This post will explain
this previous post.
As it was the summer holidays for the sprogs, Tatas and I decided to get rid of them at relatives and I would take a week off starting at the August Bank Holiday. Son went to my mother's and daughter went to Tatas' sister's. We were meant to drop son off at my mum's the weekend previous but because of
the hand injury I couldn't drive, Tatas still has trouble driving long distances without pain, and so my mum came down and collected son instead. Once my brother had found out that I would be going up on the Bank Holiday weekend he mentioned that the British Superbike round was at
Cadwell Park and so tickets were booked.
Son doing Febreeze advertI came home from work on Friday and daughter had already gone to Tatas' sister's so Tatas and I enjoyed ourselves as you can only do without kids. Yeah, you're right. We got smashed, watched porn and fucked like rabbits; screaming orgasms , monkey sex, the lot.
Saturday morning woke us up with clear and sunny skies; totally at odds with our previously fantastic weather ... for fish. We got our stuff sorted and headed round the world's biggest car park (the M25) where Tatas managed to grab this picture of a steam engine being transported.
Steam engineYou may not think that it's a particularly good picture, but we were travelling faster than the lorry, in the outside lane and it was taken on a phone with a camera delay between pressing the button and the picture being taken. So fuck off.
Having passed some time on the M25 we turned up the A1 where we managed to get stuck in a queue of traffic at a roundabout. As we pulled off the roundabout I looked at the speedo and noticed that the temperature gauge was above normal. In fact the temperature gauge continued to climb quickly and then shot right off the maximum and continued going. Shit!
Unfortunately the section of A1 that we were on, approaching Huntingdon, has no turn offs, or I'd missed them, so I had to nurse the car to a garage just off the A1 on a roundabout. As I stopped the car a cloud of steam erupted from the bonnet. Oh dear.
One call to the nice people at
RAC and we settled down to wait for the breakdown rescue man to turn up. Did I mention that it was warm? By this time it was very warm .... and we were parked directly in the sunlight. As the car turned into an oven we decamped and sat in the minuscule shade provided by a fence.
The breakdown rescue man phoned to check our location as the postcode (zip code for you foreigners) we gave was listed as a grammar school and within 10 minutes he was with us. The RAC main desk phoned me to let us know that the rescue man would be with us just as he pulled up alongside the car. A brief discussion with the rescue man and it was decided that there was nothing he could do so we would have to be taken to our destination on the back of a recovery lorry.
An hour later, we'd now been at the garage for two hours, the recovery lorry turned up. Again, just as he pulled alongside, the RAC phoned to let me know that he would be with us briefly.
Five hours later, and after Tatas threw a fit because a bee was flying round her head in the cab, we were travelling along a single track country lane with the recovery lorry's SATNAV informing us that we had reached our destination. "Sorry to tell you mate", I informed the driver, "but we're at least two miles from our destination." After directing him for another ten minutes we arrived at my brothers and unloaded the car from the lorry.
A three hour journey had ended up taking the best part of seven hours.
After some piss taking from my brother and some dinner we left with my mum to her place to get some well deserved shut eye so that we could return in the morning.
Sunset from bro's houseThe following day, Sunday, we piled into mum's car and travelled to Halfords at Grimsby. No time to walk round the docks, the car required fixing. Having bought new coolant, oil and oil filter we arrived at my brother's yet again to see if the car could be fixed. I poured in some water and coolant and we bled the system as best as possible. I then turned the engine over while my brother stood by the open coolant reservoir ready to put more water in as it emptied. Coolant and water erupted from the reservoir opening like Old Faithful. "I can tell you now that your engine is fucked as I did the same thing to my car a couple of months ago. Your cylinder block is cracked and it's pressurising the cooling system." informed my brother.
Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck!!!
By this time it was getting late and so we had dinner at my brother's then went back to mum's to kip for an early Monday morning start for the British Superbike round at Cadwell Park.
Cadwell Park is situated at the top of a hill in the middle of the Lincolnshire countryside with a crossroads about 200 yards from the entrance. On race day the police change the roads from two way to one way to improve traffic flow. It still takes ages to get in if you are in a car. We were in a car so we were taking some time to get to the track. Mum let us out on Corkwell Hill and Tatas, son and I walked up the hill to the main entrance. Bro and his tribe were to meet us at the main entrance at 8:30 as I had all of our tickets. He text me to let us know he would be arriving about 9:00 as his wife was late leaving work so we stood there and watched the bikes arriving; there were cars arriving too but who cares about them?
Son and me at main entrance
How it looked when we arrived
How it looked ten minutes later9:30 comes, no sign of bro and his tribe. Phone rings.
Bro: "Where are you?"
Me: "Waiting for you at the main entrance. Where are you?"
Bro: "They redirected us round the back entrance so we can't get in the main entrance. Get yourselves in and come over the other side of the track."
Me having been there only once before and sat in the grandstand: "Which side? Opposite the Mountain?"
Bro: "No, walk round the other way. You should see us at the other entrance."
Me: "OK, see you in a bit."
So my tribe enter and start walking round the circuit. There a lot of bikes. All going the same way we are and so progress is slow. About 15 minutes later my phone rings again.
Bro: "Where are you now?"
Me - absolutely clueless: "Walking round the track still. It's a bit busy this side."
Bro: "Do you know where we are?"
Me: "No"
Bro: "Well I can see a big white thing. Might be a video screen."
Me: "I can see a grandstand, it's got lots of orange seats in it. Can you see it?"
Bro: "I can't see a fucking thing apart from this big white thing. Can you see the Suzuki inflatable."
Me - looking round and seeing it on the opposite side of the track to where we've walked. "Yes."
Bro: "Were opposite that with a big white thing in front of us."
Me: "?????????????"
Bro: "Can you see a Renegade flag and a (forgotten which type now) flag?"
Me: "There's fucking flags everywhere!"
Bro: "........."
Me - after scanning everywhere inside the track: "Oh I can see the Renegade flag now."
Bro: "Well we're standing at the entrance behind that."
Me: "Ok I'll make my way there."
Now as I was standing, the Renegade flag was on my left, the entrance I needed was on my right. Where my bro was standing, looking at the track, the flag was directly in front of him. I thought the entrance was to his right and thus directly to my left and behind the flag. Luckily as I walked past the entrance I was looking at the outside of the track perimeter and saw bro frantically waving so I sauntered up to him waving his tickets and said "You waiting for something?". He wasn't impressed.
We sat down and had a great day, bought T-shirts as although it was sunny there is a strong wind that can get up over the hill and so our shorts and T-shirts weren't really adequate for the job. Our lips were turning blue.
Toseland T-shirts
Currently leading the World Superbike Championship and English
Tatas doing her Perry impression.
"Hello Mrs Patterson!"
Bro likes Kiyonari
Currently leading British Superbike Championship and Japanese
Daughter didn't go but still got a T-shirtThe racing was good.We had two Spitfires from the local airfield fly over too.Still had no idea at this point as to how the fuck we were going to get home.
Got back to mum's and she raised the point of how we were going to get home; old mum. So we discussed several options including getting a coach back (no way) and eventually settled on mum lending me the money to get a new car and her car, as she works all afternoon and most of the night, so that I could get around and find one. Text bro to let him know the situation. Text comes back that he's taking the next day off work to drive me around. Happy me as I can get around the local area but have no idea where to look for a car dealer.
Tuesday was spent up until around 1pm looking at various unsuitable cars until we pulled into a dealer with one promising car. I took it on a test drive with son while Tatas stayed in bro's car with bro. It was a good car to drive even though I said I'd never get front wheel drive or an automatic. Arrived back at the dealers and then took Tatas out in it. She drove part of the way back and liked it as she didn't have to change gears so wouldn't aggravate her back.
She also told me that bro had said that it was the best car we'd seen all day and that we wouldn't see another one as good so I'd be a fucking idiot not to buy it.
Thanks bro.
So we bought it.
The new carUnfortunately the car was registered as disabled for tax purposes and so it could only be re-registered at a DVLA tax office, not a post office but a post office can change the class to disabled WTF! The DVLA office was in Lincoln and it was too late to drive there before they shut so it'd have to wait until the following morning. Buggeration.
Fortunately it is a petrol engine so the petrol that we would have used in the old car could be siphoned out and put into the new car. So it was back to bro's to remove the fuel from the old car.
One chopped up length of hosepipe inserted into the fuel filler neck resulted in us discovering that the old car had an anti-siphoning valve. Shit, have to cut the fuel line and empty the tank that way. Except that the fuel wouldn't flow from the cut we'd made at the engine so the line was traced back to the fuel tank. Bro cut the fuel line and we got some fuel flowing into a fuel can.
The fuel stopped after about a half pint. Oh for fuck's sake!!!
Heads under the car for an examination resulted in discovering the fuel filter which was slowing the flow of petrol. Tracing behind found the line from tank to filter which was rather short. A few nuts loosened, on the car you dirty cunts, and the fuel was flowing well. Then slowed. What now?
Following the filler neck resulted in a discovery that the fuel tank went across the whole floor pan of the car and over the drive shaft so we'd only got the fuel out of one side. No problem, we jacked up the car until it was nearly on its side so that the fuel ran to the other side.
Discussion while putting petrol in my tank.
Me: "Bro, come and open this petrol cap. My hand's starting to hurt again and I don't want to fuck it up again."
Bro: "That's what you get for wanking too much."
Me - fed up with hearing the same thing: "How often do you wank by twisting your cock?"
Bro: "Depends how much pain I want."
Me: "And that is how often?"
Bro - muttering, we're good at muttering in our family: "Not that much really."
Me: "How often is not that often?"
Bro: "Never."
Me: "Exactly. Now shut the fuck up about it and open the fucking petrol cap."
We had got about two thirds of a tank in my car and half a tank in bro's car by 10pm when I had to leave to get back to mum's so I left bro with the last of the petrol dripping out of the tank. He managed to get another half can out of it over the space of an hour.
Got up bright and early Wednesday morning so that mum could run me into Lincoln to the DVLA office. Parking was £1 an hour and as we didn't know how long I'd be in the office we got two hours' parking. Went into the office and virtually sat straight down.
Me: "Hello, I've bought this car and I need to change the taxation class."
Jobsworth: "You haven't got your insurance documents."
Me: "Yes, if you look at my address, that one there, you will see that I am quite far from home and so my insurance documents will be arriving there."
Jobsworth: "Can't tax it without the insurance documents."
Me: "Yes but the insurance documents will be sent to my home address and my car broke down so I had to buy this car to get home and without getting home I won't be able to get my insurance documents."
Jobsworth: "Can't tax it without the insurance documents. Do you want me to get my supervisor?"
Me - gently simmering: "Yes."
Jobsworth's supervisor: "Hello sir. Unfortunately you cannot tax this car without insurance documents."
Me - thinking on my feet: "What's your fax number? I can get them faxed to you."
Jobsworth's supervisor: "We're not allowed to do that sir."
Me - getting annoyed: "Well how about if they e-mail scans of them to you?"
Jobsworth's supervisor: "We cannot accept e-mails or scans sir because of the amount of fraud we've encountered in the past sir."
Me - incredulous and very annoyed: "Well that's funny because I'm a computer programmer and I know for a fact that electronic transmissions such as emails are legally binding." (I know this because I wrote the system which was used to design and build the Bluewater shopping centre - mall for you foreigners)
Jobsworth's supervisor: "Sorry."
Me: "So if I can't get home to show you the insurance documents and you won't accept any valid form of proof how the hell am I supposed to get this car taxed so that I can get home and get the insurance documents to prove that I'm insured to get the car taxed?"
Jobsworth's supervisor: "I'm sorry sir but that's not my problem."
Me - after gathering all the paper work and storming out the office: "For fuck's sake you useless fucking bastards! What a fucking waste of time!"
All of this took 10 minutes but to get to Lincoln from my mum's it's roughly a 40 minute drive. The local post office from my mum's is a ten minute walk.
Me: "What time does the post arrive at your place?"
Mum: "About 7:30 but the latest is about 8:00."
One phone call to my insurance company and I get copies of my insurance documents sent to my mum's. Did I mention that we were expecting family Wednesday night? No? They had to be phoned and notified that we wouldn't be there but we should be there Thursday night. We were expecting to be home Tuesday night you see.
Thursday morning, up with the lark sat waiting for the post.
7:30 comes, no post. Eat breakfast.
8:00 comes, no post. Have cup of tea and a cigarette. I'd say fag but I know how you lot would twist it to the other meaning with a lot of nudge, nudge, wink, wink, eh, eh's.
8:30 no post.
9:00 no post. Tatas suggests the son, her and I get a bus and go somewhere. I suggest just lazing around as I'd pretty much not stopped.
9:30 no post. Another cuppa and ciggie.
10:00 joy of joys the post turns up.
By this time mum wouldn't have time to drop me off in Lincoln to get the car taxed so I decide that, as the car is technically still registered to the previous owner and is thus technically still classed as disabled tax and therefore technically it's not illegal to drive it untaxed, driving the car to Lincoln ourselves is ok so we leave. We arrive in Lincoln, get the car taxed and drive home in three hours.
Thursday night the family arrived and we had a great time. They're both from Wales so had left at the same time as us and, after stopping off for breakfast, arrived about an hour after we did. Dinner was cooked and the Welsh wife learned how to engrave glass under Tatas' tutelage.
Friday morning all of us got up and we all left for Tatas' mum's in Wiltshire to prepare for Tatas' brother-in-law's 50th surprise birthday party. The best bit about the journey? Tatas drove for the first time in 4 years!!!
Birthday food was prepared and the party was great. So great that Tatas' brother-in-law passed out. Silly, silly, silly. Everyone knows you don't pass out at parties.
Ten green bottles ...
hanging on a brother-in-law
and his headShould've warned you that it was a long post.
Labels: bank holiday, British Superbike, Cadwell Park, car trouble
