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Unsurprising and Annoying
Unsurprising
Nursey, once she remembered who I was and had perused my jab list, asked which countries I was going to and started writing down India, Nepal, Pakistan, China, Kyrgyzstan, ... except it was quite obvious she had stopped writing when faced with Kyrgyzstan. It is hard to spell and I guess that mine is not the regular two-week trip to foreign climes.
She asked and I confirmed that I had checked the malarial requirements for my trip and seemed happy enough with that -- actually I hadn't looked particularly closely, perhaps I should do that now. By contrast, the woman at MASTA was very clued up and knew about the new strains of malaria endemic to the Azerbaijan border in Iran along the Caspian coast and which anti-malarials were effective. I guess you pays your money...
I asked for 10 weeks worth (six weeks in malarial countries, four weeks post-malarial exposure and two days pre-malarial exposure) which took her some time to agree was 72 pills and she trotted off to get a doctor to sign the prescription.
I then had the travel clinic spiel about how they have all the jabs in stock, except Japanese Encephalitis B. Good job I don't want it then. They do always have Rabies in stock, were her parting words. Good news.
Annoying
Off downstairs to the pharmacy who laughed in the face of me questioning their stock levels before producing eight film canister containers and a cardboard packet each containing 8 pills (I guess I'd emptied their stock). I thought the 50 pill tubs were a waste of space (50 green pills loitering at the bottom of an even larger plastic tub together with a healthcare leaflet) but these 8 pill tubs are just a joke. Every single one had to have a sticky label on with appropriate directions and my name.
"I suppose you can put them all in one tub when you get home." Yes, yes I suppose I can. In the meanwhile the world dies a little.
One the plus side they were only £14.52 which makes them just about a third of the MASTA price. What is annoying, however, is that I now have precisely 72 Doxy pills. That really does mean I'm limited to six weeks malarial risk exposure. Where's my room for manoeuvre?
Other Matters
Things I forgot to mention in the last post.
Before I reached Whitehall I found myself in relatively quiet backstreets nosing about and passing through land marked as pertaining to the Peabody Estates and/or Trust and the Church Commissioners (aren't they the second largest private landholders in the UK or something?). Intricate history on your doorstep. If you lived there. Just where do people park their cars? They must have cars.
Walking past parliament there was a protest in support of Laurent Gbagbo which I wasn't expecting. In fact I wasn't expecting any kind of protest at all (deposed president supporters, anti-war or even the anti-CCTV protesters -- I didn't get a full list as I was trying to avoid walking into tourists and we need their money right now) as I thought they banned any kind of protest from being within 1km of parliament (presumably for fear that elected officials might have to listen to the electorate once they'd squirmed into office).
Camera
I took it upon myself to have a look at cleaning my camera, a digital SLR, as it's been on a long trip in some pretty poor conditions and has probably collected some dust. I have a Giotto Rocket Blower which was proving to have little or no effect at all on the small amounts of dust visible under the right circumstances until, that is, I got a little too vigorous with my efforts and whacked the underside of the viewfinder prism with the tip of the blower. I now have a smear across the view.
Obviously this doesn't effect photos but it is very annoying. Feeling lucky, I then tried various lint-free and microfibre cloths to gently persuade the smudge away. I can confirm this has little or no effect on such a smudge but in fact introduces many fine hairs and bits of dust into the fray. Which the blower won't remove. Sigh.
So I did some reading up on dSLR cleaning techniques to find that the general consensus is that the sensor (or, in practice, the filter sat above it) is relatively speaking quite robust but it is the mirror and prism you have to be especially careful with. Oh dear.
People seems to put a lot of faith into sensor cleaning swabs (and the super pure cleaning fluid that goes with them) and so I've bought a kit. The mirror is considered so sensitive that you're advised not to use the swabs on it -- more because the fluid may leave a residue when it evaporates, to be fair, but wouldn't it also leave a residue on the sensor/filter? Perhaps it has less effect. The kit also includes some various cleaning pads. Hopefully, between them all, I can recover some clarity through the viewfinder.
I did try just now taking a picture through the viewfinder but I can report that this isn't nearly as easy as first thought and, certainly with the iPhone, the picture taking camera is reluctant to focus on the dust/smear.
The Motor
Well, who'd have thunk it? A brand new battery and the car is eager to start.
A brand new battery has not, however, fixed the awful spinning/grinding sound I get when I turn the wheel. As someone suggested, that doesn't sound good. I fancy it might be related to the power steering vacuum assist as the noise is affected by the amount of turning and revs. However, my knowledge of matters under the bonnet extends as far as where to add washer fluid (although I didn't do that for a long time when the washer bottle repeatedly failed) and I might have mistakenly checked the oil level. If we all fixed our own cars, mechanics would be out of a job! Think about it, we're in this together.
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