:: I have the powah

After weeks of grinding my teeth, suddenly it all flows. The car is booked in for a service next Tuesday and a courtesy car will be provided (at first they said no, I'd have to wait two weeks for a courtesy car but I put my foot down quite hard & they capitulated. I would have demanded the sales manager's car if they'd stuck to their guns!).

A new certificate of motor insurance is winging its way to me as well. Yesterday I had the humiliation of going to the PO to renew my tax disc only to discover I had the wrong insurance certificate - and I couldn't find the right one anywhere. (For kiwis: the tax disc is a windscreen sticker that shows you've paid your registration fee; insurance is compulsory over here, so you have to prove you've got it before you can get a tax disc.)

And being on a roll, when I got to work I immediately spotted something set up wrong that could have resulted in mayhem later on, and not only that but I found a simple and elegant solution.

I'm so glad that sticky patch is over. I have a lot of stuff to do this weekend! First off tomorrow is the Christmas work do - lunch in an Italian restaurant followed by drinks at a pub up the road.

:: nothing's ever that simple

When I bought a shiny, nearly-new Ford to replace my ageing, clapped-out Peugeot, I was savvy enough to ask for a service record. There wasn't one, but the salesman said it should have had a service, and promised to track down the record for me. This is where my savvy came undone. I believed him! I know! A used car salesman!

Six months on I still haven't got the record. Not only that - it transpires I haven't got the service record because there isn't one: the car has never been serviced. So now I'm waiting for the Ford service centre to phone to arrange for a service - no doubt at a time of maximum inconvenience.

Mind you, any time until after New Year would be a time of maximum inconvenience. Unless they give me a courtesy car - some friends with an Audi have a brand-new one to tool around in while their airconditioning leak is sorted out. I'm not used to these little luxuries: with my old car I would drop it at the local garage on my way home from work and pick it up on my way to work the next day. But the Ford service place is out in industrial estate country, near the bypass.

I'm starting to feel like that League of Gentlemen character: "Are you local?" I've abandoned my fancy-pants city hairdresser for the local salon. And it's so liberating! I popped in (popping in is such a "local" thing to do, isn't it?) yesterday and made an appointment for today. Left home two minutes before the appointment and arrived bang on time. Half an hour later I was home with glossy, neatly trimmed hair, for a fraction of the price. My previous hairdresser was originally "local", in that his salon was just up the road from my old flat. But then high rents drove them out to a bustling suburb, and news of his excellence meant he got busier and more expensive, while I moved out here. I'd have to book weeks in advance, then drive in (it was either that or two buses), spend ages looking for a park, pay a small fortune and drive home (half an hour each way). Local is the way to go.

:: plumb crazy

The plumber-who-put-Jack's-bath-in-wrong wasn't busy at all. He - or rather his underling - rang the doorbell at 9am on Thursday, the day after I phoned. Underling, an extremely reserved youth, scurried up the ladder into the loft and had the ballcock replaced in a jiffy. He didn't have a timer in the van, he said, so he'd be back later.

I popped up to the loft and put the lid back on the header tank and tucked in its cosy insulation. It is winter, after all.

Underling returned at lunchtime. He had the old timer off in a jiffy but couldn't work out how to fit the new one. After a phone call his boss arrived. I sat in on the lesson in How to Replace a Timer and I think I could do it myself now. Apparently it's reasonably important to make a note of which wire goes where, or else you may fuse the switch and get told off and have to run out to the van for a new fuse and a better screwdriver. Also, it's good to turn off the switch before poking at live wires with said screwdriver.

Eventually they got the thing wired up, but then the heating wouldn't come on. It's your solenoid, Bossman said. Eh? Then the heating came on. "It should come on right away," he said. "It came on right away last night," I replied. He denied having caused solenoidal problems & suggested I replace it - "forty quid". When I balked, pointing out that it was actually still working, he suddenly noticed the lack of ventilation.

Uh oh. Next thing Underling is hurrying out to the van for a notice, which Bossman duly affixed to the front of the gas heater.



Every time a gas plumber comes to my house I end up with a notice tied to the heater. Scottish Gas do nice big yellow ones. The real scunner though was when he came back the next morning (9am again) with a form for me to sign, presumably absolving himself of all responsibility in the event of me dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. I don't know, I was still asleep when I signed it.

The new timer is a snazzy electronic number, though it does pretty much the same job as the old one. Which had a sticker on the back showing that it was over 20 years old!



The new timer won't need to last that long - I'm planning to get a new system in the next couple of years.

I'm really tired of those warnings.