Monday

Good evening peeps,

Well I am just beginning to warm up after a hard day's work in the freezing cold. It has been a stunning beautiful winter's day but freezing hell.

Yesterday I went and did a shift working with the homeless. We had decided to do a roast meal, so at about 3pm I was sent to get hot chickens from the supermarket.
I took one of the homeless girls with me, and we got four whole hot chickens and some bisto gravy and things, the reason for getting hot chickens is we can't roast them at the shelter, but we cooked the potatoes and vegetables at the shelter.

We joked that my car smelled of chips yesterday and toast chicken today.
We ended up with a lot of volunteers today, for the first time, which is a good sign, because I can't keep up four shifts per week, so anyway, I offered to go early.

I headed home in the cold quiet Sunday evening.

It was dark and I was driving alone just outside a small residential area when disaster struck.
Max's accelerator cable snapped.

Those of you who don't know about cars, the accelerator ensures that the car can pick up speed and thus keep going and go up through the gears. Without an accelerator, the car may not have the power to climb slopes and may stall and will certainly hold other road users up as it can only do about 10mph through engine powered momentum.

So this wasn't good news as I was about 3 miles from home. I drifted Max onto a kerb and walked back to a shop that was thankfully open.
I got some credit for my phone and phoned the car's best friend and left a message.
Then I had to decide what to do. I didn't feel that I could leave the car there and walk home.

I decided to get the car home under engine power.
Do not try this yourselves, unless you really have to. I have had enough training to be able to do this. It is a stupid thing for  normal people to do though. But it was Sunday evening and it was going to be quiet down through the villages so I decided that as long as I let other cars pass and kept the hazards on, I would eventually get myself and the car home.

I was successful but it took an hour. The roads were quiet and other traffic acted with patience and understanding.

I turned Max around in one and brought him onto the Great Hill road. At first I kept him in 1st gear, but on downhills and flat areas he would roll better in 2nd. I stopped a few times in  laybys to rest Max and me as it was stressful, and to let other cars go by.
I was lucky with the roundabout, it was deserted and I drifted Max accross it and onto the Great Hill.
The traffic remained light and we continued this slow and eerie journey with the hazards lighting up the dark countryside.

The car's best friend texted, all he could do was order a new cable, he couldn't rescue us, but we were busily rescuing ourselves, and you should only own a car if you either have breakdown cover or can rescue yourself, I tend to rescue myself, as you will remember with Florence earlier this year :) she blew her starter motor in the pitch black pouring rain in the middle of nowhere at 6.30 in the morning, do you remember that? :) How to bump start a car.

As Max and I rolled into the villages, things got more tricky, the streets are lined with cars and it is bad enough in daylight with cars trying to get through either side, but here at night and up a slope, with Max losing momentum, we got into difficulties.

On the uphill I was struggling to keep Max going, and he stalled several times, while traffic started to build behind us and also to the front, traffic the other way  waiting for us to clear so that they could get through. As you can imagine this was stressful.

I managed to get Max through eventually, and pulled over to let the other traffic go.

Then it was just a question of getting round the side of the hill and bowling home, and that was fairly stress free. Max is parked in his usual space, his new cable is waiting for the car's best friend to find time, and that will hopefully be tomorrow.
Don't ever try that, peeps, most people wouldn't, but me and Max are not your normal people, well Max is a car so of course he isn't.

Anyway, it took an hour to get me and Max home, and then I texted my work-mate to arrange for him to pick me up in the works van this morning.

I slept well last night and woke up in time to sort myself up and hurry to meet my work mate.
We went to work down on the seafront, but it was bitterly bitingly cold in the wind.
It was so beautiful with a wild sea and the pale blue winter sky and the bare trees and the sunlight, so beautiful.

We had four hours at the first place, but we got so cold, we tried to work in an area that was a bit sheltered from the wind.
When we had finished the four hours, it was lunchtime, and we managed to find a seafront cafe that was not only open but doing good hot drinks for a good price, and they were nice too.
So we took our hot drinks and went and had lunch at the next job before we started work.

The work now was mainly leaf clearing, and the bitter wind was sending the leaves everywhere, I used the blower and blew the leaves towards my mate who had the leaf hoover, and he hoovered them up.

Then we had a few other small jobs to do and it was due to be an early finish.

The boss phoned as we drove towards the last job of the day.
He phoned my workmate's phone but he was driving, so the fourth time the phone rang, I answered and said 'Thank you for choosing Dominos' and he laughed a lot.

He wanted us to come and help with a job, but I couldn't make head nor tail of the directions, could hardly hear him, so when we parked, my workmate took the phone and so we went to help the boss.

He looked so tired and bedraggled when we got there, he had been working hard all day and had broken both pairs of loppers, including a pair he has had for ages, so he didn't feel too happy, and when my workmate told him that we had had hot coffee with our lunch he told us that in that case he was going to make us pick up all the leaves by hand and we couldn't go home until we had, but he was only joking. He hadn't had hot coffee while he was working.
He laughed about me getting Max home on engine power.

The three of us blew and hoovered the leaves and got the job finished, the sunset was glorious and everything glowed as the leafless trees became silhouettes against the darkening cold winter sky.

The van has no heater and I came home freezing cold. I have my thermal top on now and a hot waterbottle, but I think I need a hot shower in order to warm up properly.
I can't wear a thermal top to work, because believe it or not, I would overheat and get sick.