A catalogue of errors...

I had a really great time away – and am now about half ay through repainting my living room. The whole room is now white and in about an hour or so I’m going to put some colour on the walls (photos to follow…).

Anyway, you may recall that there was a mix up over our holiday booking. Initially they thought we were going in January and then when they realised it was February, they were already booked on the Thursday night. When we turned up the confusion continued because the room was till being used by someone who had been there for the first part of the week. They’d only said that morning that they needed the room all day and they were asleep init when we turned up. The owner was very apologetic but it was fine because we had already planned to go straight out after we’d dropped off our bags, so that we could get the last bit of daylight.

I had a pretty constructive time – I bought a new mobile phone and a work bag and I bought G a rucksack and part of my sister’s birthday present. So despite that all being a bit expensive, I felt as though I had got a lot done.

On Sunday morning we were woken up by the fire alarm going off. As we were about to make our escape, the person in the room next door shouted down to the owner and said that it was him who had set the alarm off – he’d moved his kettle to below the smoke alarm and the steam had set it off. Idiot.

Anyway, we went back to sleep for a bit and then wandered down for breakfast. They do such nice breakfasts there. On the first day I had some delicious pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, then I had a cooked breakfast the next day and was meant to have the pancakes again on the last day, but the owner was having a made moment and cooked me scrambled eggs and salmon instead! Although the place might sound like Fawlty Towers, it is actually a really lovely place to stay and we have had no problems staying there previously. For some reason there just seem to have been a catalogue of errors this time but none of it detracted from our stay and it was all so relaxing and I’d definitely stay there again.

On Sunday we went for a walk at Beachy Head and we were starting to make our way back to the car but we realised that G’s hat had disappeared. G was really tired, so I offered to walk back up the very steep hill to see if I could find it, but it wasn’t there. I then caught up with G and a few minutes later I heard this little voice say “er… I’ve found my hat” and it had been tucked inside G’s coat all along…

Then G was really tired, so I walked back to the car on my own and then drove down to meet G. As we set off in the car back to where we were staying a light started to flash on my dashboard and when I checked in the car handbook it basically said there was a major engine failure (despite the fact the car was driving just fine and the only reason I knew there was something wrong was because there was a light on the dashboard). Oh dear… We got back to where we were staying and I called out the AA. The chap turned up in about 15 minutes and ran a couple of checks and said “well, it doesn’t seem to be mis-firing, which is good because that would have been really bad”. Then he plugged his computer in to diagnose the problem and… it was misfiring. Oh dear…

He looked at the engine and it seems that water has been building up and going into the engine, so all the sparkplugs and leads were corroding. He was surprised I’d managed to drive the car, but I really hadn’t been aware of any problem at all, despite the fact that this had been building up for months. Anyway, he managed to get it fixed but said I’d have to get it repaired properly. So I’ve now got my car booked in to be repaired on Thursday. Fortunately my car is only a couple of years old, so it’s still under warranty. I’m not using the usual Ford dealer that I go to (and won’t be using them again) because I think they should have been aware of the problem but failed to pick it up. So I’m taking it somewhere else to be repaired.

I was thinking about changing form the AA to the RAC, but was so impressed by the AA that I think I’ll stay with them now. The car was back running again in time for us to go the cinema (the first time I have been to the cinema since 2006!). We went to see Juno, which I really enjoyed and thought it was a nicely quirky film and Juno herself was a really likeable character and I liked the humour in the film. We both really enjoyed it. Then we went for a really nice Chinese meal, which was a good end to a slightly chaotic but still really enjoyable day.

Despite the great list of things that went wrong while we were away. It was still such a relaxing time and I didn’t find it stressful at all, which was good.

Now it’s back to painting…