Paul had seen some houses he liked the look of in the local paper, so we went out to see them under clear blue skies. They always look best like that, so perhaps that’s not the best conditions in which to see them.

We were only going across town, but it took as long as the rush hour. Probably longer, in fact, because the police had blocked the road under the viaduct and everyone was diverted around a big loop past the station. Anyhow, we got there in the end and looked around a very beautiful three-storey, five bedroom house and five toilets and four showers, but both came away saying it was in the wrong place.

I came home and unpacked the ISDN kit and tried to work out why the batteries weren’t doing much. I called Steve to see if he could offer any suggestions, and he told me they were the wrong size. Fortunately it doesn’t actually need them, so I said I’d plug it all in and then give him a call in an hour to test it out.

I was surprised how sensitive it all is. In one ear you hear the person (or studio) at the other end, and in the other ear you hear what is going through your own microphone. My clock, ticking on the wall behind me, was deafaning, and when my freezer kicked in it sounded like a plane flying low overhead.

I could hear kids playing, presumably in the next street, and somewhere there was a radio playing music. I’m guessing that was in the flat either above or below. When you took off the headphones, they all miraculously disappeared.

Fortunately, when I’m doing the 7.50am trails through it a lot of people will still be in bed so it should all be a lot quieter, but it was quite an eye-opener (or should that be ear opener?)

Spent the afternoon reinstalling Windows on my Linux machine and sorting out the nest of cables under the desk that so shamed me when the BT man came around. It took two hours to do the cables alone, but it was worth it. I now have loads of lovely legroom under the desk, and no excuse not to sit here and finally write that book.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2002 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.