Go-Kart

I'm driving a Peugot 107 courtesy car, whilst the paint damage caused by some dickhead with an envious streak and a key is being repaired on our VW Touran. I've had a couple of small cars in my time, but this one's a real roller-skate. Feeling every bump in the road as it rattles along.

Lights Out

Went out to finish off the Christmas food shopping tonight and spotted a car parked on our street with it's headlights on. 2 hours later when I came back it's lights were still on - that battery wasn't going to last long in subzero temperatures. I didn't recognise it as being one of the neighbours cars, so I tried the flat over the road - not theirs either.
The next door neighbour reckoned the car probably belonged to somebody at one of the restaurants we live near to. I tried the Indian restaurant first - only 4 couples dining in there, so a quick word with the owner and he checked around the customers - didn't belong to anyone in there.
The Thai restaurant next door immediately recognised my description of the car - it belonged to the Chef - so good deed done.
We've got a table booked in the Thai restaurant in a couple of weeks time - the manager of the restaurant said that he'd look out for us.

Crap Weekend So Far

Late finish at work on Friday at 20:30.

Walked out to the front car park - "Dude, where's my car?!"
Answer - in the multi-storey car park that's only paid for until 19:00. Forgot to move the car round to the smaller free car park outside the main building. Charged £3.80 for the privilege of the stay.

Drove home, just pulling up outside the house, when the phone rings, and I'm called back to work to fix the problem behind a system alert that's just cropped up which needs immediate attention.

Home again at 23:00 for a whole hour of Friday night! Cup of hot chocolate and bed.

Back in again this morning for another couple of hours of pre-planned work. Home again at 11:00. Nipped round to the very local coffee shop to fetch back a couple of Lattes and second breakfast (old Hobbit's die hard).

Popped out again to give a mis-delivered letter to a neighbour to hear a loud crunch! The very same neighbour had just managed to clout our car with his whilst trying to park!

His fault, so a phone call to insurance to arrange repairs and a replacement vehicle.

New flat pack furniture delivery actually arrived on time. Crash bang wallop! Off the truck and into the house. Spent the next couple of hours rearranging the unbalanced pile that they'd left, so there's less chance of it falling on anyone whilst I work up the urge to put it together over the next 20 weeks or so :)

More joys of being in work planned for tomorrow morning, and tomorrow teatime. Remind me to seek out and burn the essay about 'the future of home working' that I wrote at college!

Consoled myself by playing Rayman Raving Raving Rabbids TV Party with the boys. It claims to be "The only video game that you can play with your butt" - I'm sure that Samwise can prove them wrong :)

Motorway Messages

Sighted on the Motorway on the way back from Wolves on Sunday

1. A Tanker, with the words "Succumb to the Darkness" written in the dirt on it's rear.

2. A Mercedes with the registration plate of "B1G B0SS".

Tooth Fairy - 4

Frodo's other front tooth was hanging on by a very strong gum-thread on Thursday night.
I got him to wobble it a lot until finally, as I was examining how he was doing, it pinged out and landed on his bed.

Popped it in an envelope with a note to the Tooth Fairy to come and get it.

This time she left a small Lightning McQueen car under his pillow.



Samwise has been observing this activity closely. We found out at a children's party on Saturday that he's been giving some small white nuts to the kids in his school class to try and "trick the tooth fairy" with. So far she hasn't been fooled :)

Pedal to the Metal

Resolution: - I must get back to blogging more often and not let life, the universe and everything hinder leisure activities. (Also I must make time for leisure activities other than falling asleep and snoring zzzZZZZ!)

Stuck in work most of this weekend doing various jobs. Not so bad yesterday as the weather was dismal. Typically I'm on a deadline to finish putting together the boys Stockade Playhouse and I'd planned to do some more work on it yesterday morning when the heavens opened! Today the weather has improved and I've been stuck here for the best part of the day waiting for hardware techies to do their stuff so I can stop and start system services.

The title of this post refers to the latest problem that we had with our vehicle, which is a about a month off being 1 year old. I'd loaded up 4 rather heavy rubble sacks to take to the tip, and had gone about quarter of a mile when an Engine Problem warning light lit up and "Go Straight to the Garage!" appeared on the on-board computer.

Hoping it might be something to do with the weight being pulled, I got to the tip, unloaded, started up again and the fault cleared. It came back again about a mile or so later. Car still going but in "limp home" mode.

Arrived at work and switched off. Later that evening I headed for home and found that I still had the fault, so I parked up and called the RAC, to check it before I did any more damage. The RAC man came and thrashed the accelerator for a bit. His diagnostic kit showed the fault had cleared. He advised me to take it to VW to be checked.

Got the car booked in a couple of days later, which steadily began to get worse - back to limp home mode on starting, with an exhaust problem warning lighting up alongside the first one.

Got the car back on Friday night. It turned out to be a problem with the accelerator pedal. They've fitted a shiny new one and the problem has gone. Apparently accelerator pedals no longer pull on a cable. Mine pushes on a potentiometer (variable resistor) that drives some electronics to tell the car how fast to go. The electronics had failed.

Oh well. At least they found and fixed the fault quickly this time.

Ouch! and Ouch! again.

A couple of weeks ago we woke up to find that our car had been vandalised, along with about 30 or so cars in the immediate area. Some idiot(s) had gone around in the late/early hours scoring a number deep scratches into every vehicle in the neigbourhood.

Yesterday I put our car in for repair. I was given a courtesy car which I had to reverse out of a tight car park. Unfortunately one of the managers of the repair shop had parked his long Silver Mercedes in one of the courtesy car parking bays. This being far too big for the bay resulted in a chicane to negotiate, and with me reversing a car I'm not used to I totally misjudged it and clipped the rear wing on my courtesy car, and his Merc.

Quote from the manager of the repair shop - "Let's just see which one you've hit. Oh No! It's mine!".

Ouch! Sorted it out with the insurance, so the excess payment is now twice what it was going to be. Ouch again!

An Honest Mechanic?

Driving home from work yesterday, I spotted a car in front of me with large lettering on the rear window that said "Warning, bits may fall off!".

I wondered what this was about? I could see that the car had a company logo on it.

As I drew nearer I saw that the car belonged to a Mobile Mechanic!

Either somebody's having a laugh, and he doesn't know, or he's just a bit too honest for the good of his business.

I've been driving in my car...

A couple of photos of our new car.

HelloJohnGottaNewMota

Picked up our new car today. No it's not a Cortina! it's a brand new VW Touran.
Looks very black and shiny right now - give it a few days for a layer of dirt to take the sheen off it.

It's been a bit of a struggle getting it delivered when we wanted it. What was that quote by Mark Twain again? - "There are lies, damn lies and car salesmen".

Reading on the Bus / Car Breakdown 4

Travelling to work by Bus for the past week or so has given me the opportunity to catch up with some reading.

I bought a couple of books in February to read on holiday in Rome.

One was The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, a sequel to The Night Watch.

This is the second book in a different take on the struggle of supernatural good vs evil. The author is Russian so it is set in Moscow. As with the first book, it was an excellent read. I'm pleased to discover that there's another two books in the "Tetralogy" - I must get hold of them. I'm not sure if they're out in this country yet (they are Russian translations).

I finished this one whilst on holiday, then moved onto The Malice Box by Martin Langfield.

This one looked promising at first, but a few chapters into it I discovered that it's about treasure hunt around New York, relating to a spiritual quest based on the Kabbalah. Interesting insights into the Architecture of New York on the way around "The Path". Unfortunately I found the spiritual mysticism somewhat tedious early on in the book, and this has continued up to the last chapter. Just about finished it now, thanks to the bus journey to work, but it's taken me a good few months to get through it, since I'd lost interest at an early stage.

The main character has his own blog so that you can follow the sights on his journey of spiritual/supernatural enlightenment, and the subsequent awakening of his powers with which to combat evil as he treks around New York.

Glad that I've finished that one now. I can get back to reading some of the easy-reading children's books that I got for my Birthday in May, but were interrupted by the much inferior, but over-hyped, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

No more reading on the bus next week.
The Volkswagen Dealer called me at 18:00 today to tell me that the car has been repaired! (Looks like the 3-week possible wait was a worse case scenario).

The part arrived from Germany this morning, and they've fitted and tested it today.
I'll have to trek over to Bootle (using my all-week bus ticket) and pick up the car tomorrow morning.

Car Breakdown 3

The VW Dealership called me this afternoon.

The service desk lady said that she had some "bad news".
The car (a Volkswagen Touran by the way) needs a new fuel unit - 375 quid to replace, plus 40 quid to diagnose the problem using their test kit.

This, however, wasn't all of the bad news!
The part is on "Back Order" from Germany which means I will have up to a 3 week wait. Aaaargh!

I also checked to see if there was any "good will" with the Warranty (it expired 5 months ago, but it could be a "known fault"), for a possible discount on the repair. The Warranty Manager said "No".

When I asked what the "fuel unit" did I was told that it was an "electrical" component. Sounds very much to me like they're replacing a chip?

Why have they run out of spare parts? Either it's a very rare fault, or a very common one and there's been a rush for parts. Couldn't find anything that indicated this on the Web. I don't think it's related to the Tesco contaminated fuel scare that happened in March, but I'll keep a lookout just in case.
I last topped up the tank at a Shell Filling station in Betwys-y-Coed, and before that it was mainly at Tesco's and occasionally Asda.

It could be just Murphy's Law in operation, since the 3 year Warranty on the car has expired.

So it's "Shanks Pony" and public transport for the next 3 weeks for me. I'll have to get a bus pass for next week, and think about possibly hiring a car for a trip to London at the end of the month.

It's Frodo's actual Birthday tomorrow (although he had his party last Sunday) - so we'll have to get a Taxi to the play centre that we were going to, for an on-the-day treat tomorrow morning.

Car Breakdown 2

The car breakdown saga continues (see the end of Summer Holiday)

The local Nationwide garage where the car had been towed to by the AA called me on Monday afternoon to say that they had investigated and road tested the car. Their computer diagnostics were showing "no fault" and it was starting and driving OK.

Giving that we're thinking of trading in the car in a couple of months I decided to give it a try and see if the fault had somehow rectified itself, or if it would develop again.

I picked it up on Tuesday morning and drove it out of the garage. Two corners around the block on Penny Lane the car broke down again! Again it wouldn't start.

I walked back to the garage and they sent a mechanic to investigate. He took his computer diagnostic equipment and plugged it in. Again, as with Saturdays AA man, the computer was showing "No Fault" even though the car wouldn't start.

I was advised to take it to the main VW dealer, who would have better diagnostic equipment. So after walking home and picking up my stuff for work, I caught a bus back to the car and called the AA. A very nice man towed me 8 miles or so to the main VW dealership in Bootle.

Although they said that they probably wouldn't get to look at it on the same day, that afternoon they called me, and said that it appeared to be working OK, and their diagnostic equipment was showing "No Fault" (they are charging me 40 quid to run diagnostics on their kit).

I explained the two breakdowns to them, so they've decided to investigate further.

This is the same place that when I took the car in for a brake check, they told me that they'd had all the wheels off the car. None of my hub cap ties had been cut!, so all they'd done was drive it and try the brakes.
Therefore I suspect that at this point they'd just tried to start the car, and had found that it started.

They called me back to get my permission for a mechanic to drive the car home to St Helens and see if the breakdown happens again. I said that they could do this.

Haven't heard from them today, so hopefully he broke down and is now looking for the cause of the problem.

I'll give them a call tomorrow if I haven't heard by then.

I'm now rediscovering the joys of public transport.

Summer Holiday

Saturday - Arrived at the Holiday Cottage in "Ysbyty Ifans"

Sunday - Bright and Sunny today. We drove to Harlech, where we had tea, milk and toasted teacakes in our favourite tea room (soon to be featured in one of Novelist Supermum's stories).

Then down from Harlech to spend the rest of the day on Harlech Beach, which has got to be one of the best beaches in the area.

Great day out.

Monday - Wet morning, but turned bright and sunny in the afternoon.

Went to the Greenwood Forest Adventure Park. An eco-friendly theme park. We all rode the "Green Dragon" roller coaster. To power this first you all walk up a hill and get into a large box car. Everybody's weight takes this car down the hill, and acts as a counter-weight to bring the roller coaster cars up the hill (it also generates electricity for the ride). You then all walk up the hill again and get into the roller coaster cars that are now at the top of the hill. Then off you go at breakneck speed whizzing round the track and down to the bottom.

This was Frodo and Samwise's first roller coaster. Samwise just made the height restriction, and I wasn't sure how he would take it. Luckily they both thought it was great fun, laughing and shrieking all the way to the bottom, and both wanted to go again.

Other attractions were some slides made out of matting that you whizzed down on plastic "tea trays", several rope, chain and log climbs and bridges, some large tubular slides, and "jungle boats" that you had to navigate through the "jungle" yourself by paddling and pulling on overhead ropes.

Great day out.

Tuesday - A rainy day for a drive around Snowdon to the Llanberis Lake Railway

An hour or so's ride on these little chuff chuffs was the higlight of the day. There was a stop at a picnic area, but since the nearby cafe and playground were both shut for repairs it wasn't worth staying.

We ate some of our pic-nic in the little rail carriage. Samwise got into the groove and started dancing to the "clickety clack" sound.

There's a slate museum next to the main station, so we had a quick tour of this since it was free. Then a walk into Llanberis for a look at the start of the mountain railway (have decided to do this on a special trip another year, since it's expensive, and you can't get to the top at present as they're improving the last section - it's a building site at the moment).

Wednesday - A wet start to the day, but turned bright and sunny again as we drove out to the Anglesey Sea Zoo

Had a spot of trouble finding this, due to a very small, almost unnoticeable direction sign that we missed with a lobster on it. We were distracted at the time by the larger sign for the small, but largely named town of llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

The Sea Zoo was OK, but wasn't very big. For twenty notes I would have been disappointed if we hadn't got to see a diver "maintaining" one of the tanks. All the kids sat at the front while he took his aqualung out and pulled faces at them. They were supposed to ask him questions by writing on a board and holding him up. This quickly deteriorated into asking him to do tricks. This included a forward somersault, backward somersault and a cartwheel.

Outside was a bouncy castle and an adventure play area, so we spent a good hour or two here and had our lunch.

We then went in search of the nearest, and found it just outside the Sea View Centre.
Spent the afternoon throwing stones into the sea with Frodo and Samwise.

Great day out.

Thursday - Another wet day, so we visited Gormenghast aka Penhrhyn Castle Not mediaeval this time, but built in the 1800's from the profits of Welsh slate mines and Jamaican sugar plantations.

Fantastic place to wander around. Magnificent neo-Norman architecture - i.e. like an overdecorated film set, combined with interiors ranging from the Victorian period to the 1930's. Bakelite lamp stands. Water closets - flush toilets with hand pump action, a collection of steam engines, early electric lighting and power, enormous kitchens with vast arrays of copper pans and larders where the carcases of a whole herd of cows could hang, an early fridge in the form of "the ice tower" and the most fantastic arrangement of servant summoning bells - a labelled bell ringing in the servants quarters for every room in the castle.

The weather remained wet, so we had tea and cake in the castle tea rooms before wandering around the stables, the stalls of which now form the gift shop.

There was a walled garden which was worth a visit, particularly for the bog garden, which had some huge foliage in it, due to the heavy rains.
A quick go on the adventure playground in the castle woods before it got too wet, then we had our pic-nic in the car.

Friday - Again a wet start, but bright and sunny later.

Visited the town of Conwy. Here there is a fabulous toyshop where we bought an essential addition to the boys toy castle - a tavern. Every castle needs a pub! We also bought a wizard and a queen figure to add to the castle population.

Another shop in Conwy sells mediaeval weapons and armour. Novelist Supermum bought this sword. I have sword envy.

We found a quiet cove beyond the tourist filled sea front (the so-called smallest house in the UK is here), just outside the town wall. Had our lunch here. Frodo and Samwise indulged in their favourite pastime of throwing stones in the water.

We went for a vertigo-inducing walk around the fortified town walls. Great views, but a bit scary in places, taking two small excited boys above the rooftops balancing on top of a mediaeval wall. There was a safety rail - but the gap was a bit worrying.

Great day out.

Saturday - Packed up and headed home.

Great holiday.

---------------

Frodo's 6th Birthday Party is tomorrow (his Birthday is next Friday, but we're having the party in advance as a lot of his school friends will be on holiday next week).

The party has been booked at a local college campus. 2 of the staff provide the kids with party fun and games. We just provide the food, balloons and party gift bags.

I've bought a cylinder of helium from the local cash and carry to inflate the balloons. The party gift bags are little boxes full of gifts and sweets that we got for a couple of quid each.

Bought the food from Asda this afternoon. Drove out of Asda and whilst putting the car into second gear it stalled in mid gear-change. The engine just cut out completely and I couldn't restart it.

Called the AA and a "very very nice man" did his best to fix it on the spot, but had to tow me to a local repair centre, where they'll take a closer look on Monday. Suspected "cam sensor failure" causing an intermittent fault. They started it again immediately at the garage - but they want to keep it and check it out since the computer chip was reporting "no fault" even when it wouldn't start!

The AA man gave me a lift home with all of my shopping.
We'll have to take a taxi to Frodo's party tomorrow.

Car Park Nazi

Swiping my car park pass into the machine this morning I got a "Ticket Blocked" message. Pressed the button to speak to the Car Park attendant who told me that my company hadn't paid the bill, and could I please leave the car park.

Spotted the boss on my way out, who told me to park in a nearby NCP for the day, and claim the fee back on expenses.

It turned out that the fault lay with the jobsworth who had decided to bar us from the car park until the bill was paid. He'd sent the invoice to a different part of our company - somewhere in Blackburn, rather than the office building opposite the car park, thus delaying the processing of the payment. He's been doing this every 3 months - despite repeated requests for him not to do so.
Looks like today he finally snapped.

So did our area head, who also found himself locked out of the car park. He's sending a stern letter or two to the directors of the car park company.

I've just had a text to say that we should be OK tomorrow. Maybe I should go green and get the bus.

Haven't blogged for a bit.

I really must get back to blogging again. Further updates on our trip to Rome also to follow soon - hopefully before we head off on the first of this year's two trips to Snowdonia.

Not been up to much over the past couple of weeks. Wished a couple of old friends (who are getting older) Happy Birthday - which was cool as we got down to some text and email chat. Found out where they were and what they're up to now.

Red Nose Day came and went. As always, we stayed up for the comedy, got upset by the pictures of people much worse off than ourselves, and bunged off a donation to pay for 10 lifesaving mosquito nets. A few days later I recieved an email to say that our donation had bounced. Being wary of a possible phishing scam I've carefully checked this out, and it looks like they genuinely didn't get my donation, so I'll have to send it off again.

Had the car MOT'd yesterday. I've yet to drop a vehicle off at the garage and have it pass first time, even when I've also requested a full service. Needed a new track rod/bearing joint this time. Went to Nationwide at the top of Penny Lane/Smithdown Place who have been OK in the past. The car is out of warranty now, so there's no point in going back to VW who would charge the same price just for the oil change, without doing any work, say they've taken the wheels off and had a look - without even taking the hubcaps off and then try to charge me for a bottle of "top-up" screenwash fluid - even though the screenwash is full.

Frodo had a major joint assessment yesterday - i.e. he was examined, tested and discussed by his teacher, headmistress, educational psychologist, speech therapist and school doctor and parents. He's making progress, and looks like he will continue to make progress, but really needs to have a boost to assist his language difficulties, which are probably holding back his progress in other areas.

Had to fob off the idiot doctor chairing the meeting who was suggesting the use of drugs to increase his attention - Frodo is not hyperactive so they wouldn't be appropriate. Apparently the drugs have similar effects to cocaine - hmmmm maybe I need to sort out my attention difficulties...

Net result is that it's recommended that Frodo attends a school next year that has a dedicated language unit to help him, with a view to bringing him back to his current school when it's appropriate to do so. The school's that have these resources tend to be in the most deprived areas, so that they can get the funding (the more "free school dinners" you have, the more money you get!). He could go into the mainstream of the school with the language unit, but that would be a school that is 97th in the league tables, whereas his current school is about 4th.

Next we've got to visit a school or two, and have another meeting with teachers, advisory teachers etc - to make sure that we think this decision is OK and see if a place can be sorted for him for next year.

Cars that turn into Aeroplanes

A discussion at work about whether or not anybody had really invented a car that turns into an aeroplane resulted in me Googling up the moller skycar website.

Much debate about whether or not this thing is real. We expect that the concept is real, and they're trying to get investment. However take a close look at some of the "vertical takeoff" video's. Is that a wire I see above the skycar?

Even if it does work, and you can afford one, you'll still need a pilot's license to fly it.