Ady woke me this morning at 7am. 7 AM mind! to say it was dry and he thought we should go and try and get my car. I agreed and got up, chucked clothes on and contact lenses in and said he should just rouse the kids a little and tell them we were going but they could stay in bed. Davies got up though and wanted to come which meant we had to bring Tarly too, so she came in her pjs and one of my cardigans.
We got to Caz and Bid’s just before 8am and there were no signs of life in their house yet. I thought the car was going to start but it didn’t and then the battery started to flatten 🙁 . We ummed and ahhed about what to do and had another look around the house but no one appeared to be up still. Chris and Julie live just around the corner and although Julie and the kids are away Chris is an early riser so we drove round there to see if he was around and had jump leads we could borrow. He was indeed up and about (infact he’d already been out to a car boot sale) but had no leads. He gave us a tin of quickstart spray though and offered tea but we declined, conscious of the weather being forecast to change.
Back to Caz and Bid’s hoping the spray would work only to find the bonnet catch not working again so no hope of jumping it with leads anyway. Or spraying it :(. One last go at starting it before swearing lots and getting back in the car to come home again :(.
At that point I was sharing Ady’s doom and gloom feelings. With the van not starting yesterday either and my car still stranded at Caz and Bid’s without me even being able to get it jump started and very little funds this month to fix anything, let alone my reluctance to throw money at my car when I am getting rid of it in the next couple of months life looked quite bleak :(. I then realised that me being mopey made Ady even worse, so gave myself a pep talk, we decided that the van is not a priority and if we cancel plans to use it to go away next weekend we not only don’t need to have it running until we have money to get it serviced we also save money from the planned camping to spend on my car instead. Suitably bolstered with a plan (and really you have to have two vehicles in order to be able to moan about both of them not working so we should be happy with our riches) I shared it with Ady and resumed my usual role of pacifer and cheerleading optimist.
Back home we had a large cooked breakfast to make up for leaving home without even a cup of tea (and several large cups of tea too) and decided to make the most of the day by working on clearing the playroom completely of stuff. There were lingering car boot sale goods in there along with the sorted videos, DVDs and CDs from the lounge, so armed with laptop and camera Ady photo’d and boxed tidily and I listed 19 lots on ebay including several wholesale bulk lots for collection only. We now have 4 crates of books to go through along with the bookcase in the hall to create some more bulk lots of books and then the lounge and playroom theoretically contain only stuff we will be using up before we go, taking with us or boxing up for storage.
Which leaves the kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms – all of which I want to have completed before we go to Christmas camp – so we have about 8 weeks to do it in. That felt nicely productive and took our minds off car crises.
Davies and Scarlett played with the lego, spent some time with the chickens and ducks – decision made to take the ducks to Tom’s Dad’s in the next week or two. Scarlett sad but philosophical and understands it is the best idea all round. I am sad for her and a bit miffed that Sploosh has just started laying. Thanks to their early start the kids were a bit squabbly but took time out from each other whenever they got on each others nerves too much.
It was during one of these breaks that Tarly did some drawing and came to ask how to spell ‘dog’ we told her and she came back with ‘cat’ and ‘dog’ written on two bits of paper. I started to talk to her about the letters and she did her usual trick when any hint of reading might be about of going all silly and claiming she can’t do it and doesn’t want to do it. I hate this defeatist and not even going to bother trying attitude so took her to task on it and talked about how everything she’d ever done or achieved was as a result of effort, practise and believing she could do it – citing control over her body leading to running now from those first deliberate reaching out a hand for something shiny as a few months old baby. The Bob books happened to be in the pile of books I was sorting so I grabbed book one (Mat sat, Sam sat, Mat sat on Sam etc.) and showed it to her. To her great delight she realised she could read it once I’d helped her with each letter sound – the process of blending them seems much more natural to her than it did with Davies when he was first trying to read. She took it round and read it to Davies and then to Ady and then came back for book two! We couldn’t find it to jumped to book three and again she was quite capable and already recognising words she’d read a page or so back so not needing to spell them out again. Davies still hasn’t totally cracked that yet.
So the Bob books have been saved from the ebay pile for now and Scarlett has suddenly realised that once she has cracked the basics if she puts effort in she can read anything she likes whenever she wants. It may of course grind back to a halt again in which case we’ll leave it be but it may just leap forward as these things so often do when the time is right. But anyway, another milestone moment of first book read :). And I am guaranteed no Rainbow Fairy Magic in this house ;).
I cleared away the last of the ebaying stuff – more to do tomorrow and will try and list at least one thing a day and tackle one room per week. I did some more knitting – I’m making a bag which is in three panels – two identical sides with cabling and a gusset which goes all around. I’ve mixed colours of the same wool and can’t decide if it looks good or a shambles yet. Will do the other side and make a decision after that.
We watched a film while eating dinner, which was delicious and the kids were about to go to bed when there was a knock at the door. We very infrequently get ad hoc visitors so I was quite surprised. A woman stood on the doorstep and asked ‘Do you recognise me?’ to which I replied, probably quite suspiciously (I hate questions like that, on a par with ‘who do you think it is?’ when someone rings and you ask who they are) ‘Should I?’ just as I realised it was the previous owner of the campervan. They had got me to write my name and address on the bit of the log book I brought away with me and nowhere on the bit to send off! We had mentioned that we loosely knew their next door neighbours so they had asked them where we lived and come looking for us (having been told ‘on a corner somewhere off Western Road’) and thankfully spotted the van in the drive. I filled in the paperwork and they asked how the van was running to which I explained we’d not been able to start it, we didn’t know where the battery was and the fridge wasn’t working.
Her husband was in the car so he came out and I called Ady out. The battery is underneath the leisure battery, accessed from underneath the van on the outside, the fridge was working fine for them (and having posted to a Bedford forum this afternoon and had several replies it would seem the steepness of the drive is indeed the issue there) and confirmed they’d never had a problem starting it. So I gave him the keys and sure enough it took a bit of effort but he got it started and running and shared the knack of the choke and revs technique. Talk about lucky timing 🙂 They were very lovely, said they still miss her and we said they could come and visit us and they said we could phone them any time with questions :). All very amicable.
So that was a nice end to what has been a fairly frustrating weekend in lots of ways. My car is still over in Barnham so tomorrow may well have yet more chasing about trying to get it started but fingers crossed I can get the van going and fill it with petrol so I have another vehicle to use at least. I am also hoping for a drier day tomorrow and Ady getting my car started so we can take it back to the bloke who fixed the bonnet last time.
Phew to the good end to the weekend :-).