One word? When seven would do…

My last Wednesday shift today and my last working with a couple of colleagues too. They are both coming to my leaving meal next week but we had cuddles anyway 🙂

Frazer came to look after Davies and Scarlett as he is not working at the moment. The kids were thrilled to see him and really enjoyed spending the morning with him. He left when I got home as it’s his girlfriend’s birthday (they have been together nearly a year now 🙂 ) and he was taking her out for a meal. I’d love to get to know her better, she seems very nice but I guess that’s unlikely any time soon…

Ady had got up at 3am to drive to Wales for a gardening roadshow. He could have stayed over (and I think tbh I would have done, very little would induce me to get up at 3am) but he hates being away from home so chose to do it in one day. He was home by 5pm though and had had a nice day.

The kids and I had lunch and I plucked up the courage to ring the mechanic about the van.I got told he was at lunch so I battled with the old laptop trying to put rip some cds from work for a bit and then rang again. I got hold of him and he was fine with me (Ady and him had gotten quite shirty with each other yesterday on the phone), said he had started but not quite finished and it would be ready to pick up in the morning. I checked the price (have been dreading hundreds as he has clearly spent time on it even if he has not done the work, plus he did recover it from here on his truck so could feasibly charge even if it would be a bit low to do so) and was told ‘about 70 quid’ so said I’d bring cash hoping that will secure the price a little. In the meantime I had rung the other mechanic who services it and asked if the manifold can be welded, he reckons not but said it could be pugged to get through an MOT. I arranged to drop it off tomorrow to him, for him to get it through an MOT, said we are about to head off in it and I would need it back Wednesday next week at the latest and he agreed. Fingers very firmly crossed it is ready tomorrow, gets to new mechanic okay and is indeed ready for us MOT’d by next Wednesday at not too scary a price. I can’t pretend to feel remotely relaxed about it all but I do feel better than I did yesterday as though I have regained control a little again.

Buoyed up by that I rang a debt collector who has been trying to contact us using all sorts of foul means tactics. They have written on headed paper to ‘the occupier’ asking for information on me on a personal matter claiming to be the Scottish Bureau of Information. I Proper Googled them and found they use that name because on the phone it can be misheard as FBI when they say SBI. They rang and just asked to speak to me, checked my address as ‘we have some post for you’ and then hung up and in the last couple of days have written a couple of letters and rung leaving strange messages like ‘can Nicola urgently ring Cathering on this number…’. So I rang them, said the magic words ‘we have a debt management plan with the CCCS’ and was instantly asked the client number and thanked very much. I *know* we owe money, but we are paying it and reducing the debt and I just hate the bully boy tactics employed to scare people. It contravenes all sorts of financial governing body ethics and rules and one day I would quite like to get involved in something that helps people like me who mess up to put things straight without needing to be treated like that.

That done we nipped out to Sainsburys for petrol and vegetables for dinner and popped into Brantano for Davies to get some wellies at the same time. He now has decent wellies rather than the Woolworths ‘toy’ wellies he did have so everyone will be suitably shod :).

Back at home I continued to battle with the music and the laptop, cooked the kids some sausages and mash, lit the fire, put chickens away and answered my phone to one of our WWOOFing hosts who was ringing to check and confirm dates and details – very exciting to have spoken to one of them properly rather than just email 🙂

Ady arrived home, we all watched One Man and his Campervan, did bad, good, learnt:

Davies:
Bad: Frazer still smokes
Good: Found out what LBP2 is like (playing F’s ps3 yesterday)
Learnt: The Sphinx is the god of the afterlife

Scarlett:
Bad: Worried about bedtime
Good: Good to see Frazer today
Learnt: It’s Kat’s (Frazer’s girlfriend) birthday today

Ady:
Bad: Had to get up at 3am to go to Wales today
Good: Came home 🙂 was supposed to stay overnight
Learnt: children who have paperrounds are under threat of not being allowed to work thanks to restrictions on the hours children can work

Nic:
Bad: still don’t have van back
Good: Due back tomorrow & it’s booked with next mechanic
Learnt: what Aga stands for and that it’s inventor was blind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGA_cooker

I got our dinner on and had a bath then sat with Tarly while she fell asleep (it took about 10 minutes, so no great hardship) and Ady and I both chatted to his mate Rob on the phone who has been reading the blog since Christmas when I put the link to it in most of our Christmas cards for people we’d not yet told so they could read the whole story rather than trying to retell it. He was full of positive things to say which was lovely. He did a lot of travelling in his 20s and is a couple of years older than Ady. They house shared together many, many years ago and Ady has always looked up to Rob so it was great for him to get such enthusiasm from someone he thinks a lot of :).

I feel like we’re in that middle dip on a rollercoaster at the monent, we’ve done a couple of scary climbs and loops in the last couple of weeks – I know there is far more to come but it’s a minor respite from fretting for a couple of days at least.