Alas, poor Vixen. I knew her, dear reader

Shall we take roses when visiting the patient?

No, no.  It's OK.  The car isn't actually dead, just very sick :-(

For some time now, it's been losing its oomph.  Not taking off at intersections or pulling away at roundabouts (a bit of a worry that one). Feeling like it wants to cough when driving along.  And, from time to time, actually coughing and emitting clouds of blackness from the exhaust.  Highly undesirable.  Especially as we're going to Axminster next Friday.  We don't want a dodgy car if travelling long-ish distances!!

It's been in a couple of times and had expensive new parts fitted.  These have not helped and the situation has got steadily worse.  After I had brought the car into work and back on Wednesday and not been entirely confident that it would manage to get up the hill towards Dronfield, I declared that I wasn't driving it again on my own until it was repaired!! 

It went in for investigation yesterday.  Nick and his pal sucked their teeth and declared it to be the turbo head (or some such thing).  £850 for a new one.  EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY POUNDS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?  They'd better be damned sure that it really is a new turbo thingy that is needed. 

They called for a second opinion and The Builder seduced a nice lady at the bank.  The nice lady came good with a small loan.  The second opinion thought that it probably wasn't the turbo head.  So now the vixen is properly in hospital, having lots of tests to determine a diagnosis.

I came to work on the bus and the train.  Was quite nice, but then the sun was shining, I walked onto a bus and onto a train without having to wait for any length of time. It's not quite as enticing in the depths of winter. And the bacon sandwiches they sell at the station don't smell quite as unresistably tempting during the summer as they do in the winter!




I went out this morning for a potter in the garden before coming in to work. It was extremely difficult to drag myself away again.  It was one of those mornings that are described so eloquently in novels and children's books from the 1950s, describing summers that probably didn't really exist then and don't often happen now.  The sun was shining and there was the gentlest of gentle breezes.

Cheerful cornflowers

The birds were singing and the bees were buzzing around lazily.  The flowers were beautifully scented.

Poppies growing happily among the cabbages

The cat was asleep in the sun on the little table by the pond.  The chooks were clucking in their run and munching on clover. The strawberries are pretty much ready, there are oh-so-nearly peas ready for snacking on.

Ideal weather for a cat

Why, oh why would you throw yourself on the mercy of buses and trains and workplaces when you could don your apron and bake things in the kitchen, or get your garden shoes and a wide brimmed straw hat and potter about deadheading the roses and picking herbs and sorting out the cabbages, or gather in rhubarb and make rhubarb jam ...

Fairly acceptable for the chickens, too

Something about contractual arrangements?  Oh - OK.  And so to work I came

:-)