Health

The Most Expensive Car In The World

Marooned

..and so I dribble to the end of one of the most full, stressfull, penniless and dismal months of my short young life. With no irony whatsover (considering the medium on which you are reading this), I won’t bore you with the minute details. A lot of you with whom I speak on regular basis will know about most of it. The maroon metal monstrosity pictured above played it’s part in no small measure. So far this year, I must have spent the best part of £1000 on it, despite only paying £595 about 3 years ago. The world is full of people willing to dish out advice when this happens but the answer is never so simple as most believe. “Get rid of it!” they yell. But you can’t “get rid” of a car that is broken can you? Who will take it? So, you fix it and then you don’t need to “get rid of it” at all. In fact, the thing you have just fixed is one more thing on it that is less likely to go wrong again. I use this dubious logic to convince myself that after this year’s repairs – the thermostat, clutch, exhaust and alternator will not go wrong again for ages. I know…I know…

Anyway, it’s booked in tomorrow at the garage next to work (I know…I know) that I have often spoken about. Yes, I always feel stupid in there but you have to understand that it’s very convenient and thanks to my kind friends, I won’t have to spend £25 on taxis. By this time tomorrow, I will be able to stop disconnecting the battery every time I park up at home, at work and anywhere else where I am going to be more than about 10 minutes. It’s amazing what you can put up with sometimes isn’t it? If it does have one downside, it’s that I  have to wait around at work so that all my colleagues have driven off before I lift the bonnet to fiddle with the battery. They are all really kind but you do get a bit fed up of “are you ok?” or “do you need a hand?”. It’s my fault really. I shouldn’t know so many nice people.

I shouldn’t knock it too much though. As is always the case in the middle of diversity like this, I have learnt so much. I can now disable and re-enable the immobiliser with consumate ease. I know where the fuse for the horn is, I know how to change the battery, I know how to tell if the battery is charged just by looking at it and I even finally got round to putting new batteries in my key fobs.

But you are right. I should get rid of it. But look at it..it’s 13 years old and it’s still so shiny. It still has new car smell. Still!

So one final thank you to the RAC men who have helped me these past few weeks. Most of you were friendly, kind and helpful. One of you wasn’t but in his defence, it was very early, very cold and I did jibber like an idiot in an effort to pretend I knew the first thing about motor vehicles. To say I have got my money’s worth out of an annual RAC membership this year would be something of an understatement.

So that’s what’s been happening. It is certainly the only part of it entertaining enough or amusing to post here.

Progress

Long time pals will have been watching this blog on an almost daily basis for signs that it is going to be a going concern anytime soon. Well, I have now finished putting the last seven years of blog posts in and like most such jobs, it was a drag. This is mostly my fault as I re-read most of them before putting them in. Some I left out as a result of sheer tediousness or irrelevance. Some of them were too short to bother and after reading and disregarding the third of forth such dribble, I remembered that my first blog template was a skinny, single-columned affair where such tiny snippets would have filled half a page. Most of them would barely fill a Tweet these days.

Some of the entries reflected how much has changed since in the last 5 years. I had few friends at work who read my blog and it was very much a school friends blog. This is by no means a bad thing but nowadays, many of my work friends read this and would be a bit bored and/or mystefied by talk of things boarding school. I did (unwisely) bitch about work on occasion too. Why I thought this was appropriate is a bit of a mystery.

There is no mention of my dad passing away although there is of his funeral a week later. Likewise, there is little mention of my being diagnosed of Diabetes but there is of my memorable visit to a medical “workshop” a few weeks later. On reflection, I probably didn’t feel like blogging about dad at the time. I suppose the same could be said of my medical bombshell too.

So I guess I am “back” now.  My next blog post will be the first concerning the writing of my book. If you didn’t know I was doing such a thing then you will no doubt be fascinated by what I have to share with you over the coming weeks. If you did know, then once again I promise that I will actually get on with it.

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