instead of an April one.
Up with the alarm this morning as we were due at Bruce’s at 9am to perform the Great Car Swap.
Smiled at our horse box, patiently awaiting our collection in 2 weeks time – can’t wait 🙂
Bruce gave us a quick once over on the Pajero, we’re going back over when we get back from Glastonbury for some Trailer Towing and Reversing For Beginners lessons along with Getting To Know Your 4×4. Love Bruce 🙂 His brother Keith appeared for a quick chat too which was nice – when I first met Bruce and Keith their kids were younger than Davies and Scarlett are now, it’s odd seeing all the generations growing up.
Ady’s been listening to ‘Everybody’s Free to wear sunscreen‘ recently, which he somehow missed when it came out in 1999. We played it to the kids last night. Suspect, just as the song says, it’s wasted on the young 😉
We drove over to my parents to show them the car, getting some diesel on the way (plenty of garages seem to have empty pumps but there were no queues so the crisis is over – for now). We all had mixed feelings about the car really. It is *much* smaller than the Sharan, or indeed Willow. Having driven round in a seven seater, proper MPV for the last 10 years and then a campervan getting into a two door car feels very odd. Scarlett decided she hated it and wanted the Sharan back 🙁 In talking her round I think the rest of us convinced ourselves though and we are all now happy with it. If we were staying on the mainland it would NOT be the right vehicle for us but we aren’t. We’ll be doing very little driving anywhere, it will get us up to Scotland, tow the trailer and then be the perfect working vehicle on the croft, we can drive all over the island, collect people from the ferry, whizz down to fill up our water containers etc. As I said to the kids it will be the car they both learn to drive in. The condition for that was that they could reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel at the same time. Having checked they both can they are now content with the car again and keen to start lessons ;).
Mum, Dad and Frazer all came out to stand on the pavement and admire the car. It does look quite striking 🙂 We realised we have had more red cars than any other colour over the years – Ady’s first car was a red Cortina (at the time I was on my second ever car, a beige Escort – the MOT ran out on mine first so we shared the Cortina), replaced with a slightly newer red Cortina a year later. We also had a red Escort (after I wrote off a white one, the red one was crap- we bought it for £300 and it kept conking out on the way to work in Brighton. I remember breaking down on the same roundabout each day for about three days running!). We also had a little red Metro and a red Fiesta estate as crappy second cars for a while when Ady did a gardening round on his day off pre kids, I think the gardening just about paid to run a second car and as we worked in totally different directions to each other it made sense. Our second ‘decent’ car (we’ve only ever had four cars to date that cost over £1000) was a red Peugeot and now we have this. Worst car ever was a handpainted fold Fiesta, nicest was Ady’s company car Touran with built in dvd players. This falls somewhere towards the nicer end of the spectrum with a sunroof but a tape player cancelling each other out!
We stayed for a cup of tea and pinned my parents down to a date to come for their first visit. They are intending staying in the castle, Dad says he is ‘not prepared to rough it’. I suspect he will have no choice ;). While there I had a chat with Frazer and urged him to go traveling. Dad and I had been talking about Frazer and bemoaning his lack of adventure or life experience earlier in the week so I decided to spent the last couple of weeks on a one woman campaign to persuade him to go off chasing life before he hits 40. He listened and I was at least sober for the first leg of my ‘Listen to your big sister with her crazy hippy ways’ speeches which hopefully gave it a little credibility. Will continue in a similar vein when we’re back next week. Maybe I’ll start texting him an inspirational quote a day… 😉
We came home for lunch, eaten sitting outside in the sunshine. Ady washed the car while I packed up clothes to take off with us next week and went through all the toiletries in the bathroom. We’ll leave kitchen and bathroom tidy but intact but all the rest of the rooms will be emptied of stuff for the week in hopes of plenty of viewings. Ady overheard some people in a car today having stopped outside the house peering in saying ‘the garden looks okay’ so we’re clearly getting interest.
I wanted to have a go at driving so I took the car our for a drive, down to the seafront, along the coast a little, back through the village with speed bumps. The speedo is in kph so we’ll have to rely on the satnav to keep us within speed limits. Driving an automatic takes a couple of false grabs at the gear stick as you go round a corner to get used to but is surprisingly quick become accustomed to. I was very impressed with the suspension over the bumps, my chair sort of rocked on itself. Ady and the kids have been watching YouTube videos of Extreme Pajeroing with people putting their cars through all sorts of conditions and challenges.
I spent a very happy hour or so trawling through seed catalogues and starting to make lists of stuff to order. Ady cooked dinner and then after baths I read some more story to the kids. Looking forward to seeing Jill & Johnny tomorrow :).