Goodbye old friend

Finally, today I'm going to collect my new car. It's taken ages to get the money out of my savings account, partly due to the numpties who work there and partly due to the postal worker's strikes holding up the mail. But now the money is in my bank account, so I'm off to Lincoln just after lunch to hand over the dosh and get the new car.

I'm excited, but a little sad too. I'm going to miss my current car. I've had it for over 6 years and it's been a good little car. There are a couple of things about it that I'm not going to miss. The way the clips that hold the parcel shelf in place keep falling off, and the loose corner on the window that catches the wind and squeals like a soul in torment when I'm driving fast or in high winds. However I am really going to miss my nice comfy bucket-like seat that I've carefully beaten down and bedded in, until my bum fits nicely into it and it's soft and squishy.

I'm not looking forward to the suffering this new car is going to cause. The driving position is very different from my current car. At the moment I'm very laid back. The new car has me sitting higher up and almost on top of the pedals, which puts my driving foot at a much sharper angle than it's used to, more like driving a van than a car. I'll need to do a bit of pottering about in it, to ease my poor aching joints in gently.

Wookiee's happy because it's got a CD player. My current car only has a tape deck, although I do have one of those adapter thingies, that plugs into the tape slot at one end and another media device at the other end, so you can hook up a CD player or MP3 player and play it through the car stereo.

Fingers crossed I don't break down en route!

The car is well

The car is fixed. The garage managed to clean up the brake pads, so it didn't cost me more than they said initially *yay* Now I just have to take it easy until the money comes through to pay for the new one.

Now it's my poor Ewok who's poorly. His started running a temperature yesterday evening, and despite two doses of Calpol before betime it wasn't showing any signs of coming down again. He woke me up at 3:15am being restless and cranky in his sleep and I managed to get another dose of medicine into him without really waking him up, then took his temp again and it was up to 38.7C (101.5F). I managed to settle him by dabbing the back of his neck, face and feet with a cold wet muslin, but he was fairly restless for the remainder of the night, meaning that I didn't get much sleep. Then he woke up at 8:15 this morning and refused to go back to sleep again, even after another dose of Calpol.

His temperature is still a little higher than it should be, but at least it's lower than in the night. I'm just hoping he can be persuaded to take a couple of naps today, so that I can catch up too.

No go and full speed ahead.

No go.

My car is in the garage and waiting for a part. Apprently it's unsafe to drive, as the oil has been spraying all over the brake pads on the right side of the car and they are now soaked, making them dangerous.

It's going to cost at least £165 to fix, not including the brake pads. Just what I needed. NOT!

At least the weekend trip is still going ahead. We've booked a hire car which we've got until Tuesday morning, so we don't have to rush back on the Monday. Hopefully my car will be done by Tuesday and I won't be stuck in the house, although going to pick it up might be interesting.

Full speed ahead.

In other news Ewok has started walking without holding on. He took his first independant step about a week ago and since then there's been no stopping him. He can now take up to 10 steps before gravity gets the better of him. Of course he looks like an extra from Shaun of the Dead while he's doing it, but the cheesy grin makes up for that.

In honour of this milestone he's gettting an early birthday present from his Grandma and Grandad (my folks) of a Babywalker with bricks. I've had this in his wishlist waiting for him to start walking and was going to buy it for him, but when I told my mum about it she said they'd get it for him. After all, it's only a little bit early, it's only a few weeks to his first birthday. I can't believe it's come around so soon.

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.