Lucy in the car, with meowing

I drove my cat Lucy up to her new home last weekend, living with my sister in the Midlands. She meowed all the way up, with a brief interlude when I put Simon and Garfunkel on, which I think might have knocked her out.

It's been noticably different without her here. On the up side, I don't have to hastily shut the front door every time it gets opened to stop the cat getting out, I don't have to put up with being pummelled at 5 in the morning and I can shut the double doors into the conservatory, which makes the house a bit warmer. On the down side, I really miss her and for the first few days I kept thinking I could hear her behind me. She's got a weird little noise that she makes - sort of a cross between a purr and a sneeze, like she's trying to clear her nose, and I'm sure I've heard that a couple of times. Apparently she's been wreaking all sorts of havoc at my sister's end too. When she moved to my house, she didn't eat for three days and took to pooing in corners. I thought it was because she had managed to poison herself by eating lilies, and had forgotten all about it anyway, but apparently she's been doing the same thing at my sister's. I think it's stopped now though. She's also been terrorizing my sister's cat who is a big wuss but understandably pissed off. I hope they manage to put up with each other though because I really don't want to move her again.

I went to Machynlleth last weekend (where CAT is) to find a place to live. I'm going to be lodging with a lovely woman called Fiona and her daughter and two cats, in her house which is about 4 miles from Mach, and 7 1/2 miles away from CAT. I'm hoping I can bike to work, which I manage it will make me super fit in no time. I've been trying to lose a bit of weight too, as it makes biking easier. I don't hold out that much hope of being good with biking - I might start out well but I'm sure I'll lose motivation after a while. I fitted my bike with a computer this afternoon to measure the speed, distance etc - hopefully that will motivate me a bit. Maybe I can reward myself when I reach distance milestones.

Preparation efforts on the car front are storming ahead. After finding a place to live and realising I'd need a car, I booked Sid (my red K-reg mini) in for his MOT last Tuesday, having finally got the engine back together and the passenger window replaced. It took me a while to start him (mostly because in the months he's been in the garage I had forgotten which knob was the choke and was trying to get him going by turning on the heater). I finally got him going and was cheering as I started to pull him out of the garage, at which point he lurched forward twice and then refused to go into gear, and I stopped cheering. I concluded that the clutch had gone, called my dad and burst into tears.

My dad advised me to call a specialist mini garage, so I got out the Yellow Pages and searched for one. I found one in Cottenham which is really close and phoned them up. They told me that they didn't deal with old minis, although they had heard of a bloke who called himself 'Mr. Mini', who lived somewhere nearby. Through my powers of internet geekery I eventually managed to track him down and called him up. He doesn't call himself Mr. Mini any more apparently, because BMW decided there was some sort of copyright conflict of interest, and the small guy always loses out in that kind of wrangle. So now he's Dean's Minis in Soham. He came and picked Sid up at half past three with a special mini towing contraption, and Sid's now being cared for by arguably the most competent and genial mini mechanic in Cambridgeshire. In the meantime my lovely dad came down from the Midlands and cheered me up by taking me out to lunch.

With luck, I should have Sid back by the end of next week, with a new rear subframe, new rear and front brakes, new handbrake and working clutch. Hope so!