Red's Ramblings v.2

I thought it best to do a summary of recent events so as not to have such a backlog of things I wanted to mention that it prevented me posting anything at all.

The holiday went well. We’d opted to go to our friends apartment again. Its in a brilliant location in Arenal D’en Castell on the north coast. A very picturesque horseshoe bay that despite being the ‘quiet’ island had something for everyone including a bar that was open till 6am, although the last two hours weren’t entirely legitimate. I’m past that sort of thing now mainly because I’m on my back at 2am but James, with his sipping action, managed a few all night sessions. His mum was less than pleased on each occasion. I’d imagine that’s the last holiday he goes on with us as a family although he does like to stay near my wallet.

I did do some tweeting while on holiday but did a lot less than expected. I had pre-bought 50MB of data but realised as the iPhones stats rolled on that my previous monitoring of the stats had excluded any wifi usage and my actual use was much higher than I thought. So excluding Google Maps, video Tweeting, excessive photo tweeting meant that by the end of the fortnight my total use stood at 48MB.

Nearing the end of the holiday I did have the next adventure at the back of my mind. Before we left I bought a horsebox that had been listed on eBay. Other than a description and a photo it was a blind purchase of £2000 cash. Not only was there the uncertainty of whether I’d bought a dog it was over 300 miles away in St Ives. The plan was to get back to Manchester Airport, hire a car, get a few hours shuteye and head off to pick up the box dropping the hire car off in Penzance. That all went to plan with the added enjoyment of an aborted landing at Manchester (an experience) and we soon found ourselves minus cash and with a 7.5T Mercedes truck to drive home. It was a baptism of fire but I’m relatively happy to drive anything. The problem was that it just didn’t feel ‘right’ or safe. It was 80 miles on when we found out why. We had just crossed Bodmin Moor in thick fog when the dash started to play up, I lost the rev counter, the engine overheated, I was getting random warning lights and was rapidly losing pressure for the air brakes and steering. I just managed to get it off the A30 and into a carpark (a horse and country supplier no less) when I lost the last traces of steering. Fortunately luck had dealt us a good hand as not only did we have breakdown assistance but the local franchise was 2 minutes up the road and they were with us pretty much immediately. It turned out that the belts to the fan, alternator and compressor had failed due to age. After a trip back to the workshop they failed to find a replacement set and wouldn’t be able to get the parts till the next day so they lent us a car and pointed us in the direction of a B&B. By mid afternoon the next day we were back on the road and I got us home by 7pm. A journey that I don’t fancy repeating, ever.