:: argh

Bad news today: my dear old Peugeot, which has ferried me back and forth to work pretty much faithfully for five years, has failed its MOT (WOF, for kiwis). The repairs needed for a pass would cost £500 or so, and it's just not worth it.

Worse news: I thought I'd be able to sell it for scrap, but no-one I've phoned so far has offered a bean! They don't want to know! "I'll take it off your hands but I won't give you anything for it," they say. Bah. I'm going to offer it to the lads down the road who mend cars in their driveway - if I'm giving it away I'd rather it went to someone I know. They might not want it either, of course, it is pretty rough. But hey, it has four good tires! Errrr.... and that's about it.

The mechanic says it's actually dangerous to drive, so I'll probably have to hire a car to go car-hunting in. One of the chaps at the garage offered me a P-reg SEAT Toledo for £150, but as I said to him, it's probably time I got a proper car.

So, car-hunting. Tomorrow is my day off, but it's also, wait for it, Make Poverty History rally day. Yes, not only would I rather be rallying myself, but a) I can't and b) car-hunting/hiring/scrapping will be made difficult by road closures, heavy traffic, police, steel perimeter fences ... oh, it's going to be just lovely.

Oh, and of course then there's car parking at work - you only get into the car park with your own car, the one registered as yours. So I'll have to explain to them about my hire car etc etc.

An added complication is insurance - apparently some car dealers will insist you have a certificate of insurance before they'll let you drive your car away. So that means giving them a deposit, arranging insurance, waiting for the insurer to post a certificate and then picking up the car.

Grumble grumble grumble.

Plan A is to get the bus into town and hire a car, then tootle around looking at car yards. What is missing from this plan? Bertie, that's what. So I have to walk him, get the bus, hire a car, blah blah.

Everything else I was planning to do on my day off goes out the window.

I'll stop grumbling now. It's a lovely sunny day, hurrah.