Ker-Fut 3 – The verdict

So – as expected from Friday, the turbo had basically exploded. It doesn’t appear to have damaged anything else, and although I’ve had some other options, I’m getting it repaired/replaced. (In fairness, the garage has offered me a decent deal on the work, as I’m a regular customer etc.)

It’s been right on the edge of whether it’s worth doing or not – the car is now definitely in the “it’s cost me money” field, although in fairness it’s taken ’til now to do so, 2½ years since I bought it.

I think I detailed that at the time – and it turns out I didn’t ’til more than a year later – but I basically got an excellent price for it anyway, and then managed to get back far more than expected for Mondeo, refunded car tax etc., so all told the Saab actually cost me £300. Since then, it’s had small bits done to improve things, and we were back to just about break-even, maybe a bit over what I’d paid, but less than the Saab garage would give me for it.

With this latest development, we’re now to the point of being on a par with what they’d give me, so if it has any further significant issues, it’ll be going to the great shitheap in the sky.

I just hope Saab knows how close it’s come to being scrapped this week – and appreciates the fact I have saved that occurrence for another day…


Ker-Fut 2 – Getting to the Garage

F0llowing on from Friday’s car issues, it’s been a semi-eventful weekend.

When I got home on Friday, my first job was sorting out a hire car for the coming week (possibly two) as I’m all over the place. That got sorted relatively easily – one place was closed, and I’d have had to call their Glasgow office to try and find out what was available (a ridiculous state of affairs, and frankly, fuck that) and the second one, while closed, enabled me to book a car to be collected the following morning, in a dead easy process.

And then it was a small case of hunting for the necessary identity documents. Driving licence (and the new necessary code from DVLA for the online driving record – needed since the paper part of the licence is now outdated) was OK, as was passport – but finding documents to prove address were somewhat more difficult, as I now do all my bills online, so rarely get anything “official” through the post. (As an aside, I wonder how that will change things over the next couple of years, as more and more paper-based stuff is removed/reduced/made into a cost) I did find the necessary bits in the end, but it’s getting to be more hassle than it should be.

Collecting the car (a new Vauxhall Insignia, which is not at all bad, as Vauxhall’s go) was an absolute doddle. The place is quite new, but was really a case of walk in, do the paperwork, check the car, bugger off. All told it was less than 30 minutes – fairly impressive. Because I’d used the same company before (when the Mondeo died on me) I had a lot less ID-checking to do – which seemed odd, as that was two-and-a-half years ago, and lots could’ve changed since then – but it was a nicely painless experience all round.

I’ve plonked about with it a fair bit over the weekend, and yeah, not bad at all.

I’ve also been looking at replacement vehicles – I suspect the Saab has blown up significantly, and will be more to repair than it’s worth, so I’m sounding out alternatives – and there’s a couple I’m going to check out this week, once I know more about the state of the Saab.

And then we come to getting the Saab to the garage. I’d thought a lot about this, and decided that the best plan would be to drive it (slowly, and along backroads) to the garage on Sunday, avoiding all the heavy traffic and any potential issues.  If it died, well, I’ve got recovery as part of my car insurance. I left it ’til later in the Sunday, rather than trying to do it while people were still going shopping and so on.    I did have my doubts about the plan – but figured it was infinitely better than trying to do it on Monday evening, let alone Tuesday morning!

Anyway, set off lateish on Sunday afternoon (about 5.30) and it was all fairly successful.  I got most of the way fine, but then it did die out properly, so I had to do the recovery thing. In fairness, even that ended up going really smoothly – the recovery vehicle turned up within half an hour, and took me to drop the car off at the garage. (I was actually really lucky, because one thing I hadn’t taken into consideration was the fact it was the Grand Prix at Silverstone, so traffic and breakdowns were greatly increased later on!)

Then it was just a case of dropping off the keys, and getting a cab home – all told, I was home by 8pm, which wasn’t bad, when everything was taken into consideration.

 


The Weekend of Quiet

As planned, last weekend was fairly quiet – and much needed.

The only booked thing I had in was to get someone from nPower’s third-party partner company in to look at my electricity meter. I’m going to write about that in a different post, because it gets long-winded, and slightly farcical. (As do all things nPower)

Other than that, I didn’t do much. The total of activities was

  • Visit the cinema (twice)
  • Keep up my walking targets, so I did wander round Milton Keynes etc.
  • A bit of shopping
  • Sorting out the back yard, including buying new pots and plants, and getting them installed/planted.
  • Other very small odds and sods.

So it was decent.  It would’ve been better if I’d actually been able to sleep well too, but there we go, that’d be pushing my luck too far.


Warm

Today is the UK’s hottest day of the year (so far) – which is quite surprising, as it’s right at the start of Wimbledon fortnight. Usually that would signify two weeks of grey/damp/wet weather, but this week so far seems to be clear,bright and – yes – warm.

Of course, I realise that people in Australia, America, and umpteen African nations (as well as a bundle of others) are laughing their socks off at us here thinking that 30° C is anything more than ‘slightly warmer than winter’, but lordy, we do like to complain about it.

The thing is, here in the UK we’re just not used to extreme weather – or even ‘more than mediocre’, really.  30°C isn’t extreme to most places, any more than -10°C is, but to us in the UK, those are extremes. Neither end is common enough for us to have created the infrastructure to deal with it – neither air-con in every building/facility, nor heating and anti-snow/ice stuff for the cold bits. Neither hits us for more than three or four weeks a year, really – and on average it’s probably even less than that.

So yes, we’re not good at dealing with weather – and some of that is just part of Being British™, I suppose. But there is also that side to be considered, that we just don’t have the equipment (whether in buildings/facilities/institutions, or just within our own bodies) to cope with it decently.

For myself, I don’t mind it.  I used to really dislike hot/warm weather, but I’m getting better at it. Today’s been spent ‘working’ at home, and it’s meant I’ve been out in the yard for most of it, now that it’s a decent place to be. Those two weekends of doing stuff here turns out to have been pretty much perfectly timed, so it’s a pleasant environment. And there’s been enough shade in general to have let me be out in the warmth without crisping myself in direct sunlight.

That’s a win all round in my book.


Getting Back In The Saddle

Following on from this week’s ‘Heavy Thoughts‘, I’m aiming on getting myself back into more exercise and so on.

Among those plans, I’m heading back to a gym – and it’s another new one.

I signed up with one in Milton Keynes (MK) earlier this year, thinking that it would be a good plan due to working in MK four days a week.  However, it didn’t work with everything else – it was a bit in the wrong direction, and a ballbag to get to. It didn’t fit with how things were working for me, so I wasn’t going.

As a result, I cancelled it – no point carrying on paying for something that’s not being used, just because of good intentions, after all. Thankfully it was one of the newer no-contract gyms, so wasn’t any great issue.

This week I’ve signed up with a different one (but still contract-free, and actually cheaper still than the previous one) and went for the first time as well. It’s closer to my office, allbeit still a decent walk, and means I can park near the office as usual – I get in early anyway, to avoid rush-hour traffic – and walk down to the gym, then walk back and get to work.

I’ve not chosen the best time to do this – this week and next are chaotically busy with other stuff as well, so I’m not in the MK office as much as usual. Initially though, it’s aiming to get me into going again, and getting into a routine for doing so.

And from there, we’ll see how it all goes. I’m optimistic for the moment, but time is more likely to tell.


Changing Terms

Last week, Milton Keynes suddenly changed their parking rates. Not by a lot, all things considered – it costs me about 20p a day more now – but it didn’t seem to have been very well publicised.

(Disclaimer : There may have been notices in local papers or whatever, but I don’t get those, so didn’t see anything. But there was nothing I saw on parking meters etc., so regardless of how much it was discussed/publicised beforehand, I hadn’t seen anything. And I’m sure I can’t be the only one)

One of the other changes, though, was that now you have to pay on Bank Holidays as well. That’s not been the case up ’til this week – it’s always been free – and it’s all just a bit sneaky.

Because it’s only happened for the second bank holiday weekend in May. So anyone who’s known it was free from the first weekend would be quite within their rights to assume it would be the same this weekend.

There’s more information about that change – they’ve put stickers on the parking meters etc. – but if someone had seen three weeks ago that they didn’t need to pay, would they even go near the parking meter this time?

I don’t know – but there’s definitely a lot of parking tickets been issued today on the bit outside my office building. Which indicates that my theory may be correct on this one…