Sunday 27 June 2010

Time to be old...

There are times when you are young and there are times when you are less young.

Last night was Bethan official 18th birthday - holy hell it wasn't 10 minutes ago I was 18.

Lots of people got invited and many of them turned up.

A mix of people my age and people a lot younger, it all went awfully well.

Last night as we sat round the the fire pit with the starlight shining and the PA reminding all the neighbours we live here is was serene.

Special, a point of reminder,don't know how or why but I felt lots younger again myself.

I hope it was as special for Bethan as it was for her father.

I am so very proud of my children, then again I am biased.....

R

Friday 25 June 2010

PArty party.....

Tomorrow is the day,  like the Queen Bethan has an official birthday. It being so much more practical to have a load of teenies round when the weather is warm and they can be bannished to fields than to have them running round the house in February.

The world has been a blaze of preparation as mangement and I run round in circles, still at least today there has been some help from the younger element.

Tallies car has been voted a huge hit having some top of the range sound system that even shows films in surround sound.

It was pretty peacefull really with them all watching stuff in the car.

Tomorrow might be hard work I suspect.

R

Thursday 24 June 2010

Driving on

 I suppose we all remember our first car. For me it was a geriatric Morris 1000 that lasted me 3 years, oddly management also had an old Moggy thou. In reality her first proper car was an ex MOD Cavalier we bought just after she passed her test which carried her everywhere for years.

Branwen has Mr Tick an elderly Citroen AX which I bought so the three of them could learn to drive, which she immediately announced was hers. The AX is an ideal learners car being blessed with not too much power and holding the road like a limpet.

Taliesin of course had to have something of his own, in fairness he allready has a discovery he bought earlier this year, trouble is you could almost buy a house for what it would cost to insure. So now he has done rather a good deal on a Renault Clio, not any Clio though this one looks err striking.

It looks like it crashed into an accessory shop and one of everything stuck to it. 

His sisters have been warned, the word chav is banned. He is not to be bought hoodies as a gift, neither is he to be given a hat to wear backwards.

This is all very well but someone has to drive it home and someone is looking awfully like me.

But thats not the biggest point, our drive is more suited to Land Rover than Low rider and at 10 PM last night the digger was still running and operations were still ongoing. MacTalpine construction was resurfacing our drive so his car could drive down it.

R

 


Tuesday 22 June 2010

Folly of finance......

SO we have the first liberal conservative budget.

A combination of cuts and VAT that will mean the least able will suffer the most and those who engineered this mess get away to gamble money on the markets untill we have to bail them out again....

Still not been a bad few days, diet sort of stuck to, wine has been avoided and I am feeling a lot better.


Off to work in the morning - ahhh such fun.....


R




Saturday 12 June 2010

Management takes charge......

She has had enough, she said as she walked back in from mowing the jungle



My wrists have to get better,

Red meat is off the menu, no more coffee, the daily medicinal drop of wine has been suspended, beer is banned.

She says it's because she loves me, if so why is there a hint of sadism in her dulcet tones...

This is getting very distresing.

R











The all auction hero strikes again...

There is an advantage in having sold the van.

Management is quite constrained as to what she can buy at auction, monster items of  furniture are less practical.

Of course I could always hitch up the trailer but that's a big job for someone whose wrist is not bad.

That said we did OK, selling some stuff we bought for 4 pounds for over 40 and she got herself some very nice items worth a lot more than she paid.

All in all a good thing, I got to struggle to drive home so Bruce could drive me over to pick up Gwion from school and Tallie from work.

Not sure who is more scary, Bruce who sometimes thinks she is driving in France or Tallie who thinks he's driving a timed stage in competition with his mother........





 




Thursday 10 June 2010

feeling like I am running along behind the bus of life....

It has been a long time with no posts.

Life has been all sort of complex and I have been pill popping to try and get my limbs to cooperate.

The old wrist problem is back, and of course life is dealing cards...

Bank holiday weekend.....

Friday teatime out I came and the Xantia had a flat tyre as all the tyre places close. No point dealing with that - it could wait for a few days.

Into the "Mr Tick" the AX with Branwen behind the wheel.

She of course "found" a local jeep and stuffed it into that.

No real worries, light frontal as we say in the trade. The lady in question was gutted, she loves that little car, so home we came and Daddy one hand supervised as Branwen stripped the bumper off the car then directed hammering out operations.

Of course no where is open on a bank holiday weekend so it was AX off the road.

That left us with the 806.

Saturday much running round and Bethan singing her bit at the local folk festival.

As her dad I am of perhaps a little short of objective, that said she did pretty good.

But anyway Sunday dawned and off we went in the 806 to drop Tallie at work at goodness me o clock.

On the way home, something was not right, something was very not right and stopping the car I noticed that we had yet another flat tyre.

The complication to this is, the spare on these froggie motors lives on a little platform under the floor at the back of the car. Said platform is lowered by means of a threaded bar. Of course being at the back of the car this is like a mud magnet and it's always seized solid.

But not on this 806. A month or so before, I had pulled the spare off in an epic of spanners and swearing and, errr, coff, coff, it was outside the house, on the floor.

Having blagged a lift home, tools were loaded into the front end less AX and recovery mounted.

With Branwen and the management as my trusty aides we rode off to get the car.

Management decided she did not want to drive mobile endorsement AX dawn there and positively insisted she would be the one driving the 806 home.

So anyway, we got there and, armed with trolley jacks Branwen and I set to work.

But hang on, where was management?

She had been offered tea by a neighbour and off she had wented.

This left me and Branwen to do big swearing and work.

Of course we had brought the wrong jack, so we had to lift the car so far, block it up then lift it again.

All this as management strained herself managerially in someone's kitchen.

Being nice people, we finished the job then went home, thoughtfully leaving the keys in the AX....

Back home and even more entertainment.

Down to the Gwaun in the fire engine.

This turned into another epic as Isabelle blotted it's copy book.

Either the coil or condensor is on it's way out and having got to the valley the old thing went on strike.

This was all very well but the trip home turned into a bit of an epic with the motor cutting out every time it got warm.

To add the final touch I got things slightly wrong at the top of the drive.

As I said to management, she wanted a new gateway built and I have made a good start on the job!

Fortunately Isabelle escaped without a scratch.