Well that was stupid

I had to pop out on Friday afternoon, but when I got to my car I found my neighbour was sitting in the open door of hers with her 2yo asleep on the backseat and the new-born being appallingly cute on the middle bench seat. As our drives are physically contiguous, this put my car's engine within 2m of both of them.

"I'll just roll out onto the street and start the engine there," I told her, not wanting to present her with two crying children.

Starting it rolling was no problem, that part of the drive is on a slight slope, so just insert the key, knock it out of gear and take the handbrake off. But the streetside half of the drive is much steeper, and as it started to pick up speed I braked to check there was no one coming, and automatically stuck it in gear* as I did so.

That was a problem, because doing it without the engine running immediately engaged the steering lock, and the weight of the car on the slope meant I also couldn't get it out of gear. And you can't start the car with it in gear. The only way** to get it out of gear and out of steering lock in those circumstances is to physically push it forward slightly to take the weight off the drivetrain. But it was on the slope, facing uphill, and my normal stick a leg out to ease it slightly forward wasn't going to work.

So that meant getting out of the car to physically shove it forward, but as soon as I took the handbrake off and knocked it out of gear, it was going to start rolling backwards.

That's okay, thinks I, I can just grab the handbrake to stop it.

So I knock the handbrake off, put my shoulder to the car and rock it forward 

The pressure on the gear lever frees up and I knock it out of gear. At which point it immediately starts to accelerate backwards.

I grab the handbrake and yank it on.

Car continues to accelerate backwards.

Sh*t! F*ck!

The only solution was to dive into the (slowly) moving car and stamp on the brake pedal, which stopped it just short of the road.

I am amazed I got away with no more than a bruised shin.

Also a good reminder that the handbrake is a parking brake and not a moving brake!

* Just to be weird, my car is a semi-automatic - no clutch pedal, but a conventional gearstick.

** There's probably something buried in the manual, but I know rocking it forward works.

Okay, how about this way?

I ordered a new desk last week, the aim being to stop using my existing one in the back bedroom and instead have it in the lounge, right next to the french windows. This would mean replacing the TV stand that's already in that corner, and ideally my (largish) TV would become my new monitor - there's only me in the house so I'm unlikely to want to watch TV at the same time I'm using my laptop - and can just open up a window to BBC iPlayer/whatever if need be.

For an L-shaped desk it arrived in a startlingly small, if weighty, package - I was surprised when the delivery driver drove off, I'd assumed he was going back to his van for another box.

But everything seemed to be there when I opened it up, so I set about putting it together: three desk top sections, four shelves, 5 sets of legs/sides (two pedestals for one half, single side for the other), 4 crossbars, 8 bracing struts and a multitude of screws and bolts.

I think I can say it's a very clever design, it can go together in three different ways, but that flexibility means almost all of those parts are subtly different from each other: three different designs of legs/sides, three different designs of crossbars. And the only difference between them is that the holes are drilled in different places. The assembly drawings do show the holes, but they're very, very small.

Figuring out which was which was very irritating. But it did go together eventually, if with several left over screws.

And then right at the end I realised what I'd thought were QC Inspector stickers, were in fact labels to tell you which part was which. *headdesk*

But of course that's only the first half of the problem. The second half of the problem is how you arrange TV, laptop, DVD player, and the DVD player's surround-sound speakers. Straight on one way? Straight on the other way? Across the corner of the L? At what angle across the corner of the L? 

Let us say there have been multiple arrangements. And I'm still not sure that the current one is final.

(Plus several hours trying to get the laptop to talk to the TV without losing half the picture off the edges, and an eventual realisation I needed to change the TV settings, not the laptop)