And it turned out that it wasn't, after all, the turbo head thingy that needed replacing at over £800, but some valve or another which controlled fuel and air which needed replacing for something less than £300.  Much better!  And so is the car.  It drives now with a purring sound and without the jolting and juddering and coughing and puffs of black, black smoke :-)

In the meantime, I had been pondering what to do about being car-less for the weekend.  I ordered supermarket necessities online, due to arrive around 7pm on Saturday.  We can go to the market in Chesterfield for the veg and meaty requirements. Come to that, there's a perfectly good butcher in Tupton, although no greengrocer. The village shop does sell veg but not much and it's not very fresh.  But that's OK.  We can get to Chesterfield easily enough on the bus.  Sorted.

And then, of course, we weren't car-less for the weekend. So we wandered off to Chatsworth and pottered around in the countryside and called into the garden centre.  We pootled about in the garden in the sunshine and let the chickens out to play. The Builder did lots of useful things.  I did fewer useful things but did do quite a lot of baking.

Ham and sausage pie with salad

And then it was Sunday and the country stopped to watch the England football team perform quite remarkably appallingly in the world cup.  I went for a stroll around Tupton just after kick-off and found the place almost entirely deserted.  I ran across one of the elderly gentlemen who sit, in Last of the Summer Wine style, on one of the benches on Queen Victoria Road.  He was on his way from his daughter's house, where he had been having Sunday lunch, back to his flat a few doors away so he could watch the match.  I saw another of the elderly gentlemen on a bench which was not his customary one.  And I saw a lady out for a walk.

Tupton, supporting England

And that was it.  Everyone was inside and (I assume) watching the soccer.  I went home and settled down to be equally appalled and slightly amused by the England attempt to play soccer, in the Skype company of Austin in Japan and Ant, Christian and Zoy all (I think) in Melbourne.  Skype conference calls are a wonderful thing!

And then I went outside to gather in red currants.  I let the chickens out while I was about it.  There weren't many red currants but I figured we might as well garner them in.  Went off to grab my glass and came back to find the chickens having a merry feast of the red currants in my harvesting basket!!!!!!  You can't blame them.  They will have naturally assumed that tasty treats in baskets left lying about on the lawn will, of course, be for them! There won't be much red currant jelly this year!!  There should be quite a bit of white currant jelly though.  The white currant bushes are, comparatively speaking, quite laden.

I started off this year's lot of elderflower fizz too.  We opened a bottle of last year's and it fizzed excitedly everywhere.  Managed to get most of it into glasses in the end - and it was absolutely delicious.  Has the advantage of not being alcoholic so you can drink it on a sunny Sunday morning without shame or guilt!

I woke up this morning to the sound of a persistent tapping noise outside.  wondered what on earth it was.  It was only about quarter to four although it was pretty much light.  I got up to investigate.  It was a steady stream of water falling from the sky.  Not something we have seen much of recently.  Alas, it didn't last long.  The kitchen water butt remains obdurately empty.  The sun is out again now, in Sheffield at least.

Just had a message from The Builder.  When he went down to clean out the coop this morning, there was one, small, light brown egg in the egg boxes.  That's not bad going.  We've only had the chooks a week!  (He says it's sunny in Tupton now too)