Saturday 20 October 2012

Even more car antics.

The day started rather well, with young D being invited to the Police Station to discuss what they had video of him up to in a local store. This is some form of restorative justice where he has to make amends for his "sins". He has been ordered to make things right, then of course he is still banned from the shop but he will have paid off his debt.

Back home and time to round up the builder and get the Xsara over to Greasy Garage. Xsara was something I bought a good while back and we simply never got round to sorting it. It has a totally naff personal plate that will have to go, but of course it will need to have a valid MOT before we can change that.

Of course, with an MOT needed it must go to a garage,  one of the reasons I got it cheap was that it  has a clutch fault. Not the slipping sort, the other sort, the not releasing type. So it was start it in gear then drive to the garage without using the clutch to change gear. This is the sort of thing that's grist to any old truck drivers mill, in fact, driving without using the clutch is one of my show off tricks in the old fire engine.

Of course an old fire engine has lots of things a modern car doesn't have, like an engine that needs a computer to tell it what to do. The engine management system on the Xsara has been a bit flakey and I got a whole mile from the house before it went on total strike. So it was abandon the car and come back a few days later with Phil the builder and his Jeep. On with the show attach the tow rope and away. I have some nagging feeling that using a towrope is now illegal and you are expected to use some sort of rigid device, anyway away we went and it was down into the valley with me providing retardation then up the other side with Phil providing motive power.

Up to Greasy Garage and, the field entrance which the car was due to be parked in was blocked with another car parked there. Never mind, we could just  manoeuvre the car a bit, well when i say a bit, there were a few back and fores and a decent amount of lock to lock changing, lots easier if the power steering was working but a dead engine wasn't driving that. Soft tyres helped not at all either, the Green Goddess is easier to turn than this thing, still, a lot of sweat and swearing later, it was in.

This was not the point where we needed a head to pop over the gate in the house opposite and offer to move the car in the spot we originally intended to put the Xsara.....

Still, it was back to the pub and refreshment. I happened to notice the Xmas menu on the wall. The starter was Coquilles St Jaques, impressive stuff, thought I, Le Chef was serving and I asked in innocence, how do you do CSJ?  Turns out she had never done Scallops before, now, I was taught how to cook scallops in a restaurant in Brittany.

She was dead pleased I had popped in, I offered to do some pilot cooking to test the recipe. I think that, for the local palette I would need to use a lot less garlic and maybe even drop the Gros Plant in favour of something like a Touraine.

Want my original recipe?

Dream on.....

R

        

    


1 comment:

Tia said...

If it's illegal then the AA have broken the law in the not too distant past...