Hang the expense
I bought a book yesterday.
It is the most expensive book I have ever bought.
As most things can be found online, this is where I found my latest purchase.
I know it was expensive as books go, at over twenty thousand yoyos but I have been having a rough time lately and I thought I deserved a treat. I think Herself might like it too.
My new book:
Brilliant, just the incentive to get the hell out of there and back on the road.
If you specify it with a prescription windscreen, you’ll get over the glasses problem too.
Or I can rely on the dozens of gizmos that are designed to prevent me crashing?
I had a Ford Focus once, estate, white one, diesel. Cost me 800 quid off a bloke at work in 2010. Drove it from Cambridge to Finland with a friend’s housemoving stuff in it, then back via Denmark. Had 108mph out of it, straight and level, on the autobahn. Great motor. Then one day it stalled in Saffron Walden and wouldn’t go. A friend towed it to the main dealer who said “Fuel injector pump. That’ll be too fausand quid mate. Plus yer VAT”. But I still got a few hundred off some bloke as a non runner. Happy days. And hope you have happy days in yours 🙂
I got a Focus back around 2004. That car brought us all around Ireland and on several excursions to France. It was a great car that was a pleasure to drive and the only reason I eventually traded it in was that repair costs were exceeding insurance premiums.
Great book to ponder when you’re at traffic lights and peer at all those switches on the steering wheel, and come to the conclusion that you haven’t a clue what they’re there for!
God be with the days when we had to cope with a choke and a switch for windscreen wipers.
In the early Minis the wiper & light switches were too far away on the dash panel to reach if you were strapped in with the non-inertia reel seatbelts. An after-market supplier came up with pair of push on extenders, which were a godsend to people like me. The headlamp dipswitch wasn’t a problem though – it was a big metal button on the floor!
Happy days…
My first car was a morris minor – I accidently fitted an anti-theft device when I swapped round the choke and heater (?) cables. I When I forgot (frequently), it would be a pig to start in the morning!
Hah! I remember that dipswitch well. A dirty great cylinder behind the clutch.
It’s not one of those electric things, is it? If so, you may wish to keep a breakdown kit (4,000 AAA batteries) in the boot.
There is mention of “hybrid” somewhere so I’m not too sure. The manual does go to great lengths about petrol filling so I’m not too worried.
Oh dear, a hybrid is the first step on the slippery slope that leads to driving a milk-float.
Most small hybrids get by with an over-sized battery and a muscular starter-motor, allegedly to provide a ‘power boost when needed’ – in practice, without the extra weight of all that baggage, you’d never have needed the claimed ‘power boost’ anyway.
I just ordered a new motor yesterday – when the salesman drew me towards an electric model I asked him if he’d seen the TV News and whether they’d reported that Hell had frozen over because, until they do, I’ll not be driving any electric milk-float. He got the message – mine’s pure petrol.
I don’t know the first thing about them to be honest. I intend to just sit in and drive. My biggest problem maybe prising Daughter away from the vehicle as she seems to have taken a fancy to it.
You’re lucky to find a book – last year I bought a car (that needed a repair) and the only handbook/manual I could find were ‘online’ – I spent hours doing screenshots so I could look at the paper while I was doing the work (oily hand near a laptop???) Even many of those (mainly youtube) were wrong or left stuff out).
Lots of cheap(ish) parts online too – better than paying garages (unless you know a good one).
Sorry, but it just occured to me that at least people won’t be able to catch you with your nose in a book (at the moment) 🙁
Hope you’re getting so they can let you out soon – you must be missing the manor, your coffee shop (and herself of course)
Whatever happened to the Haynes manuals? That used to be my first purchase after acquiring a new banger. Of course cars are so computerised nowadays they need a degree in electronics just to look under the bonnet.
I’m so happy you feel up to a treat. As soon as you’re up and about it’ll do you a power of good to get down to the coffee shop and make a few journeys.
How is herself getting on, if you don’t mind me asking?
Herself is doing grand in the home where she’s parked for the moment. She went off happily yesterday to a poetry session but was a little taken aback to find it was a pottery session. I’m expecting a lot of new ashtrays.
Don’t you just love it when you buy a book and it comes with a free car?
Good to see that you’re on the mend. 🙂
Plays havoc with the postage though.