Technology What a Thing it is Two

Let me begin by telling that today is the first time I’ve walked along pretending to be on the phone, while actually talking to the built in voice recorder. I quite often compose blogs and scribbling as I wander. However it can be a pain in the arse to keep stopping to write notes, and for that matter to carry a notebook. Due to this inconvenience, often the words I conjure are lost. Being able to make these recordings is far easier. It’s why some time ago I bought a Dictaphone. However I can’t find my Dictaphone; I think it managed to get ditched in the lockup (this could be fatal for it, because I wouldn’t have removed the batteries, for everything else placed in storage I removed the batteries to save them from leak damage over time).

Today I have to eat my once words “who needs a smartphone, all I need to do is make calls ect”? That has certainly turned out to be bunkem. I take pictures with the phone, and it's great for that (it’s only 5megapixels, but for Facebook, Twitter and here it’s fine). The pictures can act as cues, and often once a thread is picked back up I can re-live a walk, and re-discover my thoughts or words (as long as I make time to actually write them down ... I am working on that particular self discipline).

It may be limited, but I always have the phone, where quite often I don’t have the camera (because I’m a dullard), and now I have the phones voice recorder as well. I may have mentioned I have voice to text software, but I’ve never had time to train it properly (maybe once we are away that will change, if the phone files are compatible ... shouldn’t be too challenging with my previous background in IT ... ahem).

So just before I started typing I listened to my new verbal notes; eventually I stopped cringing at my dulcet tones ringing in my ears like a bad Dick Van Dyke impression, roughed up with a little vintage Mike Reid (the more relaxed I am the better I sound; also: note to self, make notes don’t try to write using speech, because that just sounds like an Eastenders extra trying to big up their role). Having listened through I grabbed out the key phrases and thoughts typed some words to start a post, headed it with a paragraph about the use of the voice recorder and then got caught up with the use of technology again ... and the spiel above ensued.

Over the nineteen months of this blog I’ve tried to find shortcuts, to deal with my shortcomings in written form, notebooks and carrying them, my terrible illegible scrawl, how my written words go from ten words per line at the start of a note, to four words per two lines by line three, and how to catch those fleeting thoughts that eventually end up here. I may have cracked it, Samsung Galaxy Ace and a hands free kit ... though based on battery consumption today I may have to purchase a spare phone battery, and I think we have no option but to find a dash mounted solar charging system.

Now I shall proof read this, preview it and hope I’ve picked up on all my other written short comings when it’s published, and then write what I actually meant to write before I went off on a massive tangent.

Spelyng and Gramer

Evry now and thin I pop in to the old pasts and have a re-red to rimind me what has gone bfour, and evrytime I do I find typos. And yet I proof read, spellcheck then have Amanda proof read, and then I preview the posts because the change from MS Word text to Blog format, with the immediate change in background and visuals always weeds out a few more stinkers.

I just re-read E-Cigs and Asthma from a few weeks back ... littered with typos. I think their must be Google Gremlins in the Bloggerverse, tinkering after I've published.

A Little Re-cap

We started the blog www.iltyt.blogspot.com eighteen months ago, to communicate with our nearest and dearest while we travelled (though in truth the first post was little more than me making sure I hadn’t buggered up the template, and could post pictures). It’s become our diary and electronic scrapbook, and a reminder of what a slog it’s sometimes been.

It has been a mission getting from there to here from the moment Amanda said she’d had enough of the joys of London to today. Including having our original motorhome written off in January 2013, a leaky house that required extensive damp and remedial works before we could sell it (this if you look back through the blog this was a one of number of nasty surprises 2012 early 2013 had for us), a damp and leaky motorhome ...that’s the one that got written off in January this year that had to be repaired and renovated in 2012, before we could even fully contemplate this trip ... which made the writing somewhat more painful, for all the time money and effort put in.

There has been depression, counselling, tiffs, spats, Conjunctivitis, Chest infections, work stress, hundreds of hours of overtime, evenings and weekends of “fettling” the original motorhome, keeping secrets from employers, dealing with the police (ongoing), insurers (technically ongoing), selling a house and moving into my brothers flat, unexpected and irretrievable expenses, purchase and conversion of a new wagon, and to ice the cake a suspected broken wrist.

However when all is said and done, we are here, we have both finished work. As of today Saturday 24^th September 2013 we don’t have jobs. We had a brilliant week of au revoir’s then one big night of drinks and goodbyes (the management reserves the right not to publish embarrassing pictures of the narrator and the management being shit faced amongst a crowd of City of London teeny boppers on a Friday night) ... oh the shame.

Our old jobs and lives are history, our multi strand umbilical is slowly dropping all its connections ... I pictured the Saturn V rockets dropping their coolant and electrical feeds as I thought of these words. We aren’t off the launch pad yet have, but there is an imminence to lift off that is inescapable. The other visualisation is that of buying a new home off plans and then having to wait while it’s built before you move in ... pick the analogy you prefer.

We have a home to return to eventually and a houseful of stuff (technically we don’t have a home for three months whatever happens). But right now, our primary financial feeds are cut, we don’t have jobs. 95% of everything we own or used in our previous lives is in a full size military green shipping container in the middle of nowhere Essex. We are on a block of cash that we need to eke out as best we can for as long as possible, and to supplement if at all possible with work we can get as we travel (fruit picking, bar work, campsite shit picker upper ... whatever). Underlying this is the rental income from our eventual home, though at today’s prices, that money would only just get us home.

This afternoon as I sit and type, mildly (but doubly) hung over from pre-leaving drinks leaving drinks, followed by proper leaving drinks, what we’ve done weighs  heavy with doubt and excitement. Our life in this temporary home is still relatively expensive and would chew through our limited funds like Pacman. We need to downsize into our wagon. We need to complete the items on the list in the earlier post, we need to complete the circuit, severe the final cords and begin the shakedown, before following the sun south ... hopefully as a far as Cyprus.

It doesn't feel brave, I think because we have a home to return to, no desire to be doing what we are doing now, and the horrible realisation that if we wait until we retire, we'll both be too fucked to do it anyway. We'll be here, on the blog, Facebook and twitter. We hope that people can get a blow by blow account as we go, so the experience is in some ways shared, and we hope some of our nearest and dearest can drop by as we go and meet us on the way and share some real bits with us.

Technical Difficulties

There have been a few formatting errors in recent posts. Probably entirely my fault, I would like to apologise to our reader ... it won't happen again.

I'll investigate the issue with Word formatting removal, copy and paste and why sometimes Word formatting remains and makes the whole blog look like the written version of Steptoes Yard.

For those that are interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWi7c3jwyeM

End of Days

So here we are three working days left before we both leave our respected jobs and employers. We have so much to do.

1. MOT (car and motorhome)

2. Insurance (motorhome pre and post re-registration)
3. Valet a car

4. Sell a car

5. Re-home a cat

6. Move the furniture we brought from our old house to my brothers, into storage ... arrange man in van

7. Sort out our going away clothes

8. Make space in the lock-up by moving our garden tools into alternative storage (for the furniture above) this maintains walk in space)

9. Sell the old motorhome’s brand new fridge, charging unit, and water heater

10. Change addresses on existing documentation

11. Photo copy and maybe laminate documentation (twice minimum)

12. Obtain a new spare wheel for the new Motor home

13. Eeeeer Obtain the Motor home ... it’s still with Paul in Devon

14. Have new spare wheel delivered to Paul

15. Find out for sure if my right Scaphoid bone is actually broken (2^nd September)

16. Sort out five new tyres (I was going to get a set of Alloys, but I’ve decided that’s a months diesel on vanity) tyres to be multi season just in case

17. Obtain the new Satnav unit

18. Make a list of all the forum users who’ve ever clogged up forums with utter shit, tangents, boasts, lists of shit they have used previously, seen, done and been to, despite having no bearing on the initial enquiry made by the poor bastard looking for “help” on the forum, and egg and flour them ... I would have said murder them in their sleep and nail them to their own front doors, but you have to be careful what you post on “T Tinternet” these days lest someone takes you seriously and calls the police

19. Prepare alibis for any murders involving motor home users where items of iron mongery, or modes egress and exit were involved

20. Make a list of contents for the purpose of insurance while on the road

21. Assemble the tool kit

22. Obtain minimal spares (belts, maybe and alternator and starter motor, a clutch, fuses, bulbs, bulbs fuses etc)

23. Obtain new number plates with Euro symbols

24. Sort out breakdown cover (probably AA on existing membership) ... there is that perverse part of me that thinks my being a member for the best part of twenty years will afford me good service if the crunch comes ... which if BT, O2 and Direct line are any proof of will demonstrate utter contempt for their long standing customers at the first sniff of trouble. To elucidate they all bollocks’d up their final payments at account closure time  and then chased for sums of money measuring less than £20 to Amanda’s and I’s previous address, tracked us down eventually to our new temporary address (which we provided them for final statements while still at the old address) and wrote snotagrams saying that if they didn’t get paid for their fuck ups they would move our “debts” to a collection agency ... because of course the previous reminders went to our old home. There is a word, but Amanda says I’m not allowed to use it on the blog

25. There must be one, I’ll re-read the official version of this list again when I’m not fried

Amanda said the last few weeks and days would be the most difficult in terms of breaking out, leaving work is the easy bit. She was right.