Goodbye To An Old Friend

It's only a car but in the four and a half years that we owned the Toyota Prius we grew very attached to it as it was our main transport during the six months that we were living in Scotland and making regular visits to see the builders in Suffolk. In that six months we notched up almost twenty thousand miles and spent an awful lot of time in the car. We'll never forget driving away from Southport with the Prius loaded to the roof with everything we might need for six months of caravan living.

But since we bought a new car in June last year the Prius has been sitting on the drive for most of the time as it's nowhere near as comfy as the new car. We sometimes need to travel individually (even though its only short distances) so a second car is a necessity. We wanted something comfortable to use for most of our short journeys around Suffolk and regular visits to the family in Kent while saving the bigger vehicle for Scotland and longer trips. After plenty of research we came up with the Mercedes B200 sport. It was the Which Best Buy in its class and the Mercedes Dealership, Robinsons in Bury St Edmunds, were very helpful last year.

It arrived yesterday. It's not the best looking vehicle but it's beautifully equipped and very comfortable. The salesman went to great lengths to sell us the special stone chip insurance and, it's a good job he did as, driving back from the dealership, a lorry threw up something that hit the car.

So, with less than fifty miles on the clock, we were on the phone to the insurance company today making a claim - an insurance worth taking out!

I mentioned visits to Kent earlier. We went on Friday to help the family prepare for our granddaughter Catherine's birthday party. It was a stiflingly humid sunny day but in the evening a huge storm cloud suddenly blew in and within a few minutes we went from dusk to pitch black. Paul filmed a few seconds on his phone.

Sudden blackness (the green is a pedestrian crossing).

An enormous lightning flash.

And back to blackness with another lightning bolt in the top corner.

We've witnessed some of the wildest storms we've ever seen in the UK over the last few days - they really have been spectacular.

What Happened To Honesty?

We're still in Rochester at the moment lending a helping hand to Paul and his family but I had to pop back to Framlingham last night as we'd arranged with auctioneers Abbotts of Campsea Ashe to take some stuff in to their sale room. They've a regular weekly sale on a Monday and it's so popular that you need to book a slot weeks in advance. As I walked towards the car, which was parked on the main road, I noticed a wing mirror cover lying on the pavement. "Hmm" I thought "that looks ominously like my wing mirror". Sure enough I walked around to the driver's side to find this.

No note, no insurance details - nothing. As you can see, I was parked within a space and, although the mirrors protrude it's a main road with plenty of passing space. So I had to drive back to Framlingham with reduced visibility.

I got back to Fram, loaded the car to the gunnels with all sorts of stuff from the garage including these good Victorian items, some great garden planters and candle holders and much much more and went to bed. I took the load to Abbots first thing this morning and then headed back to Rochester via Toyota in Ipswich to sort out the mirror. It's going to be £278 to fix it which sort of negates the purpose of my drive home as, although the stuff I've taken to the auctioneers cost the best part of £1,000 I'm not expecting much more than £300 when all the charges have been taken off.  

I don't want to get on a soapbox here but what happened to honesty? I can understand ignoring perhaps a tiny scratch (although a brief apology under the windscreen would be welcome) but to leave someone with a bill for almost three hundred quid and no recourse to the insurance (excesses and no claims considered), is criminal. If someone took £300 from your wallet they would be a crook, what's the difference? I said no soapbox so that's the end of the matter but I would ask anyone to think twice about the consequences of their actions and ask themselves if they would be happy to be on the receiving end.

On a positive note I should get the proceeds of the sale of my Japanese collection in a couple of days. I've been thinking of replacing the car. It's quite amazing that the proceeds from these three little bits

of pottery could possibly buy this.

We'll wait and see. 

And if you want to grab a real bargain, get along to Abbotts of Campsea Ashe on Monday.

I Suppose It Was Inevitable Really

After driving over seventeen thousand miles since leaving Southport in July I suppose that it was inevitable that we'd eventually hit a snag with the Prius. But, excepting for the time when someone reversed into the car in  Leuchars Station car park, we have had a problem free time. Until this morning that is. As we drove out of the Chantry Park Premier Inn with the prospect of a carefree morning in the Suffolk countryside we noticed a loud grating noise. The car has been regularly serviced and only passed its MOT a couple of weeks ago but this sounded like a brake problem that we had about twenty thousand miles ago.

We phoned our Southport Toyota dealer contact and asked for details of an Ipswich agent. We keyed the post code they gave us into the SatNav and headed towards them. I phoned about a mile before we were due to arrive only to find that they were a Ford garage (thank you Johnsons Southport good to know you're keeping up to date). The Ford garage gave us the Toyota number and we headed off in their direction. Again we phoned en route only to find their service department trying to persuade us that the (by now much louder) grating was probably just a bit of corrosion that had appeared overnight - hmm. Anyway, helpful Mr Toyota Ipswich was fully booked and, my pleas for help seeing that we were due to head to St Andrews in the morning fell on stony ground and elicited scant sympathy with the best he could offer a reluctant "I suppose you could bring it in some time this afternoon and we will see if we have time to have a look."

SIngularly unimpressed I hastily rescheduled the meeting that we had with the landscape gardener in Framlingham and headed there. I drove very cautiously with as little use of the brakes as I could. While I drove, Marion looked up  garages in Framlingham and we phoned John Grose Ford. Like Toyota, they too were fully booked, but they could not have been more helpful and  offered to squeeze us in. To cut a long story short they checked over the car, found a worn brake pad and have arranged to fix it before we head back to Scotland in the morning. They also loaned us a very nice car to get back to the hotel in. So hats off and thank you to John Grose and a very big thumbs down to Lancaster Toyota of Ipswich for their lack of interest in our plight and frankly ridiculous diagnosis of the potential problem. Little things like this can have a big impact. We sold Marion's car in July with the intention of replacing it when we moved to Suffolk. Which of those two dealers is more likely to get our business?

Meanwhile, back at the house, the kitchen fitters, John and Wayne from Orwells, are making progress. We're still some time away from completion but the appliances are mostly in place and we've even got one cupboard door in. The work top has been templated and will be with us in a couple of weeks. After that we just have to have the glass splash backs made and we'll be finished.

The wardrobe fitters from Langtry Fitted Furniture in Ely arrived yesterday and just over thirty hours later, the dressing room was finished. It was great to see this job run so smoothly. The wardrobes and dressing table look good and blend in beautifully with the wallpaper. That's our bedroom almost finished now. Just the carpet to arrive on Wednesday and upstairs will be virtually complete.

The meeting with the landscape designer and landscaper went well and they are set to start on Monday. We've got a meeting with Gill from Orwells in the morning and then (car brakes permitting) it's the long slog back to St Andrews for the last time until March.  

One final word about our three days in Suffolk. Regular readers know that we love cinema. After an exciting screening of The Hobbit at Ipswich Cineworld IMAX on Wednesday, we tried The Riverside in Woodbridge yesterday. How's this for cinema food? - Yes I did take a bite out of the mini fish and chips before I decided to take the photo. It's their take on Tapas - absolutely delicious. After that we went to see Quartet. Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut is funny, but also poignantly sad and, watching it in a screen full of grey haired viewers, we both ended the afternoon reaching for the tissues and wondering if we should go for something a little further from home that won't remind us too much of our own mortality next time. Wonderful cinema though.

On The Road Again- Again

I think I've used "On The Road Again" as a title before which is hardly surprising considering the amount of time we've spent in the Prius in the last three months. This time it's another flying visit leaving St Andrews in the early hours of tomorrow morning and aiming to be back in the early hours of Friday.

We're seeing the builder to check on progress at the house in Framlingham. I'm hoping that the garden office will be built although it won't be finished for a few more days and I'll be interested to see how the space for the sliding doors is progressing and how things are going with the bathrooms. We'll be seeing the interior designer and the kitchen designer on Thursday and hope to finalise a lot more of the interior details. Next week the new wooden windows are being fitted throughout the house. This is a major part of the project costing around 15% of the full budget and we can't wait to see the results. the only problem is that seeing those results will entail another 1,000 mile drive and we don't fancy that prospect next week so will have to rely upon others to check the work out for us. 

One of the benefits of retirement is being able to plan your leisure activities around the weather forecast instead of being stuck with what the weekends throw at us so I took full advantage of a fine forecast for yesterday and spent the day out with the detector again. I visited the field where I found the small gold fragment last week and went with high hopes and a pile of small grip seal bags in anticipation of all the finds. The field is due to be planted again soon so I don't have much time to search it again this year.

I had a wonderful day with beautiful crisp autumn weather and had plenty of exercise criss crossing the field for more than six hours. Sadly no more gold appeared and this was the contents of my finds bag when I finished. It wasn't a totally barren day and I was happy with the following bits and pieces.

Not Quite Sure What This Is May Just Be A Bit Of A Buckle

Very Early Button

Medieval Silver Penny

It's Edward I Minted in York

I never consider it a wasted day if I find one of these ancient coins. They aren't valuable but they are tiny and it was over seven hundred years ago that someone managed to lose this.

I did my bit for the environment too and safely disposed of this assortment of bottle tops, tin cans, foil and other scraps.

Today I was given the wonderful job of baby sitting Rose for a couple of hours. We had a great time together. When Sarah got back Rose tried on her new hat and gloves in readiness for the Scottish winter.

Very stylish I'm sure you'll agree.

All Systems Go

After discovering a spacious compartment beneath the Prius' boot floor, we've managed to get everything we need into the car in preparation for our journey to St Andrews to set up the new caravan. We couldn't manage the bedding for the second bedroom but we aren't planning on any visitors this time. Otherwise we've got pretty much all bar the kitchen sink in there. I realise that the space in the compartment is where normal cars would have a spare wheel but the Prius designers deemed the weight of  a spare to be inefficient for economic fuel consumption and if we get a puncture we're left with the prospect of either hoping that the emergency tyre repair kit works (it didn't last time) or waiting for the AA. I wonder if anyone has done a study to find out how much fuel is wasted and how many greenhouse gas emissions are created by recovery vans on call to Prius drivers with punctures. I'm tempting fate now. You know what the next blog will be about already don't you? Good job it's summer (it is Scotland mind).

It's not going to be too relaxing for the first couple of days. After getting everything in place we've got a bloke coming on Thursday to fit a TV aerial and then there's someone laying some paving stones as a base for the cycle store and then we've got to go and find some bikes to fit in the store when it arrives and is erected. My eyes glazed over when I saw the twenty pages of instructions for assembly. I somehow think that my tool kit , which came in a Christmas cracker, might not be up to handling it. It's a good job that Sarah's partner Duncan is a bit of a whizz with the DIY and they have all sorts of man things in their house like saws and drills and screwdrivers. Marion's dad once bought me a saw for a present. I think he was trying to tell me something. It did look kind of manly hanging there on the garage wall but it started to sort of blend in with the brick colour of the wall as it became coated in a thick layer of rust. I never did get an opportunity to use it but it was comforting to know that it was there if I ever needed to cut some wood (as you do).

We can't wait to see the family in Scotland. I read on Facebook that our granddaughter managed to put on 7 oz in just one week. It's quite handy Facebook isn't it? Although I'm glad that I'm no longer in the jobs market as I read today that a company has set itself up specialising in advising employers on job candidates' social media backgrounds. It seems that they will trawl the Internet for any salacious photos, pictures of you drunk at the office party, tweets that you made on the spur of the moment, weird religious views, racist remarks, off colour jokes. You name it, it could well come back to haunt you. There's going to be no privacy and even if you think your own Facebook pages are squeaky clean, what about that ex girlfriend who tagged the photo you texted in your own Weiner moment?

I had just about my first contact from Instanta Ltd since I retired in November today. Obviously something important had cropped up (Craig Buckley was inviting me to join the new football score predictions league). I was browsing the Internet to find a photo of Craig to accompany this snippet of information and was puzzled when I found the photo above. That's not Craig, it's Gavin Ford

See!



Those photos just go to show that the world is full of coincidence or maybe Gav's doing a bit of moonlighting under the name Craig Buckley.I've joined the league with a suitably appropriate name and we'll see if I can recreate the stunning form that took me to the top of the league many moons ago.

And finally on the subject of football. I can't believe the fuss being made about young Balotelli's performance at LA Galaxy. It was a friendly. He did a bit of showboating. If it was a cup final maybe there's room for complaint but a friendly? A player trying to be a bit entertaining? Heaven forbid. They'll soon beat that out of him.


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