brandy in which marijuana buds were steeped; however, no corroborating evidence has been found to support the use of any of these terms in Spanish (although *potiguaya is recorded in an English glossary of drug terminology slightly earlier than the earliest example of the present word.
The US-favored term "marijuana" also has rather murky origins once you cross the border: From Mexican Spanish "mariguana", "marihuana", of uncertain origin. It has been suggested that the Spanish word is from Nahuatl "mallihuan" prisoner. Forms [containing] "j" appear to be an English innovation (attested later also in French): occasional recent examples in Spanish prob. show English influence. Influence of a folk etymology from the Spanish personal name "María-Juana" or its familiar form "Mari-Juana" has frequently been suggested; if so this would appear to have occurred within English.
Good ol' British "cannabis" comes straight on from Latin or Greek.

Now that the Dunces have started settling into our new home, we've managed to find the time to start exploring the area a little bit. The past two weekends we've done some wandering just a teeny little bit off the tourist trail. Today's post is in honor of the Tottenham Cemetery where we had a short wander after a local history walk¹.

It's quite a large cemetery, and has enough vegetation that it feels like anything but the midst of a legendarily urban area:




The different sections are divided by narrow walkways, and many of the gates along the way are locked. Once we made our way inside, we found out the secret to getting from one section to another:


And here's the best gravestone we came across:


Unfortunately, we found that the cemetery also featured hobo-ish ne'er-do-well-type riffraff wandering about and menacing other visitors:


Or if not ne'er-do-wells, at least a wild-haired Dunce in full "California Hippie" mode (along with super-nerdy GPS-as-fashion-accessory). But this weekend was the end of the Hair Farm. The advance of summer made it impossible to keep going with long, crazy hair. No longer will complete strangers comment on my resemblance to "Mikey" from the US TV series "American Chopper", but it'll most likely be Philip Seymour Hoffman once again. I'm not complaining, anything is better than "Spaz" from Meatballs (I'm very sorry I couldn't find a picture of this character. Trust me, 1979 was not a good time for a nerd who resembled a comedy character called "Spaz"). If I had grown up in the UK, I suppose it might have been the Milky Bar Kid instead.


¹This entry should perhaps be about the local history walk itself! It was the first in a monthly series of local history walks put on by the newly organized Tottenham Civic Society (which soon will count the Dunces among its membership), starting at the fabulous Bruce Castle museum and then taking a loop around Tottenham. Which was formerly quite an exclusive area but now has a reputation of a grim, crime-ridden hole (and one of the few places where first-time buyers might claw their way onto the property ladder). So it was really interesting to see just how many interesting buildings from various eras are dotted around the area. In any event, we didn't actually take any pictures during our wander, but only afterwards. So you'll have to take my word for it.

Since we moved into the new flat, it's taken DunceCat some time to get used to the new situation. Everything smelled different, and there was the gross indignity of being locked inside for a month. But finally things are settling down, especially now that the weather has improved and we can open the front windows. She especially enjoys sitting in the front window spying on the neighbors. And watching us as well.



When I say "spying on the neighbors", well, she does watch people and cats coming and going down at street level. But really her focus is all upon our bird neighbors. There are quite a few of them who hang around the trees, roofs and power lines just above the window. So she spends a lot of her window time making birdcalls: odd, creaking sounds, interspersed with strange meows and chomping jaw movements (not sure whether these are intended to be threatening, or just wishful thinking. In turn, the birds squawk, swoop, and occasionally defecate in her general direction.



And then when she's done, it's time to ditch the window and patrol the rest of the house.



She's confident enough now to do full-speed rampages from one room to another, gripping the carpet for the sharpest turns, and skittering around the kitchen linoleum. But sometimes guarding on two fronts is just too much effort for one lonely cat.



But usually she's right back on duty in a few minutes' time. And woe betide anyone who tries to sneak past her. This is what it looks like if you try to enter a secured area without the correct pass:


None shall pass!

As I've mentioned a few times before, the Dunces have recently moved into a new flat which required some amount of cosmetic effort and modernization (you'll have to wait for an upcoming post to see more details). One urgent need was to replace the ancient water heater, a process not without its problems. But there was a tiny window of time between the removal of the old water heater and the installation of the new one, during which the wall behind the heater was visible.

The previous owner of the flat bought it in 1977, and did the place up to a high standard at that time (including installation of the now-dead water heater). So the wallpaper behind the heater dates from before that time, which you can tell at a glance from the picture below. At the top is a hole in the wall: the original flue for the water heater, which was badly filled by the heating engineers, then knocked out and patched more appropriately. Below the hole you can see a nice indication of some previous choices of decor. Most of which are nicer than the present wallpaper which we have not replaced or painted over just yet (mostly gray/greenish, textured and shiny, as you can see around the outside. On the right side, the whitish bits are actually the camera flash, reflected off the textured shiny bits).

Yes it's a huge picture; sorry about that but I felt it was the best way to clearly show the different patterns.



Coming soon in the "house" series... some before/after pictures of rooms we've actually done cosmetic work on.

It's been quite a long, long time since I've posted any photos at all. That's going to change really soon (he idly promises). 

I'm quite bad when it comes to taking pictures; very regularly I forget I have a camera at all, and when I do remember to bring it out, more often than not I put it back away, letting the most recent pictures gather (virtual) dust.  But no more. Starting tomorrow (isn't it easy to promise future activity rather than NOW?) I'm going to focus on photos around here.

I'm not going to promise anything in particular, although certain readers will probably be more interested in seeing some types of pictures (erm, perhaps some before and after shots of our new flat?) than others (erm, photos of roadside debris, blurry photos of a cat in action).

And we'll just have to see how long this goes before I fizzle out.

Well, my ride home yesterday wasn't successful. I did get home, and it only took twice as long as usual, but sadly my first attempt to go traffic-light-less just didn't work out. Even though I had a pretty useful scrap of paper with cryptic notation concerning the streets and intersections I planned to use (nose in the map is not allowed, but consulting a scribbled sheet on the fly is OK)

I did reduce the number of traffic signals to six, but also including a few non-legal maneuvers. My real failing was in my clever attempt to avoid traffic signals by (legally) riding in parks. However, I failed to notice that nearly all of the park entrances were protected by traffic signals (so that park users can enter and leave safely, I guess). This was even the case where motor vehicles were quite clearly prohibited. My no-backtracking rule also left me at two park exits, facing a traffic signal, and unable to backtrack and try a different exit.

There were also a couple of places where bicycle riding isn't quite kosher but this is not apparent from the map. Mostly pavement/sidewalk riding, albeit very briefly (e.g. Woburn Walk, which looks like a road on the map, but is quite obviously pedestrian-only. I should have remembered this, working just around the corner. Or another road which dead-ends, and the only place to ride is across a pavement/sidewalk onto the adjoining road). The only other rule-breaking occurred when I saw a traffic signal ahead and had no place to go but the wrong way on a one-way street (maybe a very good possibility in the other direction, though, as long as I can solve my "park problem").

So yesterday's score is 5 traffic lights, 4 riding in pedestrian areas, and one "wrong way". I think I can do better, but some more obsessive-compulsive behavior will be necessary.

Red light jumping is probably the most hotly debated issue on the cycling forums I read, and it's no wonder with the huge number of traffic signals in most British cities.  My own commute is just a little bit over six miles, and includes a massive number of traffic lights.

Going to work in the morning I face exactly 50, and my usual route home includes 25. No, I don't use time warping technology, it's just that my commuting demands are different and different times of day. In the morning my aim is to get to work as quickly as I can, possibly with some decent exercise along the way. I'm not so interested in scenery or anything nice, just blitzing down the road to work. From our new house the quickest route by far is on the main roads, which have a lot more traffic signals.

On the way home I'm much more inclined to take quieter back streets at the expense of speed. And also to avoid three very nasty traffic-snarly areas (turn at Camden Town, Nags Head area just after Holloway Road, bus stops at Finsbury Park station and just thereafter), areas that are not bad at all in the other direction in the morning. But 25 traffic signals are still quite a few. And there are any number of them that I'm tempted to jump now and again.

The only solution, really, is to devise a cycling route that avoids all traffic signals. Then it would not even be possible for me to jump a red light. Of course this would be a trivial exercise if there were a canal route or converted rail line between work and home. But there isn't. It would also be trivially easy if I permitted myself to break other traffic laws in order to avoid red lights. For example, every time I approached a traffic signal, then mount the pavement ("sidewalk" in US English), go around the corner and cross the street away from the signal. No, this cycling route needs to be a legitimate cycling route (thus ruling out pavement riding and off-road riding).

I've looked carefully at maps and I think it's possible. London isn't exactly conducive to planning convenient alternative routes, at least anything remotely direct, but it appears that I can take advantage of numerous back streets in a winding homeward journey. The real difficulties are all related to crossing major streets (especially when there are major intersections involved). I see quite a lot of occasions where I will have to enter a main road from a small side street, then divert quickly down another side street before reaching a traffic signal.

Finally, I shouldn't be riding with my nose in a map, so there's every chance this will fail on the first attempt even if the route itself is workable. Just for sanity's sake (if sanity can be said to relate at all to this challenge) I'll also forbid direct backtracking. Chances of success? Not great.

Well, we managed to get a plumber to pop round the morning of the party. It only took him 15-20 minutes to make things right, and now we have a nicely functioning kitchen sink, with hot and cold water coming from a single tap, and not a drip in sight (knock wood). Which allowed us to get things set up for the party with plenty of time to spare, and with no visible signs of the previous days' plumbing problems (except for my excessive tendency to turn on the kitchen tap and admire the smooth flow of water). I popped by the pub to collect some ale and then we were ready for guests to arrive.

We scheduled our house warming party to start at 2pm and continue "until late", with a vague sort of idea that people with small children might prefer to come earlier than those without. Only one set of small children managed to get there, so perhaps the early start was a bit of a mistake. In any event, people started arriving at nicely staggered times from about 3pm. The weather was perfect so most of the party occurred in the back garden (Mrs. Dunce and I spent a lot of time running up and down stairs to answer the front door). A good combination of friends, work colleagues and neighbors ended up coming round, although the early start meant a somewhat early finish (a lot of people came by early so they could make something else later on). At the bitter end, the last few guests headed down the road to continue the festivities a nearby nightclub. We were strongly encouraged to join them, but we were quite ready to collapse into bed.

Last night Mrs. Dunce and I came home about the same time, arms laden with all sorts of groceries in preparation for our house-warming party tomorrow. We had ambitious plans which included some preparation of snack foods, some last little bits of organizing and perhaps a teensy bit of cleaning. But we were both hot and tired after our respective shopping trips, and both really needed a big glass of ice water (not the same big glass, mind you. One each). I filled up the glasses and turned off the water. Or at least that was the plan, but instead I failed to recognize my own strength, as the tap handle snapped in my hand and water started gushing everywhere (fortunately, "everywhere" really just meant "pouring at maximum rate through the faucet into the sink).

Our previous plumbing adventures had somehow not been sufficient to inform us about the location of the main water shutoff valve in the flat (previous workmen had shut off the water outside, where it leaves the pipes and supplies both flats), so our first step was a panicked run around the house, feeling the various pipes for coldness/signs of flow. A likely suspect appeared in the toilet (separate from the bathroom, in that traditional sort of English style), but of course the handle was immovable (and I sure didn't want to break it. Water spraying into the sink is one thing, water spraying all over the toilet room [WC?] is quite another). I must admit I was in full-on panic mode as this was all happening. Some spritzes of (bike) oil and some (gentle) manipulations with a wrench, and the water was miraculously shut off. So the most urgent aspects of the emergency were thus eliminated. And after all, we did want to replace the taps on the kitchen sink (having two separate taps, one hot and one cold, both of them very stubby, seems quite useless for just about any kitchen purposes). But then the phone rang....

It was the downstairs neighbors, wondering about the water. Apparently our supply is also their supply. The cold tap in our kitchen sink is fed directly from that supply, with no way of turning it off except turning off the water completely. This returned the problem to "immediately urgent". Mrs. Dunce headed straight out to the building supply store to purchase a new set of taps (actually, two sets just in case one of them wouldn't fit for some reason), while I put on my plumber hat and went to work under the sink. In a jiffy, I had the taps removed and was waiting with a cup of tea for Mrs. Dunce to return. Or, more accurately, I spent a couple of hours awkwardly wedged under the sink with some assorted tools, first trying to figure out how everything was connected, which parts were meant to unscrew (and in which direction), and just how to remove those bloody taps. All the while knowing that our neighbors were also waterless until the problem was fixed (fortunately they were very understanding).

The new taps were indeed appropriate for the job, and I'd pretty much figured out how things went together. So with a flourish of the wrench, and quick as a jiffy I fastened them all back together (doing them both at the same time with one wrench in each hand). Or else I grunted and strained and muttered and fumed and sulked and sweated and so on, until they were finally connected right up. Wheeee, I thought. Time to turn the water back on. And I did, and it sprayed. Under the sink this time, where, errr, we didn't have the right sort of washers to go between the various fittings involved in the connections. So off with the water again, and a frantic rush on the bicycle to get to the home furnishings store for new washers before closing time.

Knowing me, you already know that the store was closed by the time I arrived (open till 9pm some evenings, 8pm others. This was an "other".), so it was a swift and disappointed bike ride back home with nothing to show for it. Sometime during this period Mrs. Dunce tried a couple of emergency plumbing services but with no success ("morning" was the best they could do). I was a little bit loopy by then and wasted a while tearing apart the old tap in the vain hope of finding a suitable washer there. Or maybe I could cut down a rubber washer from the old taps. Eventually I decided to replace the tattered old washers from the previous fittings, in the hope they'd be better than nothing.

And they were. Once I (re-re-re-)reassembled the taps and turned the water back on, the leak had slowed to a regular drip (about 1.5 drips/second most of the time). Good enough to place some pans and towels, clean up, and go to bed leaving the water on (one of the downstairs residents gets up before 6am, so the water needed to be on by then, although they generously offered to collect water in kettles for the morning if necessary). We got up many times in the night to check and/or empty the accumulated water (I should note that water leaks have already been a nighttime obsession for me, long before any of our plumbing problems started), but there were no real problems otherwise. well except that my back, shoulders, hands and forearms are ridiculously sore from my amateur plumbing efforts.

This morning things were relatively fine, though I had to hang around for the expert to arrive. He did fix the leaky problems in the pipes, but sadly an additional leak was revealed in the tap once the pipes and connections were repaired. Taps themselves are not covered under our service arrangements, so that remains unfixed at the moment. Fortunately the expert did us a real favor and installed a shutoff valve on the offending pipes, so that they can now be turned off without affecting the water elsewhere in our flat (or indeed, in the neighbors' flat). So we are currently dripless, but also without a working kitchen sink.

And it's only 24 hours to the housewarming party, with a mountain of things still to get done by then. What else could go wrong? It's not like it's Friday the 13th or something. Stop by and check out the carnage!

Lest anyone think of me as an absent-minded professor type of character, let me share a tale that will fully debunk that notion.

Today is officially a holiday at my workplace; it's the midst of the week-long Easter break during which everything is shut down. But not completely shut down; employee access cards still give access to those buildings a particular employee is normally permitted to enter (complete shutdown only happens on Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year's Day, during which only the most extreme and unusual requests for access to any buildings will even be considered). This way workaholics, obsessives and swots can get their fix. So of course I decided to come in today and get some work done (perhaps also influenced by the fact that Mrs. Dunce had to work today [and before you ask, yes I can be trusted at home alone]).

We said our goodbyes at the front door and headed to work, me on my trusty bicycle and Mrs. Dunce heading for the perhaps-a-bit-less-trusty Piccadilly Line. After an uneventful journey I stowed and locked my bike, and headed to my office in an otherwise totally deserted building. Of course I became antsy after less than an hour of so-called "work" and wandered out of the building for a coffee (making doubly sure I had my building access card with me so that I could get back in). Yep, I sure could get back in, right up to my office door which had closed and locked behind me when I departed.

I checked my pockets a few times, but I was quite confident that my keys were with the rest of my things on or near my desk, and thus securely locked in the office. The door is not exactly the most secure (doorknob can actually be unscrewed by hand) but the lock itself, quite so. I took a tour of the building, finding that I was still alone there, and that (for once) every door in the place was securely locked. So I wandered back outside, first checking my bike in case my keys had been left in the remaining pannier (a complete violation of my dual-pannier mode of operation, where locks and bicycle items are stored in one, and other personal items in the other... but it couldn't hurt to check). Then it was off to the security office to give them my sob story. Someone was contacted to send someone else around to let me in the office. So all I had to do was return to the front door and wait.

Of course the minute I returned, one of the directors showed up, with a master key, and let me into my office. I called the security office as their help was no longer needed, and then decided that maybe I ought to put my keys in my pocket right away to prevent further grief. Only... the keys were nowhere to be found. Could I have somehow made it all the way from home to work without them? Maybe.

Leaving the house doesn't require use of keys; the door can shut behind a person, possibly even locking them out (this is how I met the downstairs neighbors: standing in my socks on a chilly evening after taking out the garbage, not yet realizing the doorbell needed a new battery). Locking the bike doesn't require keys, if the locks are being carried unlocked in a bike bag. And the enclosure is locked with two combination locks. Front door of work requires an electronic key-card, so only my office door actually needs a physical key to get in. And it's often left unlocked (the door is warped and it's hard to lock [although this now seems to have been fixed]). So it seemed that somehow I had left the house without my keys.

Although this wouldn't pose any problems for me during the "work" day, great inconvenience would result later. I had planned to do a grocery run (bike + panniers = great carrying ability), but without my keys I couldn't unlock my bike. Never mind the inability to get in the house upon arrival at home, I'd have to wait until Mrs. Dunce's arrival (I'd planned to leave early today). And I was also rather inappropriately shod for a journey home not involving a bicycle (hard-soled bike shoes with SPD cleats which are no longer recessed, or my "lab slippers" which are a pair of plastic faux-Birkenstocks that have seen better days and are practically useless for walking).

So I rang up Mrs. Dunce to tell her the bad news, and perhaps to try and come up with an alternative arrangement of some kind which would suit us both reasonably well (perhaps I would come to her office, collect her house key, then go home & change my shoes, pick up an extra key, then go shopping, etc.). While telling her the sad tale, though, I got the feeling that something was just not right. After all, all the doors in my building had been locked down, a very unusual situation indeed. And I vaguely remembered that I had actually unlocked my own office upon arrival, so I couldn't possibly have left my keys at home. This train of thought ran in parallel to my recounting the morning's events to Mrs. Dunce, right up until the moment they reached the (then)present time. At which I noticed that my keys were indeed sitting there on my desk, right in easy view.

So yes, I had locked myself out of my office. But all the rest of my hand-wringing was unnecessary, brought on by my inability to notice a big set of shiny keys less than six inches from my keyboard. At least I remembered to put on my pants this morning.

I heard the most amazing sentence on the bus this morning. It was good enough I had to write it down immediately. Have a read and tell me what you think she was trying to get across.

"I couldn't have forgotten not to tell her don't need to quit work."

Of course there's a missing pronoun between "her" and "don't", but it's really the complicated mess of negations that does my head in.