FML

 Well I've had a week!

Let me start a little tale about my week. Monday drove to to a work location on Lee-on-the-Solent, at Arundel (half way) my car started pulling back, then got ok again. I carried on, by the time I hit the road to Portsmouth my car was really struggling and I could only keep it going in 3rd gear. By the time I was half a mile from the hotel it had totally given up. I was in first gear and it was leaping forward 3 feet at a time. I got to hotel.... just.

I was so stressed by this that my clutch leg was bouncing up and down so hard it was hitting the steering wheel and my hands were visibly shaking.

I got into the hotel, only to discover that I didn't have a booking. I made a decision that if I couldn't get a room there I'd just get a relay home. Fortunately I was able to get a room so I went to get some supper and then literally fell asleep. 

On Tuesday at 04:45 my alarm went off so I could be ready for the annual joy of booking my supermarket Christmas slots. These were going live at 06:00 and I wanted to be ready. I sat on my hotel bed with 3 mobile phones and a laptop deciding which I'd use. In the end I went with the laptop. At 05:55 I logged in and found myself in a queue. Last year I had a 1.5 hour wait time. This year it was only 40 minutes, which actually felt very short.

Christmas supermarket shops booked I cabbed to the office and attended a 7 hour meeting. When I got back to hotel I got the AA out (until I rang I wasn't even sure I had membership). They arrived about 18:00 and at 20:30 said "1.5 hours before you leave tomorrow call the AA to arrange relay". 

 As it had taken them so long the night before I set my alarm for 04:45 again and rang them immediately. Because I wasn't sure how I was getting home or when I'd see my car again. I completely emptied my car. Fortunately I'd taken an enormous suitcase with me because it was still waiting to go in the attic after our Glastonbury trip. So I opened all the zips to expand to maximum size and emptied the varied and considerable contents of my car into it.

AA relay turned up at 08:30. Cab to office for day two of meetings turned up 08:40!!! Car headed for home, I headed for office for another 7 hour meeting. My colleagues were somewhat surprised by the amount of luggage I had with me for 2 days. I had to explain the suitcase was mainly full of emergency rain coats and dog balls.

Work was great and let me book a hire car for the journey home. When it turned up it was the size of my kitchen!!! I normally drive a mini and haven't driven anything bigger for about 10 years. Also my current car is now 17 years old and has literally zero gizmos. Well apart from my heated windscreen, which I love. This car was like mission control.

A patient colleague had to teach me how to get it started. I had a practice in the office car park. I practiced stopping and starting like being in rush hour traffic and then decided to do a maneuover. I then parked at which point I discovered I couldn't work out how to reverse out of the space and so had to go and find my colleague again to teach me how to reverse.

 I headed off in my space age car. Almost immediately I had to do a hill start - the hand break was a switch rather than the old fashioned hand break I'm used to. I had no idea if I could do it. I did - yay for me.

Turns out the person that had used the car previously had the Air Con on. I couldn't work out how to turn it off, eventually this started to mist the windscreen, so I wildly pressed buttons and managed to find something 'like' heating, that sounded like an airplane taking off. So I drove with that going full throttle.

On route I recalled that I needed to add petrol, but wasn't sure what side the petrol flap was on. So I had a plan to drive to Tesco in Shoreham. Park up, find the petrol cap and fill up with petrol there.... All good and very proud...

I headed off from Tesco and suddenly the car wouldn't go faster than 20mph. I drove at 20mph 3 miles from Tesco to Sainsbury's and gpt'd the problem. It was useless. So I decided to drive along the sea front home, because that's a 30mph or 20mph speed limit......

After about 2 further miles at 20mph I noticed a button on the steering wheel with a + I hit it and the car went 21, then I hit it again 22, with much excitement I pressed until it hit 70mph and headed out of town, straight into diversions.

Navigating around the diversions I eventually manged to get back onto the A27 and head home.

Now I know it was cruise control - never had that before!!!!!!!

I woke up on Thursday morning and my brain simply couldn't comprehend that it wasn't the weekend. Still two more days of work to go.

I await the report from the AA to share with the garage that currently has the car. Watch this space. Having spent £1,000 on the car in the last month I'm keen to get a bit of value from that.

Though having been in my kitchen sized car yesterday a bit of me is a keen on that make and model. Though I have no idea how I'd park it. It's a bit of a leap from a mini.

No idea how I'll pay for a new car. But that's a worry for another day.