The Excitement Never Ends.

There is, or at the time of leaving there was, a pretty, plump white pigeon - a homing pigeon, is that the term? a ringed bird, in any case; marked as belonging to someone, rather than being feral - in the indoor area of The Store's Garden Centre.
     Judging by its behaviour, it has decided that it likes it there and has set up home.

That is all.

=bows. walks off=

Alice x

The GOOD news is...

...due to illness within the ranks at work, I have been asked to move my shift to an earlier time; 10:00-14:00 instead of 12:00-16:00.
     Which is good.

The BAD news is, that means that I have to move NOW, before my breakfast has had time to go down, and scramble around getting ready and putting a sock on the dog (don't ask).
     Which is bad.

...Still.
     10:00-14:00. That is much better.

Alice x

P.S. incidentally; I have no idea what happened to the font in my previous post. I've tried to fix it, but to no avail.
     Ah well, ne'r mind. It can stay wonky; see how much I care...

An Epic Journey: 10.5 Miles Long...

A lot has been happening the past two weeks. Sick elderly relatives - one hospitalized and one anxiously waiting to be -  a frazzled and exhausted Mother, a frazzled and exhausted me, worry over the threat of my job being lost (long story) and as the cherry on top of the cake; the insane stress of the dog undergoing multiple tests and then having major surgery to remove an enormous lump that wasn't a lymphoma, as had first been thought, but in actual fact a cancerous tumour (an even longer story).
     Good times.

Anyhoo, I don't intend to dwell upon any of that now.
     The Great Aunt is stable. The Grandmama is still waiting but otherwise fine, The Mother's workload is stabilizing somewhat. It turns out that the treat of B&Q's closure was an idle one, for now at least. And most important of all, the dog is just dandy; indeed, he is frustratingly so (he is supposed to be keeping still).
     So that's alright.

What I intend to talk about today, is the saga of the fetching of Hathaway (that's our lovely little silver car) from the garage. Because I have an hour to wait before starting out for yet another vet visit with the (increasingly active and uncontrollable) dog, and really, it's funny as heck. Terrifying at the time - for us, at least, cowardly worriers that we are - but still; funny as heck.

Right-ho, then!
     Onward...

~.START.~ 

So! Our car was poorly bad. 

     Hathaway had been making very odd and unnerving noises, intermittently, for some time. Then all of a sudden the noises became ten times worse and didn't stop. So, we parked him up, borrowed The Grandmama's car (which thankfully was not in use) and waited for MN Autos to reopen. 

     It's a great place, and run by a great guy: reliable, trustworthy, patient, honest. Annoyingly, and in this instance inconveniently, there is a long period of closure over Christmas lasting from 23rd December until late January (wherein Dave sods off to visit relatives), but overall it is worth the wait, and so wait we did. 

     Then, once the garage reopened on the 20th we called up Dave, explained the problem, and delivered Hathaway for prognosis and treatment.

     24 hours later, we had a diagnosis, a fair sounding estimate and a date the work would be finished. 

     All well and good. Fast forward three days...

It went well to begin with.

     After dropping The Grandmama's car off at her flat - well, not AT her flat as in IN her flat. Outside. By the curb, rather than in her designated spot because apparently she has loaned that to someone called Greta - we called a taxi, which picked us up and drove us to the entrance to the road leading to the infamous 'Hoobrook Industrial Estate'.

.....And that was where the trouble started. 

     It was closed.

     Yep. Closed. For road resurfacing. As in, NO ENTRY: GO AWAY!*

Thinking on his feet - or rather on his seat, as he was sitting down - the taxi driver drove all the way around the one way system to reach the other entrance to the road to see if we could get in that way, only to find that we couldn't. 

     However, just as we were talking - Mother and I - about having to be driven back to Wolverly to reclaim Grandmama's car and did we have enough money to pay for that or would we need to stop at a cash-point, the driver had another idea. No fear, he assured us; he would drive up to the cones and then go and ask the workmen that he could see if it would be OK if we nipped in real quick to fetch our car.

     Great, we thought, or at least we thought that until we reached the cones and the taxi driver got out and then instead of walking past the cones to greet the workmen he moved the cones, got back into the car and drove; DROVE over the newly half surfaced road up to the flabbergasted looking workmen who stopped everything they were doing to stare at the taxi in disbelief,

     Then the taxi driver, unabashed, drove a bit closer so that he could roll down his window to tell them about our car situation. Mother, by this point was near hysterical and wanted to go home (picture a plump, 5ft2in dark haired woman whimpering mostly unintelligible things regarding 'leaving' in the backseat), but neither one of us was brave enough to actually voice this to the nice taxi driver - known henceforth as N.T.D - so we just sort of sat there, feeling varying levels of hysteria (Mother's; high, mine; medium) as the car bumped and scraped its way towards the probably very annoyed workmen and then N.T.D leaned his head out to address them. 

     After a bit of (surprisingly polite) to-ing and fro-ing, it was eventually decided that we would be allowed to drive through and fetch our car, providing that we left the back way so as not to drive over the resurfaced road twice (or, rather, three times, considering that the second time around there would be two cars not one), which was the cue my panic level rising to around the same height as Mother's was sat at, as I yelped loudly that we didn't know 'the back way' at all. The only 'way' we knew was the way we had come. 

     Fear not, N.T.D had assured us both calmly, upon hearing my cries; he would show us. All we had to do was follow him. Which was nice, and soothing, or at least it was for about 30 seconds until we came upon the first workman to be unaware of the plan a little down the way and our panic levels soared back up again at breakneck speed. 

     Stopping the car again, N.T.D explained the situation again, and was - grudgingly - allowed to continue.

     Then 30 seconds after that, we came across another uninformed workman...

     Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now well and truly spooked, Mother and I sat in stupefied silence as the taxi finally reached the right turning and trundled its way down the horrendously uneven and potholed road - right there we have why Hoobrook Industrial Estate is infamous - leading to MN Autos, and ground to a halt directly outside the building, where our car sat swathed in darkness and all on its lonesome. Whereupon, Mother got out.
     Walking over to Hathaway, she patted his bonnet fondly and bent down to retrieve the key - which as had been arranged on many occasion was behind the driver's side wheel - only to find it missing. And that, for some reason, the spare key she had brought with her just in case, did not work, in any of the doors.
     Cue: utter hysteria. 

Hurriedly, I got out, after checking that the N.T.D was not going to abandon us, and rushed over to help Mother as she frantically scrabbled around in the dark hunting for the illusive key.
     To aid in this, N.T.D helpfully turned himself around and shone his headlights in our direction, and after a few more minutes scrabbling, the key was located on the ground nearby. Whether it had fallen out on its own at some point before our arrival or Mother herself had knocked it out of place accidentally as she reached for it in the blackness was unclear, and given the state she was in it certainly wasn't a question I was going to ponder out loud, but the main thing was that we had found it, and that - God willing - we would be able to drive home.      
     At Mothers behest, I unlocked every door and she flung them all open one by one, shoving the bags of stuff we had cleared out from The Grandmama's car - the blanket Bingo had lain on; by now utterly filthy, maps and directions to various places, Mother's gym kit and trainers (ah, the primary supply teacher's lot), a plethora of empty storage tubs (no idea why) and various bits and pieces for the bin - unceremoniously onto Hathaway's backseat and then slammed all the doors shut again. Then Mother waited by Hathaway while I got back into the taxi, paid N.T.D what we owed him - adding a nicely comfortable bonus on top (which, by golly, he had earned) in gratitude for both his kindness and patience in dealing with two women that were rather obviously not able to cope with life** - then I got out of the taxi again for hopefully the last time, and headed back to where Hathaway was waiting, equally patiently.
     Sitting ourselves inside, we breathed deeply to calm ourselves down before beginning the drive, then - after waiting a little while longer for Mother's brain to unlock itself and remind her precisely how to drive - we got turned around, hooted the horn to signal the off, and started off behind N.T.D to find our way out. 

Bless him, he drove at about 4 miles per hour around that trail - we know because that's how fast Hathaway said that we were travelling - and waited until we had not only cleared the industrial estate, but also two islands worth of road works with cones confusing the lanes, still at less than 10 miles per hour, before flashing his lights "goodbye" and finally driving away to leave us to it. 

After negotiating the next island, thankfully workmen and cone free, Mother pulled into a nearby supermarket car park.
     For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then Mother broke the silence.

"Well that's that," she said, softly, staring ahead of her with wide, strained eyes; "we have our car back,"

"Yes," I said, in reply, also staring numbly ahead with wide, strained eyes; "we have."

"...How much was the fare?" she asked, after a pause. 

"£8.40," I told her. 

"Not bad, considering," she nodded. Then she added; "how much extra did you put on top of that for a tip?"

"The rest of the cash in your purse."

"And how much was that."

"£10."

She nodded again.

"Good." ...another pause, then... "Do I have my bank card?"

I checked: "yes."

"Good. Let's go get some whisky."

"Let's," I agreed with a sigh.

~.END.~

Alice x

* in defense of Dave from MN Autos for not having warned us, the original roadwork plan was for one half of the road to be done at a time, to allow cars to pass through the road - a main road - reasonably as normal and grant access to the numerous businesses within the estate; it wasn't until the day the road works actually began that some bright spark decided that as only one business was open past 6-PM and none at all after 7-PM, it would be fine and dandy to close the whole thing and do the entire damn thing. 
     ...Thanks for that, whoever you are, 
** in defense of us, it had been a very stressful week already, and we were anxiously awaiting news of the results of the multitude of tests performed on both The Great Aunt and the dog at the same time, so we may have been a little more panicky than usual.
     ...Okay, a lot more panicky. But it really had been a stressful week...