Expensive Screw!

Hi All

Sunday morning and I’ve been abandoned. And the main reason for this is of my own doing. Richard has toddled off to a Land Rover show, but more to the point, Richard has toddled off to a Land Rover show in Betsy Land Rover. I still can’t believe that I play the ridiculous ‘name game’ with the great heap of detritus!

This is how it happened.

A week ago, a sad Richard looked up from his plate of gruel and moaned, ‘I need to find some spare cash so that I can get the Land Rover sorted.’

I flashed a murderous scowl across the room from my sofa (we have one each. I think it’s termed as territory?) and said, ‘What!’

‘I’m stuck with it,’ he said. ‘It’s not running right, I have to keep pumping the accelerator and running it on the choke and it keeps cutting out. I need someone who knows what they are doing to look at it…and that takes money.’

The murderous scowl remained. ‘I thought YOU knew what you were doing? At least that’s what you said when you wanted to bring the heap from your mother’s garage so that it could drip oil everywhere. There’s more oil on the paving than there is in Saudi Arabia!’

‘Old Land Rovers do that,’ he said.

‘Apparently!’ I said.

This was the end of the conversation because if it had continued it was going to turn ugly. Anyone who has been with this blog for any amount of time will know that ‘Betsy’ has been under repair and renovation for the last year and although she is now running, it is very badly, and in fits and starts. Richard’s conclusion, because he accepts defeat way too easily, is to get some grease monkey (sorry) to repair it at great expense. This was an option but I hate the fact that Richard throws in the towel and thinks he can’t do these things, because judging by the amount of time he spends on the internet, slobbering over these damn vehicles, he should be able to build one from scratch.

Finding £300/£400/£500 to get Betsy running was not an option, so I gently approached my brother and insisted that he came over with his friend, who, I had been reliably informed was a mechanic and knew all about Land Rovers.

They came over two Sunday’s ago and within fifteen minutes my brother’s friend had Betsy purring. I asked Richard (demanded actually) why it had only taken Chris fifteen minutes to sort out something that had, so far, taken Richard a year not to sort out.

Apparently, the mixture was too rich and Chris had merely turned some screw thingy ( I try not to get too swamped with info, especially  irrelevant info) three times and Betsy took a deep breath and burst into life, singing as sweetly as…er…not sure who sings sweetly…so…

Chris insisted that he didn’t want anything for fifteen minutes work and for turning a screw three times so I fed him some chocolate biscuits, and two cups of tea, and then he and my brother went on their jolly way. I gave my brother a lovely floor lamp that I’d decided I no longer needed. I don’t think he needed it either but it was the thought that counted.

I’ve since found out that Chris drinks Jack Daniels so I tracked down a bottle in Morrison’s the other day. I couldn’t believe the price! Jack Daniels is also Richard’s favourite tipple and I’m damn sure when I used to treat him to a bottle, now and then, it was around £2.99. The price on it said £28.99 and that was with £5 off! I had a lightning moment of mental arithmetic and to my reckoning that would have meant £10 per turn of the screw! Bloody hell.

I feel massively disgusted with myself when I tell you that I didn’t buy it…but having thought about it I have to, don’t I? I’ll go back. Today. When they open.

So you see, it was actually me who sorted out Betsy, me who is going back to Morrison’s today, me who will buy a £30 bottle of Jack Daniels, and me who has been dumped, whilst Richard bounces off across country, to meet up with his friend, Darren, at the Land Rover show and play like big kids. Lord, he even took a flask of coffee!

Obviously the money for the JD will come out of the housekeeping monies (see last post) which Richard provides…but that’s not the point.

I do have some sad news to report…Chea’s best and only friend, Bobby, has gone! His family moved to their new house over the weekend. They met-up for the last time on Friday and toggled off together, arm in arm, on an adventure. Now she sits in the lounge window, looking across at Bobby’s lounge window, but his little face doesn’t appear. Poor Chea. And to add insult to injury, she’s been put on a diet by the wicked witch of the house, AND the ground is frozen this morning so she has had to come back into the house to use her litter tray for a pooh. As luck would have it she managed to fit it in just before Richard left so he had the pleasure of removing said pooh from said tray.

Off to Morrison’s…

Take care my lovelies x