The student of course cannot understand any fascination with cars, for her they are just tools to use and discard. So of course the demise of Bihan her big old C5 estate registered not at all on her radar. Her faithful companion of 3 years went to the scrap yard with no regrets or sadness, the tears were for something completely unrelated.
She, she assured me loved her C5 but she didn't want or need another one. Taliesins failed dalliance with second hand car sales yielded a Saxo which she duly took over and was very happy with. Of course it's summer and summer means Brittany which would in olden times have meant minibus but nowadays means both car and van to carry every one who is going.
The Saxo is fine but not really a car for motorway runs or the continent when it is reasonably too hot and a cramped Saxo might be a bit of a nightmare really.
As fate would have it a C5 estate popped up on eBay last week and was being bid for resolutely at around the 60 quid mark. Now, Bihan went for 200 pounds scrap so I had the sniff of an earner here. This car had a bit of tax and a bit of MOT so when I bought it for 205 pounds I could see a couple of months free motoring plus a good vehicle to take to Brittany in prospect.
Driving to get it the student was quietly fuming at spending money "we did not need to spend" and then we got to where the car was parked. A sprightly pensioner explained that he had recently bought the car and that it was just to large for him to cope with. There was an element of sense in that, the C5 Estate is a bit like sticking a wheel on each corner of the Albert Hall!
He had described the car as "rough" as the student walked round it her face betrayed that her vision of a rough car was a long way past his. The bumpers were held on by bolts not zip ties, there were no multiple combat marks down the sides, no battle scars on the tail gate, in fact it was pretty straight as these things go. Internally all the door handles and winders were still there, the seates were clean unripped and unstained neither was there half a skip load of rubbish on the floor
The front tyres did indeed need replacing, but only one of them was totally illegal. The spare we were told was OK, but more of that later.
130,000 miles is actually not a lot for a modern diesel, providing it's been serviced and the same garage had serviced this car at 10,000 mile intervals for the last 100,000 miles with Citroen main agents doing the job before that. Pretty good provenience then!
Drove it home and changed the relevant very dodgy tyre for the spare which was a brand new never been on the car Michelin as put in the boot when the car was made. Of course this was done the trick Citroen way, suspension on high, jack under the car, suspension on low and change the wheel once it's off the floor.
The car drives as you would expect and she who was not very happy has grudgingly come to think it's "OK". She did say she would have preferred it in black, but then she could never admit to being happy could she?
Just glided silently to Carmarthen and back, I had forgotten what a dream car the C5 is on the motorway and dual carriageways.
The trip to Carmathen was not without purpose. Having driven Branwen to the dentist last week I stopped in the assembly office to register the holding we have here as a first step to getting grant aid to plant a small woodland.
So far so complicated, put in the forms last week together with a map and went for a mapping meeting this morning. Thankfully it was me and not her, dear god where do they find some people. The very nice man was very nice but, he explained patiently as if to a small child Wales was a big place and he could not find our place without a map showing him. Which of course was why I had included one with my application form I explained patiently. Ah but he did not have the form he replied to the child, I wondered if maybe he should have had the form then, I countered patiently. Did I know my post code he asked, Yes I did, it was on the other piece of paperwork I had just handed him, was that my post code? Yes, what was it again, as far as I knew it had not changed since I had completed either form, the last of which had been given to him to write down 5 minutes ago, I hissed. Oh that was the post code of the property, bright lad, he got it.
Up came a satellite image, which showed our land very clearly, was this feature a track leading to the main road? Resisting the temptation to say no, we always arrive by helicopter, I said yes. A lot huffing puffing and computer mousing and he had delineated our drive. What was this other feature? I looks a bit like a house to me, says I. Ohh was that the house where we lived. Resisting the temptation to say: no it's where the cats live and we live under the tree over there (tree would probably have been very complicated for him to understand) I said yes. Then there was a concrete pad where there had been a barn, my was that a dilemma as apparently concrete pads have a different statistical code to barns and I had to decide which it was. Now, our barn departed in a big storm about 12 years ago, we never did work out where it went as no one saw it ever again, too much information, he didn't need to know that.
Moving quickly on we were able to identify a number of other features, Green Goddess fire pumps actually, now here was a real quandary, there was no statistical number for those, well they are vehicles and therefore not technically buildings or land features. Whats more they had all moved since 2009 and they were parked in other places now. After a pause, he said he probably didn't need to enter those in his data base then, it took me a few second to realise he was actually serious. Dear god he was so lucky the student hadn't gone, There might have been a felony, as it was we applied for the original paperwork a month ago, it had been in the post the day we phoned up. 3 times it had been the post, it was only when i turned up and indulged in a spot of counter banging last week that the forms were produced and filled in.
Now it has all gone to another department for them to look at - goodness knows why, all I wanted is to plant some bleedin trees after all.
I should have added the new car is called Robdale or Shinny - according to Bruce that is
R
She, she assured me loved her C5 but she didn't want or need another one. Taliesins failed dalliance with second hand car sales yielded a Saxo which she duly took over and was very happy with. Of course it's summer and summer means Brittany which would in olden times have meant minibus but nowadays means both car and van to carry every one who is going.
The Saxo is fine but not really a car for motorway runs or the continent when it is reasonably too hot and a cramped Saxo might be a bit of a nightmare really.
As fate would have it a C5 estate popped up on eBay last week and was being bid for resolutely at around the 60 quid mark. Now, Bihan went for 200 pounds scrap so I had the sniff of an earner here. This car had a bit of tax and a bit of MOT so when I bought it for 205 pounds I could see a couple of months free motoring plus a good vehicle to take to Brittany in prospect.
Driving to get it the student was quietly fuming at spending money "we did not need to spend" and then we got to where the car was parked. A sprightly pensioner explained that he had recently bought the car and that it was just to large for him to cope with. There was an element of sense in that, the C5 Estate is a bit like sticking a wheel on each corner of the Albert Hall!
He had described the car as "rough" as the student walked round it her face betrayed that her vision of a rough car was a long way past his. The bumpers were held on by bolts not zip ties, there were no multiple combat marks down the sides, no battle scars on the tail gate, in fact it was pretty straight as these things go. Internally all the door handles and winders were still there, the seates were clean unripped and unstained neither was there half a skip load of rubbish on the floor
The front tyres did indeed need replacing, but only one of them was totally illegal. The spare we were told was OK, but more of that later.
130,000 miles is actually not a lot for a modern diesel, providing it's been serviced and the same garage had serviced this car at 10,000 mile intervals for the last 100,000 miles with Citroen main agents doing the job before that. Pretty good provenience then!
Drove it home and changed the relevant very dodgy tyre for the spare which was a brand new never been on the car Michelin as put in the boot when the car was made. Of course this was done the trick Citroen way, suspension on high, jack under the car, suspension on low and change the wheel once it's off the floor.
The car drives as you would expect and she who was not very happy has grudgingly come to think it's "OK". She did say she would have preferred it in black, but then she could never admit to being happy could she?
Just glided silently to Carmarthen and back, I had forgotten what a dream car the C5 is on the motorway and dual carriageways.
The trip to Carmathen was not without purpose. Having driven Branwen to the dentist last week I stopped in the assembly office to register the holding we have here as a first step to getting grant aid to plant a small woodland.
So far so complicated, put in the forms last week together with a map and went for a mapping meeting this morning. Thankfully it was me and not her, dear god where do they find some people. The very nice man was very nice but, he explained patiently as if to a small child Wales was a big place and he could not find our place without a map showing him. Which of course was why I had included one with my application form I explained patiently. Ah but he did not have the form he replied to the child, I wondered if maybe he should have had the form then, I countered patiently. Did I know my post code he asked, Yes I did, it was on the other piece of paperwork I had just handed him, was that my post code? Yes, what was it again, as far as I knew it had not changed since I had completed either form, the last of which had been given to him to write down 5 minutes ago, I hissed. Oh that was the post code of the property, bright lad, he got it.
Up came a satellite image, which showed our land very clearly, was this feature a track leading to the main road? Resisting the temptation to say no, we always arrive by helicopter, I said yes. A lot huffing puffing and computer mousing and he had delineated our drive. What was this other feature? I looks a bit like a house to me, says I. Ohh was that the house where we lived. Resisting the temptation to say: no it's where the cats live and we live under the tree over there (tree would probably have been very complicated for him to understand) I said yes. Then there was a concrete pad where there had been a barn, my was that a dilemma as apparently concrete pads have a different statistical code to barns and I had to decide which it was. Now, our barn departed in a big storm about 12 years ago, we never did work out where it went as no one saw it ever again, too much information, he didn't need to know that.
Moving quickly on we were able to identify a number of other features, Green Goddess fire pumps actually, now here was a real quandary, there was no statistical number for those, well they are vehicles and therefore not technically buildings or land features. Whats more they had all moved since 2009 and they were parked in other places now. After a pause, he said he probably didn't need to enter those in his data base then, it took me a few second to realise he was actually serious. Dear god he was so lucky the student hadn't gone, There might have been a felony, as it was we applied for the original paperwork a month ago, it had been in the post the day we phoned up. 3 times it had been the post, it was only when i turned up and indulged in a spot of counter banging last week that the forms were produced and filled in.
Now it has all gone to another department for them to look at - goodness knows why, all I wanted is to plant some bleedin trees after all.
I should have added the new car is called Robdale or Shinny - according to Bruce that is
R
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