Rain and Cars

The weather at the weekend was definitely not springlike - well, not unless you think spring weather is cold, persistent rain and strong wind!

Even so, we braved the Bridge Mall market with Lindsey and came away with scones and cheeses, veg and eggs, tiny cakes  and some packs of sausages.

Then Jim and I drove down to Mount Martha, where we ate the scones, the cheeses and the tiny cakes with Stella.  (We ate them in the company of Stella; we didn't eat Stella as well - that would have been very greedy :-D )

We did all the usual Mount Martha Sunday things.  Supermarket, lunch in the Dava. And I cleared out the bathroom cupboard for Stella.

Back in Mount Helen, Freyja and Simon had arrived to collect the Accord, which had been sitting, unused, over the winter.  It hadn't been used much before that, not once we took over the care of Ziggy.  Simon has recently got his driving licence and Lindsey and Ian felt that UIW would be happier if it was being used and offered to lend it to Simon.  A new battery was put in. They took it for a spin. All seemed well, except that the battery light on the dashboard wouldn't go off.  But it was a new battery so they tightened up the connector and off Simon and Freyja set.  They only got as far as Gordon before the indicator lights stopped working.  The speedo stopped reading. One by one the electrical things stopped working.

I've been in a car before when that was happening.  It was Emily's old car and we were hitching a ride with her from Mount Helen to Melbourne some years ago when we were over visiting from England. We came off the freeway in Melton and rolled to a halt outside a Nandos where we had lunch while waiting for the breakdown people.  It was a problem with the alternator.  And so it was with UIW.  They rolled off the freeway at Gordon, alas not outside a food outlet, and waited in the cold until a breakdown person came and took them back to Mount Helen.  And there UIW remains.  Freyja and Simon took the train back to Melbourne.  UIW is booked in for a new alternator on Monday. We just need to organise a tow truck to get it there

In the meantime, Lindsey's car went in to be serviced in Ballarat on Thursday. When we collected it we were told that it urgently needed new tyres and that really it wasn't safe to drive very far on the old ones. Alas, they can't fit new tyres for another two weeks. So Lindsey and I are driving around in Ziggy (who recently got new tyres) and Lindsey's car is booked in on Friday in Reservoir for its new tyres. She is not best pleased that her (branded) mechanic for her expensive car can't fit her in for new tyres but the Kmart service place in the Summerhill shopping centre managed to find a space for her.

It's still raining. Not quite as windy.  But quite cold.  Typical spring weather, I suppose.