Failure is the Key to Success

Hmm… I haven’t kept up to date with my blog and now have some catching up to do. I will have to add a few back dated entries to correct this.

We went out today to Hobgoblin in Newport Pagnell to get a quarter size guitar case. We took Jo’s mandolin that I bought there at Christmas to discuss fitting a peg for a strap. We got the bag and the peg and strap no problem.

Then I started looking at their guitars; I have been starting to learn on and off for the past few months and we were thinking about getting me one for my birthday later in the year. Needless to say with their selection, I soon found one that I was really happy with and so ended up getting an early birthday present.

I got a Tanglewood TW170-AS acoustic guitar, which just felt right and has a nice clear sound. I just need to toughen my fingers up now. It is strung with D’Addario EXP strings and the steel trebles are a bit hard on the fingers after Jo’s nylon strung classical guitar.

I had my car serviced today. 90,000 mile service and air conditioning clean was what it was booked in for.

However, after adding anti roll bar links, front brake flexible hoses, front brake discs and pads and a throttle cable - ouch!

The plus side is I can tell the difference; the throttle is so light now, I wonder how I was driving it. I suppose it’s one of those things that changes little by little without you really noticing. The handling feels sharper on corners as well.

Needless to say, apart from being expensive, the car was also an hour later back than I had expected.

The shower valve arrived today and is now fitted and working.

I replaced the broken gate valve today, but discovered the cold one would turn back on, so replaced that as well.

This afternoon, I noticed that the shower valve was leaking water out of the casing. It had at some point today leaked under pressure and there was a lot of water sprayed around the area.

When I fitted the shower, I had left a couple of access panels sealed with silcon sealant, so I had to cut these open and try to turn off the gate valves that I had fitted. I was able to turn of the cold, but the hot wouldn’t turn off fully, then the wheel of the valve rounded the brass end of the spindle, so I just used mole grips to turn this off.

The leak was coming from the valve cartridge in the housing. Although the Aqualisa Aquarian value is obsolete, the Aqualisa website still have the spare parts for it. I was able to ring them and order the part for despatch on Monday. The old valve lasted fairly well, it had been in almost daily use for eight years.

I bought a replacement gate valve and will fit it tommorow.