Car woes

This dank, dismal weather is awful and probably accounts for a lot of winter depression. Even the dog doesn't really want to go out in it. So I spent most of today indoors, re-checking the proofs for the paperback version of The Queen's Letters and longing for the summer - hence the pic, which was taken on the cliff path outside Mullion Cove a few years ago.
That was the year our lovely bright yellow Honda 2000 Sports car conked out on the cliff at Land's End.  An electrical glitch; simply refused to switch the engine on. 6pm and everyone else leaving --- how do we get back to Mullion and our cottage? There is nothing more panicking than thinking you'll be out in the windy darkness all night - unless it is the blank refusal you get when a PC or laptop refuses to co-operate.

A hike down the cliff to the gift shop, which was locking up for the night, and a swift phone call to the local garage promised relief. A long hike back up the cliff - this is me and not my other half - and we got towed to the garage. I feel sure the garage owner was laughing at us all the time! He said he only came because he thought I sounded local! Ignominious journey indeed.

The car was taken  to the Honda dealer in town and we followed on the bus - two buses, first to Helston, then to Truro. Car repaired, they said, paid another huge bill and off we went. Next day, the same thing happened. Better half  took car apart and discovered poor electrical connection under the driver seat. Twist it one way and everything died; twist it another way, and everything woke up. Stopping for petrol was nerve-wracking because when we switched off we were never sure it would start again.
The journey home I was due to do on my own. Cornwall to Newcastle, with other half meeting a friend at Bristol and driving to France. We made plans; fill the car with petrol at Bristol, I would drop Bill at the station, where he would be picked up by friend, and I was to set off and drive up the M6 without stopping til I got home. I tell you, I was vastly relieved to roll up onto the drive at home.

Car to garage again, fault discussed, repaired, another bill paid - and two days later the same problem occurred. I was sent home on the bus, to get the mini out and drive back to Bill. When I got there, he'd got it running again, but next day he drove our beautiful yellow sports car to the Honda main dealer and said Make me an offer. We came out with a red Honda Civic!
I still miss the wonderful sound of that engine as I roared up Blaydon bank. I don't think we ever had it running flat out. Should have gone to Germany and the autobahns.

What is danger?

Our friends arrived bearing English newspapers yesterday, and I read that a boy has died because a goalpost fell on his head. Tragedy though this is to his grieving family, I don't see the sense in the subsequent demand that a risk assessment must be done on goalposts up and down the country.

Thus goalposts become close kin to the childhood game of conkers, which has now been ruled out of safe sports in schools. I have heard that chestnut trees should be cut down so that said conkers would not fall on anyone's head. Then there's the rumour that trees should in fact be felled because they may drop branches on people passing beneath.

How much of this is true I do not know. But it seems to me that as video games, films, novels become or contain more violence, real life is being tied down to the equivalent of walking in straight lines because bends and zig zags may contain hazards.

Common sense seems to have gone out of the window in the last thirty years. Life is dangerous, has always been dangerous, and it is up to the invidivual to circumnavigate those dangers, whatever they happen to be. Driving cars is dangerous, perhaps one of the most dangerous things we ever do, and yet people feel so safe and cocooned that they speed through houseing estates and motorways with equal abandon.

Forget the goal posts and conkers; one the whole, they are among the safer things in life.

FAR AFTER GOLD arc

I have my book in my hands! FAR AFTER GOLD! by Jen Black!

Half a dozen ARCs arrived in the post today. It felt strangely unreal to think that I'd written it, because it looks like a normal paperback book. Stylish, even. One for me and the others to go out for reviews. I love the cover and I wish I had the approved cover art to put here for you. Soon, soon... so come Monday you know what I shall be doing - I'll be making those all important calls to secure reviewers. Wish me luck!

The picture is of Durham Cathedral. For both of us it was a case of going back "home." So many of the old places are gone, replaced by cafes and restaurants and it is difficult to walk twenty yards without the smell of food and coffee drifting out on the air. No wonder the nation is rapidly gaining weight!

The cathedral is about the only place safe from change. Difficult to remember cowering by the walls as the old red buses lumbered up the middle of Silver Street. Now it is a pedestrian thoroughfare, and probably rightly so given the size of modern buses. They'd be scraping people off the walls these days. Traffic has increased so much that only those who pay or have special passes are allowed to drive up to the cathedral.

Sometimes I'm surprised the weight of motor vehicles doesn't tilt the world off its axis.

On the other hand, we've all adapted so well to having cars that our lifestyles are now built around them. We live in places inaccessible by bus or train or so far away that to get to work in the morning we'd need to leave home by six to get there by nine - and this in a country as small as the UK. The old corner shop has all but disappeared because we all drive out of town to shop at the superstores like Tesco and Waitrose. Our lives are so busy that we don't have time to spend travelling anywhere by bus when we can get there in a third of time by car. Governments are going to have a dickens of a job persuading people out of their cars. I'm off to Bowes Museum tomorrow. How will I go? By car, of course. I have no idea if I could get there by bus. To go to Durham, much nearer than BM, I would have to use a minimum of two buses (a maximum of three) and the journey would take me two hours and four minutes at best, two hours and twenty five minutes at worst. And that is with connections within minutes of each other. Imagine what would happen if one bus was late...

No contest, is it?