Week 28: Dreamy Dacia

Chaos and Fate are sitting on a log in one of the circles of hell.

”Seen Pestilence lately?” asks Fate.

”She’s busy tweaking that Pandemic, just for fun“ replies Chaos. “She asked me to get involved, so I made all four countries of the United Kingdom adopt different Covid management standards. Ha! They don’t know whether they are coming or going, and if they do go, they don’t know what will happen when they get back! I’ve also arranged for their Prime Minister to promise things that can‘t be delivered, for the testing centres to be utterly overwhelmed and for all the rules on gatherings, bubbles, schools and work to be completely inconsistent with each other. Oh you should see the confusion. It’s beautiful!”

”Nice. I’ve been a bit bored of late to be honest” says Fate, “But I’ve passed the time by meddling in the lives of that family in Coulsdon, you know the one we randomly picked on before?”

And so it came pass that Fate determined that week 28 would be a bit of a Mixed Bag.

It started with the arrival of a new sink and tap for the Utility Room. These were required because the cupboard above them had previously succumbed to gravity, and more recently, the sink waste had started to leak. We decided to bite the bullet and replace the lot as it was all a bit wobbly-dented. After an eight week wait, the new sink and tap arrived.

”Check for damage!” the instructions said. Sink all good. Tap handle snapped. Nnnnnggg. Two months wait for a broken tap.

The Bastard Cat was also due in for possible repairs. He’s lost a stack of weight and the vet suggested that he should have blood tests. On Saturday morning the great fight to get him into his travel crate started. I’m not saying he is vicious, but GT (the Girl Teenager) is now booked in for a replacement right arm (Note: Nana, this is a joke. it’s only her hand that is missing.). Eventually he was bagged up and taken off for checks. Good news! His blood tests have come back fine and it really does seem like his surplus weight was related to the now-dead old bloke who lived next door who used to give him treats when he dropped in (at least daily).

Bad news! On the way back from the vet, Gin’s (so called because she drinks gallons of the stuff) car started making a Bad Noise. This Bad Noise, the nice man from the RAC told her, is the suspension. The same suspension that was fixed by VW at the start of the year.

Good news! The man in the garage can fix it on Monday. More good news! He can provide a Courtesy Car free of charge. Brilliant news! It’s a Dacia Sandero. Oh the opportunities for micky taking are golden. Even better, poor Gin, being marginally taller than an Oompa-Loompa, has to sit on a cushion to peer over acres of cheap, plastic dashboard. Sadly for her, only she is insured to drive it. Oh the joy!

I wasn’t laughing so much though when the repair estimate came in though.

The week was dominated by the Great Puppo Hunt. You will recall that BT (Boy Teenager) was very keen on a dog from Bahrain called Claude. Now we pride ourselves as being a Bit Brighter Than Most in this household, but clearly some form of academic intelligence is no substitute for basic common-sense. It took the intervention of our dog-whispering sister-in-law (she really is a magical dog whisperer. Makes Barabara Woodhouse look like an amateur) to make us question the sense of what we were doing. She simply pointed out that we really know nothing about Claude and that he could be a nightmare, who once received couldn’t be returned. Hmmm. And so multiple attempts to find the right dog commenced. Let me tell you there are some dodgy people involved in puppy sales, and we seemed to find all of them. Blokes that wanted to rush the pup round to us on the spot, sent stock images of dogs purporting to be the parents, and going strangely quiet when a few probing questions were thrown in. All of this meant that poor BT was on a complete roller-coaster, knowing that enquiries were being made, only to find out that it was yet another dodgy job. We resigned ourselves to it being months of searching.

And then we struck lucky in the form of a lady selling cocker spaniel pups, the first litter from her own dog, Mum would be there with the pups when seen, pups have been health checked - all the boxes ticked. And £500 cheaper than most of the pups we had been looking at.

And there’s the other shock. You can buy a second-hand, two year old Dacia Sandero for less than the cost of most pups. You wouldn’t, obviously, but even so, how much? Dear Lord dogs are bloody expensive.

And so we travelled to Swanley, we met the pups and a little fella (to be called Milo) will join the family on Friday. Heaven help all of us.

The week concluded with a curry and beers evening in London for me. It was a strange feeling being back on a (relatively) empty train travelling into London. The last time I did was to hand my stuff in when I left work, way back in March. It was though good to be out with Running About John and Alg after so many months. Running About John, formerly known as “HR John (what does he do for a living?)“ divulged that he reads these Blogs and that he Doesn’t Really Like being called “HR John (what does he do for a living)”. So I shall now refer to him by the thing that he spends most of his time doing: Running About (around tracks). We also attempted to prove the Science Fact that G-Boy came out with whilst I was away cycling with him; he’d read in a scientific journal that beer is good for rehydration. Having been left like a Bedoin’s Sandal after Five pints of Old Nadger on Friday night, I have some serious questions of the author of that scientific paper.

And so we enter week 29, a week which will be entirely devoted to making the house, garden, garage, shed, furniture and kids, dog-proof. And some frantic reading of dog training manuals. What can possibly go wrong?

Love & elbow-grease,

Mr H

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