Well, I've turned over two of the three calendars in the flat; the one near the computer still has to be done. Xmas preparations and plans are piling up. I've got my ticket for the Spitewinter concert in the cathedral by the Sheffield Folk Chorale on the 16th. Vikki sings in the choir. Her husband, Iain, will be there - work permitting - and Steve and Helen attend too. We'll all be seeing each other the night before for dinner and present swapping at my place. I need to decide what to serve. I might do the chicken and orange in foil parcels again, as they worked very well last time and can be part done in advance. Maybe some kind of homemade mousse for dessert; white chocolate perhaps.

Looking forward to soul_rider and family coming over Wed 9th as usual to help in putting up Xmas decorations. I'll put the tree up a day or too before to let Iella get used to it and have the chance to climb it if she wants, without the decorations on. I always put the less breakable ornaments (wood, wire and plastic) on the lower branches but there may be fewer there than usual. Iella is less of a magpie than Diesel was at her age, but the dangly things will be a temptation.

I've booked the train tickets for going to my parents' over Xmas itself. I'll be away about a week. Need to double-check with Chris that he's willing to take the cats in while I'm away. At D&D on Sun, I pointed out that we needed to start thinking about the New Year's Eve dinner. It will be at Chris' house again. Everyone brings a dish, which means two or three each of starter, main course and dessert. I may do a starter this year - probably soup. I've also invited Iain B; he's not part of the group, though he knows them. It's usual for one or two guests to show up so about a dozen people somehow get seated at table in Chris's dining room - which is an ordinary Sheffield terraced house sized dining room.

I've done most of my present buying/making. Mum doesn't know what she wants and says we can go round Wymondham together and she'll pick something for me to get her. I've already got some edibles for her. so may get more. Saturday I went to the Simply Christmas fair in the exhibition centre in Harrogate, with Steve, Helen and Vikki. Helen was given complimentary tickets by one of the stall holders, whom she had taken an afternoon's jewellery making class with. Lots and lots of stalls, selling jewelery, scarves, handbags, beauty products, clothes, shoes, toys and all kinds of gifty things. You could get all kinds of stuff from fancy, handmade wrapping paper to psychic readings guided by archangels. I was particularly taken with the bull and sheep footstools made by The Furniture Farm - Helen and I both observed that you'd probably have to shift a cat from one every time you wanted to use it
In the end I only bought food stuff. There was plenty available to sample - so I did. I didn't bother with the vegetarian caviar, as I don't like the real stuff, so there's no point in eat fake, really. I bought a pack of Lincolnshire sausages made from Anna's Happy Trotters free-range pigs, as the sample was lovely. I also had some Hot Toddy fudge, which has been eaten, and a small tin of Jesmona's liqourice and blackcurrent sweets, which I haven't quite eaten up yet. I got some ginger marmalade and whiskey marmalade as Xmas presents for Mum and Dad.

I have been putting some decorations up. I thought the Sindy house should have some, so I bought craft stuff and a 12" tree from Hobbycraft last week. Rather than sort out a box and put it away for a week or so, I just decorated the living room. I'm pleased with it, and I'll take photos. Not tonight though...

Got to get ready to be off to London in the morning, to see Denis Lawson in La Cage aux Folles tomorrow night :) More sparkly, shiny stuff. 'Tis the season !

Last night I watched the BBC4 drama about Gracie Fields - very interesting it was too. Jane Hoorcks was great; probably the only person you could cast as Gracie, at least if you wanted the actress to sing like Gracie as well as act.
This evening I watched part of Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain, which included a section on Gracie Fields. She was the biggest star in Britain at the time, and in the early 40's, was the highest paid film actress in the world. She earned more than Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Olivia deHavilland, Lana Turner, Greta Garbo etc.

Andrew Marr focused on her most famous film, Sing As We Go. The song had been performed in the drama the previous night and so had been humming around in my head for a while. Except I kept wanting to fit different lyrics to the melody. I just did a little checking on YouTube and Wikipedia and my suspicions were confirmed. The melody of Sing As We Go, a nice, wholesome, spirit-raising song from a down-home lass, was re-used as the melody for Sit On My Face, by the Monty Python team. Which is also a cheerful song, but not quite so wholesome, really.

Well, my lovely furry starlet is still growing and thriving. She's just under eight months old now, and weights a solid eight pounds. And none of that is fat, either. There's a lot of bone and muscle under the fluff.

She's been causing me worry again, this last week. Last Tues I found a small raw patch on the back of her neck. I washed it with warm salt water until I could get her to the vet on Thurs. He diagnosed eczema and gave her a steroid injection. I'd made her a cardboard collar to stop her scratching it. The vet gave me a plastic one, but I kept on using the cornflake packet one, as I'd cut it to be narrower at the front, under her chin. That made it easier for her to eat, and she could groom herself somewhat. It was only there to stop her scratching the back of her neck, not to stop her pulling stitches out.
She put up with it with very good grace, bless her. I think that because she's had a proper collar on before, and found she couldn't get it off, she believed that she couldn't get the cardboard and masking tape affair off either. I had to repair it a couple of times and she just sat down and let me get on with it. She can be such a sweetie.
The collar stayed on for a week and came off last night. I trimmed the ends of the claws on the foot she uses to scratch that spot. The raw spot had healed over but she had a scratch overnight that was enough to leave a small red spot. I've checked it through the day and it's not changed, so the collar stays off while I monitor it.

Of course, the most maddening thing about it happening now is that she's entered for a cat show the first weekend of December. It's possible that as she'd been eating more of Diesel's grown-up cat food recently, that may have caused the allergic reaction. So she's not being allowed any of that until after the show, when I'll introduce it again, and see if she reacts. Still, it's not looking too bad at the moment, and I just to to hope it stays that way.

Here she is looking very elegant, on the back on an armchair:


Most of my cats have been happy to walk across and through the sink, but she's the only one who lies down in it:



I think that's her in there - could be a fox, for all you can tell from the picture:



I love her tail :)

This evening I got Chris to rummage in the distant corners of his roof space to find a Star Wars RPG book with a particular table that I'd promised to loan to astatine210 . When I got the book home, I remembered that this rule book has a particularly fine Murphy's Rule in it.

Wookiees have a special ability called Beserker Rage, Once a Wookiee has gone beserk in combat::
   "A character must made a Moderate Perception roll (with -2D penalty) to calm down once all enemies have clearly been controlled - unconscious, captured, killed or somehow otherwise physically retrained or stopped."

So once you've retrained those pesky stormtroopers as ballet dancers, the Wookiee may calm down.

As a double whammy of Murphyism, the Wookiee has to make a Moderate roll of their Perception ability to succeed in calming down - that's a total of 11-15 scored on their dice roll. This is at a penalty of -2D (2 dice) for being beserk. Wookiees have a maximum possible Perception of 2D+1. Assuming the highest possible Perception ability: (2D+1) - 2D = 1. No Wookiee is ever going to make the necessary score to calm down.

You know how pharmacutical companies advertize by putting their logos on stuff and giving the stuff to doctors ? This is one of the more---imaginative efforts

Iella went back to the vet this morning to have her stitches removed. It was all over very quickly and the vet nurse commented on how soft she is to touch. The fur that was shaved off is already growing back nicely, though it's got got some way to go to catch up with the rest. It's a relief to know we hopefully won't be going back for a good while. Vikki's been a saint at driving us back and forth.

As you can see, I've finally got around to making a proper Iella icon. It's the pic of her on the windowsill I took about a month ago. There was a certain amount of language involved, but we got there in the end. I have four spaces for lj icons left. I could probably do with one for sewing and craftwork in general. I shall have to think about it,

I got an unexpected letter yesterday, with the address in a handwriting I didn't recognize. It was from one of the sons of my godmother, Pat, who died last Christmas. He enclosed a cheque which was a sum Pat had left me in her will. This is the godmother who gave me my gold charm bracelet - a new charm for it every Xmas until I was 21. I thought she might leave me a little something, but wasn't counting on it. This was more than I expected, though no fortune.

I knew what I wanted to spend some of it on. Some fifteen years ago I saw Denis Lawson on stage in a musical, Lust. I saw it four times in fact. The show, and Denis were great, and I hoped to see him on stage again some time, preferably in another musical. Well, earlier this year, I discovered that he'd been playing one of the lead roles in the stager version of La Cage aux Folles. Now I saw the original movie of this many years ago, and enjoyed it, so the idea of a stage version was appealing, even without added Denis. However, he'd just finished his run in the show. Other good stars have been in since, but I never got around to seeing any of them (John Barrowman is currently starring) and regretted missing my chance to see Denis again.

Well, red_scharlach kindly informed me earlier in the week that Denis is returning ! He's only playing for about a month (December), so I got on with it and have now booked everything for a couple of days in London town over the second and third of December. Single train tickets to London were way cheaper than the open return, so I booked those - and went for First Class, which was £20 eaech way. I've found a decent looking 2 star hotel that's actually in central London, unlike some of the others that claimed to be. That's £40 for a single room for one night and has an en-suite bathroom, unlike several others in a similar price range I looked at. And I booked my ticket for the theatre.

As I'm short, I always worry about getting stuck behind someone taller, or behind something like that wretched safety rail in the upper circle at the Lyceum, which is exactly in my eyeline. So having decided I was going to do things in style, I book a seat slap bang in the centre of the front row. I considered taking a seat at one of the cabaret table in front of the stalls, which become part of the show as the dancers come and dance on them. However, not knowing the theatre, I was worried that if I was too close to the stage area, my view might be restricted as my eyeline is lower than most people's.

So I'm really looking forward to seeing the show. I'll have an afternoon and morning free in London. Any suggestions on what to do ?

Iella went back for her second post-op checkup on Tues. The vet had been a little anxious about feeling something - probably fat, under the skin of the wound. Well, when she went back Tues (in shiny new cat box) there were no change. The vet suspected that either some abdominal fat had got through the incision in the muscle during her neutering op, or else the muscle hadn't healed properly and some fat had come through - a hernia, basically. The wound in the skin was just and Iella was full of beans and charging around, which was why I'd not been worried,  The vet asked if Iella could come in the next day for an exploratory op, and restitching if necessary.

Vikki, who is no more of a morning person than I am, gallantly agreed to get up at 7.00am to have us at the vets for 8.30. Vikki has already driven us to and from the vets about five times already for Iella's op and the checkups, for which I am very grateful. However, she phoned at 7.20am Wed morning to say she was on the verge of coming down with a cold. If she got up and went out then, she would certainly succumb. And I know that Vikki gets nasty colds that linger. So she apologetically said she couldn't take us to the vet and kindly offered to pay the taxi fare. She said if she could sleep through the morning, she'd be well enough to pick Iella up again in the afternoon. I told her not to worry about the taxi fare, and phoned Mercury taxis.

Well, the taxi took us to Attercliffe in good time and I checked Iella in, then caught a bus into town. It stopped right by the market, so I popped in for a lamb burger and then next door to Wilkinsons and got a nice casserole dish. Then the 52, from the same stop, to home, where I lay down and napped for an hour or so.


The PDSA phoned around 1.00 to say Iella was fine, so Vikki and I set off to Attercliffe again around half two. We stopped first at a clock repair and jewellery shop, where I'd intended to take my splendid 70's sunburst clock a few months ago. The battery mechanism needs replacing, and the shop owner offered to do it in 15 mins so I could pick it up again after we'd got Iella. I was more interested in getting her straight home, so we'll pick the clock up next Tues when she has her checkup.

My poor girl was lying in the bottom of her cat box with her chin on the floor, looking very sorry for herself. She had had a hernia, which was stitched up. She now has a bigger scar, stiched not with fine cotton this time, but big stitches in fishing line. She has a five day course of tablets and has to wear a lampshade collar for ten days or so. She's got resigned to it though. This is her on Thurs:





Once I'd got her home and settled her, I had to start making tea for Jenny and Ian who were coming over to see her. The harvest hotpot and the Suzzex Pond Pudding went down well and it was lovely to see you both. Remember - the First Friday Social at the Walkley Cottage. I had planned to set up my Scalextric track, so we could play with the added Kitten Kong hazard. However, I didn't want iella chasing around so soon after her op.

She's bright and well now, taking her pills nicely with some tuna fish. Let's hope it all goes smoothly this time.

I've been thinking for a while that I needed to replace my plastic cat carrier. The bottom latch on the door was broken when I was given it and attempts to mend that have only been partially successful. It's also not that large. When I brought Iella home in it from her breeder, she lay neatly at the back, almost rattling around in it. Now she looks decidedly cosy in there, and she's still growing. Diesel is much the same. It's OK for short journeys around Sheffield but really, the cats deserve better. I do have an old-fashioned wicker carrier, which is much larger but otherwise rather basic.

So I needed a larger, but not extorionately expensive carrier - preferably one with a comfortable handle for carrying it. For years, it seemed at all carriers had narrow handles that were square in cross section - very uncomforable for carrying weight. Some now have fatter and rounder handles, which are more comfortable to grip.

The carrier I eventually chose is this:

It looks space-age !

The door at the front can be easily opened with one hand and the top part unclips to lift off. The handle looks good, and it comes with a shoulder strap. The white panel at the front is a food and water container that can be taken out without needing to open the door, so risk of escape if you want to feed them in transit. I can't wait for it to arrive - though I doubt that the cats will share my enthusiasm :)

A big day for Iella today. Off to the vet this morning to have some bits removed. She's a fraction over six months old now, and I'm quite glad she hasn't come into season yet, as I imagine it would be rather noisy. No danger of that happening now she's spayed.

Vikki kindly drove us to the vet. Iella never made a sound (unlike Skiffle) and just sat very quietly in the cat box. She was rather anxious, poor girl, and I felt bad about leaving her there. Once Iella was in the hands of the PDSA, Vikki said she needed to go to Morrisons, and did I want to join her or go home. I went along: I haven't been in a supermarket larger than the Barber Road Co-op for a few weeks - doing most of my shopping online - and I haven't been to Morrisons for many a month.We didn't spend that long, but I was wilting when we were done. Neither of us usually goes shopping on a Friday, and we were both surprised by how busy it was. The PDSA had notices on the surgery doors asking for donations of paper towels, so we both bought some while we were shopping.

I got back just after one, and had been in for a couple of minutes when Julie (social carer) arrived for hair washing and flat cleaning. And she'd only been here a couple of minutes when the phone rang - it was the PDSA saying Iella was fine and could I pick her up at three. So from dropping her off to getting the call, I was busy and in company, and didn't have time to fret too much about her. I was greatly relieved to hear that she was fine, even though I was pretty sure she'd sail through her op. I called Vikki, who'd just got home herself. We both had about half an hour to get lunch before setting off back to the Vet.

I picked up a rather shocked-looking kitten, complete with plastic Elizabeth collar for her to wear at night to stop her getting at the stitches. That's going to be fun...When we got home again, she came out of the box and purred non-stop for 20 minutes, demanding fuss and cuddles. There's a large bite of fur gone from her left flank - all the more striking in a semi-longhair.

She's fine now, and gleefully defying the vet's instructions to stay quiet.. She's been happily spilling the contents of the water bowl onto the carpet - one of her favourite hobbies. Must get some kind of fairly rigid plastic sheet/mat to put under the water bowl. I think Diesel was hoping she'd gone for good. Diesel's been rather hissy with her since she returned.

Back to the vet Tues lunchtime for a checkup. If I can get her into the cat basket again.

*cough* years ago I made wine - one demijohn of elderberry and blackberry and one of blackberry. Then, what with illness, a delapidated flat and the flat restoration, I never got around to bottling the wine. And then got into a funk about it, fearing it probably wouldn't be good, not after this time, which became an increasingly loooong time.

However, I finally got myself in gear, and rather than tackling the job of corking and bottling on my own, I summoned expert help. Most of the wine making stuff I have technically belongs to Iain F anyway and it was nice to have the reassurance of someone who done all this before. According to the labels tied to the demijohn's, the contents of both had been rough but sweet and recognizably wine when I'd put it aside to mature. It seems that since then, the wine had refermented, using up all the remaining sugar. Yes it was dry.

The elderberry was thin and not good. Iain reckoned that with the addition of sugar, it might be salvaged into something you could cook with, but it didn't seem worth the effort. The blackberry, however, was more promising. It still needed to have a lot of sugar added to bring it to a sweetish wine, which is what I wanted. It's also rather powerful. I succeeding in brewing alcohol, if nothing else :) So I now have half a dozen bottles of decent blackberry wine. I'm full of a cold at the moment, so was relying somewhat on Iain's palate to back up my own tasting, But at last - I have wine !

Two ebay purchases arrived yesterday morning, one of which had taken so long to arrive I feared it had fallen victim to the postal strikes. The old Hamlet cigar tin (picked up from a windowsill on West Street on the way back from an Iron Maiden concert in the 80's) that I've been using as a utensil pot is really too small. Most of the utenstil pots I've looked at on ebay are either too floral or too bland for my taste. However, I found one in a rich yellow-brown that's really nice. I also treated myself to a coffee jar from the Hornsea pottery. I have a brown Hornsea Heirloom design sugar jar, just the same as my parents have had from the 70's. My coffee jar is the Saffron pattern, which is nice and cheerful - and equally retro. More pretty things for the kitchen - yay !

Time for some recent photos of my little woolly girl. Iella is about 5 and a half months old now and is as tall as Diesel and almost as long. Helen remarked that she's grown into her ears, but hasn't grown into her paws yet. Her coat is already thicker, with a small ruff and knickerbockers, and it's still really her kitten coat. When she's about three or four and has her winter coat, she should be quite something to see !

These photos were taken this week. Here she is on the windowsill in the games room, showing off her classic Norwegian profile and her bushy tail.



( Three more pics of Iella )

Random stuff I've been doing.

Friday I got rid of a bar stool via Freecycle. I bought about pair of bar stool with some money I was given for my 21st birthday (so that was a while ago then). I have one in the kitchen, painted yellow, but the other has been gathering dust in the games room for years as there isn't room for both in the kitchen. Decided I might as well get rid of it. Decided to give it a wipe over before it was collected and discovered it was rather more battered and grubby than I thought. Managed to restore it to merely 'shabby chic' - any marks left were clean enough to eat your dinner off. Person who came for it seemed delighted anyway.

While I was at it, cleaned the toaster and kettle, including cable, plugs and socket. All looks lovely and shiny and new again. Am gradually replacing older/shabbier/dodgier stuff in kitchen and making it prettier. The old small cake tin handpainted years ago by myself has been replaced by a slightly larger, prettier one picked up for about 25p at the Birdsedge fete this summer. My old utensil pot is a Hamlet cigar tin picked up from a windowsill outside a West Street pub on the way back from an Iron Maiden concert about 20 years ago. It's too small really, and I've just bought a lovely orange glazed pot from ebay to replace it.

I'd forgotten how foul steroid pills taste, but they are definitely helping me recover from a recent relapse that was the culmination of a series of minor illnesses. My left leg now feels similar to the right one again, is less tender, and sensation is returning to the skin on the left side of my body. Energy levels have improved too.

Really need to get to a post office, as have various things to send around the planet.

Iella can now jump onto windowsills and likes to sit in the bathroom sink. She scabbles madly at the inside of the sink for no readily apparent reason, scraping with both front paws for a minute. Diesel likes to drink from a running tap and asks by rubbing her face against the tap. She's very neat about it, lapping from the flowing water while perched on the edge of the sink. Iella sat in the sink and tried for herself. She kept batting at the stream of water, possibly trying to divert it. She stuck her head right under the tap to see the water falling, and had it running over the backs of her ears and the back of her head. She tried to drink by turning her head sideways so the water flowed into the side of her mouth, which wasn't very successful. Water was getting flicked and splashed all over, which didn't bother her at all. It just sat on the outer surface of her fluff, which is designed to be largely waterproof. Her white front legs were speckled with beads of glittering water, like glass beads on a white Xmas decoration.

Need to go get laundry from the machine now. Having an automatic still seems like bliss after more than a decade of the twin tub.

My first cat was Shiraz, who was very handsome and very loving. I guess I picked him at the Cat Shelter because I was pre-disposed to like big furry cats. After having the pleasure of his company for several years, that initial liking became fixed. my cats since have been shorthairs, and lovely of course, but I didn't realize how much I missed my big furry cats until I met Max at the cat shelter earlier this year.
  One of the things that drew me to Norwegian Forests is that they're big, furry cats. They have ruffs and big curls of hair in their ears and adorable tufts of fur between their toes. The breed standard calls for a long, bushy tail, and this they have. Even in their summer coat the tail is still a beautiful plume.

This cat is Noynarock Siri. She has a plume.


The pic is from her owner's website - I've never met Siri or her owner. But what a glorious thing to have ornamenting your sofa.

For reasons I can't make clear (or remember), I was trying to remember the verses to a song we sang as children, often on school trips. Sung to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, it's 'The Cat Packed The Parachute, Forgot To Pack The Strings." For some reason, I simply couldn't recall the second verse. I knew I was missing one, but couldn't remember how it went.

So, I just googled the phrase, 'The cat packed the parachute' and got just one hit. It was a post on the Fforde fforum, by me and the line I couldn't remember was there. (The cat was the last to jump, the first to hit the ground). One of the lines is half-missing, though I may have remembered wrong and inserted one that wasn't there.

But I'm amused that I answered my own question.

I was settling down to catch up on t'internet after watching the Grand Prix, when I heard music coming from somewhere outside. It sounded like ceilidh music, and I could hear a woman's voice, that was probably calling a dance. Now there's been music and events in the parks nearby through the summer, and I've not been to any of them. Today, as it was a nice afternoon, I decided to go and see some of what's happening.

It was the last concert of the summer in the lovely, refurbished bandstand in Weston Park.

(This is the bandstand in the snow earlier this year)


The band were the Outlandish Knights, and as I walked towards the bandstand, the traditional ceilidh music blended neatly into a burst of Deep Purple's Black Night. The park was pleasantly busy, with some people sitting and watching. There was just one set dancing; a mixed age range from grey-haired to 3 year olds. The dancing wouldn't have won any awards, but the dancers were enjoying themselves and it was fun to watch.
  I'd just arrived and sat down when rhino_neil  joined me. It was lovely to see him, and we chatted for a while. We don't remember exactly when we met but it was getting on for 20 years ago now. I missed most of the band's performance, but they are very good. During the final polka, the guitarist left the bandstand and wandered about as he played, pursued by a boy holding a video camera. The gig was thoroughly documented, as there were about 3 people taking photos as well as two with camcorders. So we sat for the best part of an hour, and then I wandered home via the mini supermarket.

A very nice diversion on a pleasant summer afternoon. Now I have to go see if Diesel wants to come in for her tea yet.

I've been doing a little gardening the last couple of days. The builders finally came and removed most of the debris left behind by the roofers. The bathroom in flat 2 is being remodelled and the contractors have splashed something white over the Lily of the Valley and around it, and poured something tan-coloured nearby. As well as leaving cigarette ash in the potted Goth fern. I complained to the builder, who promised to clear it up. Quite how he intends to clean Lily of the Valley leaves, I don't know. The stuff hasn't washed off in the rain.

The pink flowered potentilla that Ven gave me was looking rather sad, and needed repotting. I divided it in two and put both parts into bigger pots (with 'help' from an interested Iella). Hopefully, it should have nice flowers next year after a poor performance this summer.

Yesterday I cut back the two purple flowered hebes - neither of which I planted. They just materialised in the front garden. The branches I cut off were the ones with flowers on, so I brought those indoors and arranged them in a large vase, putting it on top of a bookcase, well out of cat reach. I cleared up some of the smaller bits of rubbish that the builder had missed, and thew out a heather that died a while ago. I need to wash out the lovely blue glazed pot it was in, then I shall pot up the golden azelea into that.

Next item after that is to look at the holly sapling and work out whether I can successfully dig it up  and transplant it to the back garden (it's growing right by the edge of the concrete in front of the house, so much of the root ball may be under there), or if I will just have to cut it down and try to kill the stump.

And the Great White Hebe that I hacked back severely in the spring is now getting good and leafy again. I knew I couldn't kill the bugger that easily.

Asvilakins  pointed out:

"today is the 7th of August 2009 which means that at some point the time and date will be (or was, in my case) 12:34:56 7-8-9. :-)"

I just made it.

I was glancing through the mail accumulated in the hall for past and present tenants, when I spotted this on the wrapper for an engineering magazine that someone had subscribed to.




Do you dispose of it by dissolving it in beef stock  then ? Or does the wrapper cause meat extract cubes to crumble and decay ? Seems an odd way of disposing of either wrapper or oxo cube.

There seems to be an intermittent  fault in the alarm of the adjoining house. (not sure if it's fire or burglar, but seems to be internal, so guessing fire) That's the empty house, being refurbished, so no one on hand in the evening to deal with it.

It started wailing this evening, just as soul_rider  and child were leaving here, and went on for about 20-25 mins before stopping. It's just started up again, at midnight, and I sincerely hope it will shut up of its on accord before long. I'll have to tell the builders when they're in tomorrow and see about getting it fixed, or switched off.