B is for B-roads and Bye Byes

(Sorry this post is a little belated, I’ve had a lot on and haven’t got round to writing this up).

Ahead of our cross-country migration at the end of this month, I’ve been having to schedule in some goodbyes.  Significant amongst my friendship groups is the Colchester Mini Club, both the cars and their drivers.  I’ve been a member of the club for as long as I’ve owned a Mini, which is several years, and last Wednesday was my last opportunity to go to a club meeting.  It was a night of fun and excitement, even if it was tinged with sadness.

Something else that made that night a little more difficult was that my Mini was going to be there.  I’ve been going to the meetings each month in the Escort for a while now, while Neddy was off the road for the winter, but there was a very different feel on Wednesday evening driving there knowing that I was no longer a Mini owner, especially given that the car was going to be there anyway, belonging to someone else.  Selling a Mini really is like selling a close friend, and there’s a lot of emotion surrounding it.

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I know it’s Easter Sunday, and I really am excited and thrilled to know that Jesus rose from the dead, but there’s more – Neddy lives too!  It’s clearly the day for resurrections.  After several months of being garaged, my lovely Mini is now back on the road, healthy and alive and really loving it!

I was actually hoping to sell Neddy way back in November, when we bought our Ford Escort Ghia X, which was intended to replace our little Mini.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find a buyer at the time, what with the credit crunch driving car prices down, so Neddy sat almost completely forgotten in the garage, not seeing the light of day or feeling the tarmac under his tyres.  I did make sure the car was MOTed before Christmas, but due to lack of buyers I opted to SORN the car rather than renewing the tax disc, with the intention of getting the ball rolling again in the spring, by which time hopefully the car market would have improved.

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As many of you will know, I am trying to sell my beloved Mini.  Some may say that this is the wrong time to be selling a classic car, what with the economic state of the country – the credit crunch means people don’t have much spare money, and petrol prices are so high that an additional car probably won’t be high on people’s agendas.  Still, I can’t really justify (or afford) to have two cars, especially if one of them is just sitting not doing anything.  So it’s for sale.

Unfortunately, having a Ford Escort as well now as my daily runner, the Mini has been left neglected in the garage.  Now, normally this would be a good thing; the garage is dry and safe, so in that sense it’s the best place for it.  What I forgot to do was disconnect the battery.  As a result, the month and a half it’s been sat stationary has drained the battery almost to its limits, the consequence being that the car won’t start.  Ordinarily, not the end of the world.  But it was supposed to be going in for its MOT today, so that’s had to be postponed until I can get the car running again.

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Today marked a significant transition into the real world for me.  Today I bought a new car.  Not brand new, but it is a reasonably modern, normal car, unlike my beloved Mini with whom I have enjoyed many happy hours.  It’s been on the cards for some time now, for various reasons, and today finally saw that goal achieved.

The car in question is a Ford Escort.  In fact, more than that, it’s a Ford Escort Ghia X, which is pretty much as posh as Escorts ever came.  It’s got such refinements as central locking, air conditioning, electric windows, heated windscreen, 6-CD multichanger, sunroof, power steering, airbags, and even a light in the boot.  A far cry from the more simple design of the Mini.  And a lot cheaper, too.

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It seems only yesterday I bought Neddy, my lovely little Mini Sidewalk, unadulterated and raring to get into the Mini scene.  I’ve since added my own refinements, like 5-spoke alloy wheels and a carbon-fibre dashboard and suchlike, but it’s remained essentially the same car.  Cute, friendly, stubborn at times, but a great friend.

Odd, then, that I should be even considering letting that car go.

Unfortunately, that’s the way life is at the moment.  Minis are great fun, and I can’t think of a car better suited to me, but in all honesty they’re not the most practical of vehicles.  For just me, it’s fine, but my wife wants to learn to drive, we want to have kids, and there just isn’t enough room in a Mini for all that.  I wouldn’t want Ellie learning to drive in a Mini, not because I’m afraid of her breaking anything, but more because I’m afraid of it breaking her – Minis don’t have crumple zones.  The inevitable upshot of that looming eventuality is that Neddy will need to go.

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Sunday it was supposed to rain.  At least, that’s what the weather report said on Thursday.  By the time it got to Sunday morning the MET office had revised its decision and said that it wasn’t going to rain.  But it was going to be grey and misty and cloudy and miserable.  And it was.  In the morning.  By the afternoon we were enjoying glorious sunshine.

And it was on this day that I went with Colchester Mini Club to the Manningtree High School Classic Vehicle Show.  Not restricted to just Minis, there were cars of all sorts in attendance, all (or at least most) shined up and tidied to be on show.  Photos of the event are in my new Picasa album.

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Work has generally been quite busy recently.  Which is a good thing.  More work means more money.  However, there is more to life than work, and there are a whole load more things I need to squeeze into my week than just work.  I’d like to share just a few of this week’s additional bits and bobs with you.  It gives me something to do after all.

This afternoon I took the opportunity to put work on hold briefly while I went outside and mowed the lawn.  It has needed doing for a while now, and I’ve been putting it off, but today I figured I ought to take advantage of the sunshine and get out there while I can.  Looking at the forecast, the weekend isn’t going to be too promising.  The lawn actually needs treating at some point, as one half of it looks to be more moss than grass.  We’ve got some moss-killer, it’s just a case of spraying it on and letting it do its job.  I didn’t get round to that today, but I did cut the grass and do the edges, so the garden is looking nice now.  I also noticed that the peas in our vegetable patch are beginning to grow too!  We’ve got carrots and parsnips in there too, but I only planted them last week so it’s no surprise they’re not topside yet.

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They say time flies when you’re having fun.  My recent absence from this blog is testament to the additional truth that actually time flies regardless.  True, I have had a lot of fun recently, but it has been mixed with periods of busyness too, the combination of which has meant that finding time to sit down and rant about it here has been quite difficult.  Nevertheless, the time has now been found, and here I sit to write a conspicuously verbose update.  In case such lengthiness should put you off, I’m dividing this blog into subheadings, to make the sheer quantity of text a little more bite-sized and easier to digest.  If you haven’t the time to read it all, I completely understand.  Just bear in mind that I went to the effort of writing it.  So there.

So, first of all, a general introduction.  Many things have happened since my last blog post, including (but not exclusively): two trips to theatres, some significant developments on the business front, a somewhat extended birthday, Neddy going to the garage a couple of times, a couple of additions to the Dawkins household, an above-average number of requests to lead worship, and a general realisation that Ellie and I are taking over our church.  That’s quite a lot to write about.  I’ll try to keep some of it brief.  Just to demonstrate that, you’ll notice the lack of information in the spaces between words.  Every little helps.

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This past week has brought some worry and some excitement, mostly in the monetary department.  Running my own business means taking responsibility for dealing with the numbers, and satisfying Mr Tax Man that I’m a good little boy.  It came as something of a surprise, then, when I checked the HMRC web site on Boxing Day to discover that in fact my Self Assessment Tax Return had to be done and dusted by the end of this month.  Clearly I had got confused, since I thought that was due later on, but never mind.  I therefore set about downloading a year’s worth of bank statements, categorising all my incomings and outgoings and tallying that against my business records, before finally being able to plug the right figures into the online system to tell me how much tax the government was going to demand of me.

As it happens, the whole process was far less complicated and stressful than I thought it was going to be.  The online Self Assessment system is easy to use and doesn’t use too much jargon, which is good for people like me who have trouble adding two numbers together, let alone knowing the difference between net and gross.  I always thought a net was something for catching fish.  Anyway, in the end I managed to give it all the information it wanted, and told me that I had paid about £1100 more tax than I should have done in 2006-07.  Thanks.

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Christmas came early this year. Though not in the way you might expect. Since Ellie will be working all through the Christmas period we won’t be able to go visiting people then, so we drove down to Torquay to see my parents this weekend, to catch up and see people before things get manic here. They’re all hoping to come up and visit us at some point, but it was good to see them nonetheless.

Peter, my brother, has a ukelale. Not just any ukelale, a “flying-V” electric ukelale. It’s a strange mix of radical and cheesy, and suits him down to the ground. He’s just recently invested in an amp too, tiny little orange thing that makes a really piercing noise, but he likes it. Actually, all my family is quite mad. Makes me feel right at home.

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For some time now Neddy has been having problems starting.  Despite a longish run the battery would be flat, and the engine would hardly turn over.  Most of the time there has still been just about enough charge to start the engine, if reluctantly, but there have also been a couple of times when it’s failed, and this morning was one of those occasions.  Not great timing, considering I’m due to be driving across the country to get married this weekend.  There were several possible causes to the battery charge problem, one of which was the battery itself, and other main possibility being the alternator, and I could find no sure fire way of finding out which it was more likely to be or how to find out for sure, and neither looked particularly cheap to replace.

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Yesterday evening I went round to my friend Aaron’s house so we could fit new lower ball joints to Neddy, having replaced the upper ones previously. In case I hadn’t already said elsewhere, Neddy has been making a rather disconcerting clunking noise when accelerating, and I had thought it was the upper ball joint, but replacing it made no difference. So Aaron and I did the lower ones too. And did it make any difference? Not a sausage.

It’s kind of a hard noise to describe really, especially since we’re not entirely sure where the noise is coming from. You can hear it when inside the car, but not really from outside because of the noise from the engine. This leads us to suspect that it’s not to do with the suspension or anything on the sides of the car, as you would expect to be able to hear something like that form outside. It’s a sound akin to clicking your knuckles, and happens when pulling away from stationary, or accelerating hard in first or second gear. It sort of clicks three or four times before settling down.

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For some time now there has been an odd and disconcerting clunking noise coming from the front of my Mini when I pull away.  I had come to the conclusion that it might be the upper ball joint on the driver’s side wheel (the passenger side upper ball joint had been replaced about six months ago), but without a ball joint splitter or torque wrench I wasn’t exactly feeling confident attempting to sort it out myself!  Thankfully I didn’t have to do it on my own, thanks to that wonderful community that is Colchester Mini Club – Aaron came and helped me this evening.

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Yesterday it rained. Nothing unusual about that in itself, England generally has a lot of rain, but Colchester usually manages to avoid it. Yesterday, however, I saw plenty of the wet stuff. After an early start I met up with the Colchester Mini Club and drove up to Fakenham racecourse for the Norfolk Mini Day, which was not so much flooded with Minis as rainwater. It was fun driving along in convoy, and I bought a few odds and ends at the trade stands, but generally it was a bit of a wash-out. Still, the day was made up for by a cup of tea and a trip to the cinema – I’m easily pleased.

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For some time now Neddy’s engine has been moving about a bit, rocking on its mountings due to worn stabaliser bushes.  A while ago I fitted new bushes to the top stabaliser, which vastly improved matters, but since then it seems to have returned to its old unstable self, probably more the fault of the bottom bushes than the top ones.  I shall hopefully be buying new bushes at the Norfolk Mini Day this Sunday, but in the meantime I thought I would fit the extra bottom engine steady bar I bought at the Riviera Run.

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As a stalwart Devonshire lad, I’ve never had any particular association with Cornwall. Indeed, if Devon and Cornwall were suddenly and irreversibly separated by earthquake or act of God, I doubt many people would complain (on either side of the border). That said, I thoroughly enjoyed my long weekend in Newquay, soaking in the sunshine, admiring the ruggedly beautiful landscape, and drooling at all the Minis in the vicinity. Yes, I’m talking about the MiniWorld Riviera Run, an annual meeting of Minis (and their owners) from around the country, officially starting by driving in convoy from Reading services all the way down to the Trevelgue holiday park in Newquay.

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Just a quick note to say that I shall be away this weekend, joining hundreds of other Mini owners for the MiniWorld Riviera Run!  I’ve been wanting to go to this for years, and this is my first opportunity, so I’m really looking forward to it.  I shall be travelling down to my parents’ house this afternoon, then meeting up with fellow Colchester Mini Club people on their way down on Friday, and we’ll all drive in convoy to Newquay in Cornwall.  Accommodation is camping (not sure yet what I’ll be doing for food…), and there will be entertainment, Show & Shine, an organised ‘cruise’ (an enormous convoy of Minis), swimming pool, traders’ stalls, and lots and lots and lots of Minis!  It’s gonna be so much fun!  I’ll do a full report when I get back, with pictures of course!

On Sunday afternoon I was a mobile recording studio, recording the drum parts for the Rooted album I’ve been working on.  This evening I was a photographer, taking photos of a dance / movement performance for one of Ellie’s friends.  It was a challenge, simply because there was so much movement – no one stayed still for very long, there was no script to work from, no guarantee of where anyone would be at any given time, and the lighting was very unusual.  But it was a fantastic experience, and once I got into it I just couldn’t stop taking pictures!

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After a morning of being stuck in front of a computer screen (again), I spent this afternoon being very productive indeed.  I started on some cleaning around the house, and then my friend Andy came round to help me with the brakes on my Mini, which we’d not been able to finish the previous weekend.  The initial problem was a leaking brake cylinder, but in the process of fitting the new one we discovered that the thread had gone on part of the pipework, so I went off and order yet more bits and pieces.  This week it all arrived – braided brake hoses for the rear brakes, another brake cylinder and a set of brake shoes.

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This afternoon, taking advantage of the glorious sunshine we’ve been having, I spent a few hours outside tinkering with my Mini.  I couldn’t do anything about the brakes, since I still need to order a new brake hose, but I decided I would finally get round to fitting the chrome door escutcheons I bought ages ago.  Nothing too complicated, just involved taking all the door furniture off (door handle, window winder, etc), removing the door card and unscrewing the exterior door handle from the inside.  In fact, only one end of the handle needed to be unscrewed, as that left enough room to squeeze the escutcheon in.

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