Bloody typical!

Just as I finally find a new car, arrange to buy it and trade in my current one, the blasted thing (my current car) only goes and springs a rather nasty oil leak *stomp, pout, mutter*

The really annoying thing is that I can't pay for the new one just yet. I have to extract the money from my savings account and it's all done by mail. The paperwork went in the mail this morning but of course there's going to be a postal strike tomorrow, so that will probably slow it down getting there. Then they will send me a cheque, so I have to go and pay that into my bank account and wait umpteen days for it to clear. Then I can go and buy the new car.

If I didn't have to use my car much over the next couple of weeks, then I'd probably just keep topping off the oil and let it get on with leaking. However, we're all supposed to be going to visit friends in Faversham in Kent this weekend, which is a little over 200 miles away. It's too late to get cheap rail fares, even if we were prepared to try wrangling Ewok and all our luggage on the trains, for a journey that would include a trip on the London Underground on a Saturday afternoon.

So, I'll be dragging myself and Ewok into town tomorrow morning to a local garage and seeing if they can fix it up, providing it's not going to cost too much. If it is, then Wookiee has looked into hiring a car for the weekend, and I'll just not drive the car (except for emergencies) until we can go and collect the new one.

On the upside, we have chosen the new car *yay*

It's not a new new car, it's nearly new, as in a 56 plate, which for the non UK-ers, means it was registered between September 2006 and March 2007.

Here's a piccy:




It's a Volkswagen Touran, 1.9L deisel engine. It's got the 7 seats, which will be handy for when we go out with friends, and oodles of boot space for those all-important trips to Ikea.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering why we've gone for such a big car when there's only the three of us, well when you have a Wookiee for a partner who's 6'6" tall, you need something that has the legroom for him to get comfy. Out of all the cars currently available in the UK, that have diesel engines, are not saloons, and are vaguely within our price range, there were precisely 6 that he was anywhere near comfortable in (yes we really did try them all), and this was the most economic and practical of them all.

Please think of me tomorrow and keep your fingers crossed that it's nothing too expensive or laborious to fix.