26 July 2024 (Friday) - Car Service

I slept reasonably well, but again woke feeling rather pissed off and miserable. I’ve been doing this quite a bit lately. I’m OK once I get up and get going, but start the day incredibly morose.
I got up and got going. And made toast and had a look at the Internet. It would seem there’s a load of Adventure Lab geocaches that have gone live for next week’s Mega-geo-event. Created by all sorts of people. Had I known about this I would have been only too happy to have been a part of it. I’ve offered to help with several Mega-geo-events over the years. With the exception of the one in Sussex which was cancelled because of COVID my help has only ever been accepted by the events miles away (I wrote Wherigos for them). Presumably someone relatively locally doesn’t want me involved. Understandable really; I wouldn’t want me involved either…
I struggled with Wordle, then kicked everyone else out of bed in readiness for the morning.
 
The plan for the morning was to get the car serviced, so I loaded up the dogs and we all drove over to the garage. Whilst the car was in I asked the nice man to recharge (or whatever) the air-con, and to have a look at the rear left tail light. There’s an intermittent fault in which the car tells me to have a look at the rear left tail light, but when I do there’s nothing wrong with it. And I asked them to have a look at the cruise control too. The cruise control works fine, but there’s supposed to be an icon on the dashboard which comes on to tell me I’m in cruise control mode. There isn’t.
The nice man in the garage gave the dogs a treat each, and told us to come back two hours later. So we took a little walk round the footpaths along the edge of the Sevington Inland Border Facility. The place is huge, and I saw maybe six lorries in there. Surely it would make more sense to use that rather than half a motorway if there are issues at the ports?
 
We then walked out half-way to Mersham for geo-reasons. There is a geocache there. To be able to claim a find you had to have found a geocache which had been hidden in every month since 2002. I qualified when the thing went live, but what with one thing and another I didn’t get to go for it. And after a couple of months with no new caches going live within miles  I resigned myself to not qualifying for it.
Last night I had another look at the requirements for this cache. I didn’t have to find one hidden in every month since 2002. I had to find one every month from 2002 to 2022. A subtle difference, but I qualified for that Had I actually read what it said I would have done that cache ages ago…
As we walked we met a jogger. Clearly a jogger in that he had trainers on. But he also had a suit too. What was that all about?
 
Just as we were walking past the hospital on the way back to the garage my phone rang. It was the garage. I thought that was handy – we were on our way back there. But it wasn’t handy at all. The car wasn’t ready. The garage needed some part or other, and the garage would need the car all day.
Was that a problem?
What could I say?
We walked home. Once home my watch told me we’d done six and a half miles and fifteen thousand steps.
 
Having been out rather longer than expected the dogs tucked into their water bowl when we got home. I made a quick cuppa for me and “er indoors TM, then cracked on in the garden. I got the lawn mowed, cleaned out the pond filter, tidied up the gravel then fell asleep by the pond.
I then sulked. I had planned to get some sleepers and start sawing them into shape. I had hoped to look at getting pond liner. All of which rather depended on having a car. So I read my Kindle for a bit then wrote up some CPD until the keyboard on my lap-top died. Re-booting sorted it out, but it was rather worrying. What was that all about?
 
With lap-top going again I then strained my brain on another geo-puzzle that went live on Romney Marsh a day or so ago. Seemingly based on cakes, puddings and desserts I *think* there’s some Star Wars related element to it as well. But, be that as it may, how I turn a list of cakes, puddings and desserts into numbers is beyond me.
And then my phone beeped. The garage had sent a video showing how bald my tyres were. Did this mean the car was ready? I phoned the garage… no it wasn’t ready but if I wanted they could replace the tyres in the meantime. And did I know my rear windscreen wiper blade was juddering?
I agreed for them to sort that lot out. I carried on struggling to sort out the puzzle pudding until the garage phoned back to say the car was ready. Six hours longer than I had been expecting it to take, but there it was. I like being able to zoom about in a car; keeping the thing in a zoom-able condition isn’t *that* much of an inconvenience really.
 
With my step count into the seventeen thousands I didn’t fancy walking to the garage. “er indoors TM drove me and the dogs back over there (they were hoping for more treats) and she then drove on to her ex-works summer party. Sometimes I am rather jealous of her. She keeps up with all her old workmates. I don’t, really.
I took the dogs to the garage where they got more fuss and more treats, gave the nice man over six hundred quid, collected my car and came home where I sparked up Netflix and started watching something new. “The Decameron” was only released onto Netflix yesterday. It’s a comedy… and I know that not through having watched two episodes, but because it says so on Wikipedia. I might stick with it; it might perk up.
 
“er indoors TM came home with dinner. At the risk of appearing ungrateful I fed the fishsticks to the dogs. I would have given them the garlic bread too if it wasn’t poisonous to them. It’s a bit poisonous to me too as it always gives me bellyache.
 
And in closing, today would have been a good friend’s birthday. Living where he did meant that I didn’t get to see Terry very often, but the half-dozen times we met up every year were always rather special.
He’s been gone three years now…

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