Basil, Books, Birthday Shenanigans, and Bury in Bloom!

It has been a long, busy week – do I ever have any other kind – I hear you mutter, and the answer is no, I probably don’t. It was the first week of my two-week break from work and is the first time I’ve taken a fortnight off in at least twenty years. My reasons for doing so this time are because it was my birthday this week and I traditionally always take a week’s holiday over my birthday, and then, because I was booked to do a book fair today in St. Albans, I also booked the following week off so I wouldn’t be rushing back to work on Monday after a very long day.

But, of course, Covid came along. All my book fairs and conventions that I had booked to do this year have been postponed to next year, so that left me with a two-week holiday. Brilliant, you’re probably thinking, so why not make a start on that new book you’ve been promising us? Well, I really did plan to, but life took a turn this week and presented me with its usual long list of demands that I had to fulfil before I could even think about sitting down at my laptop.

As many of you know, I drive a really, old car. A wonderful old banger of a Nissan Micra called Basil. Now, Basil barely scraped through his MOT last October, with an advisory note that he would not pass this year unless the rust on his bodywork and underneath was attended to. Since then, I’ve watched the rust spread at an alarming rate and knew I had to get it fixed or else I would have no car come October.

The problem is I need my car all the time for work and I knew fixing the rust problem was going to take them quite some time, plus it was going to be expensive. Then Covid hit, we all went into lockdown, and my car sat on the side of the road, rusting quietly away to itself, and barely being driven at all. I mean, I put £40 of petrol in at the beginning of March and didn’t put anymore in until the end of June!

During lockdown, like many people I took advantage of the mortgage holiday that most mortgage providers were offering, so because I wasn’t making any mortgage payments – along with not spending money on things like petrol, takeaways, entertainment, and clothes shopping – it meant that I had a few pennies surplus in my savings account. Not a huge amount, but enough I felt to get Basil fixed. Add to that the fact I was going to be off work for two weeks with no real need of a car, and it seemed the perfect opportunity to get Basil into the garage and get him sorted.

So, an appointment was made for him to be assessed and a quote prepared at 8am on Monday morning. I know, first day of my holiday and I had to be out of the house by 7:45am, I must be mad! Anyway, I drove him to the garage and had a quick chat with the mechanic. They have been dealing with all my cars for at least twenty years, so I was completely honest with him. I need this car to get me through another two years, I said. Just two more years. Then, a tiny pension policy will mature, and I will get enough money to buy myself a nice new car. But I must have these two years, as I can’t afford to buy a new car now.

He told me he would have a look and would call my mobile when he finished, probably in about an hour’s time. So, I wandered back up into town looking for somewhere to get a coffee and a bit of breakfast, as there hadn’t been time before leaving the house. It was still only just gone eight so nowhere was open, then I came across a Café Nero I had forgotten was there and was able to buy a nice cup of coffee and a Danish pastry to takeaway. Then I wandered back down to the Abbey Gardens to have my breakfast. Regular readers of my blogs will know that this is the beautiful park built around the ruins of a 12^th century abbey that was once the largest in England.

I probably hadn’t been in the park since last year, and I wondered if there had been any changes, but it was as peaceful and as beautiful as ever. It was a gorgeous morning, there was hardly anyone around and those people who were out and about were keeping their distance from each other. I easily found a bench with a beautiful view of the cathedral and settled down to eat my pastry – much to the interest of the tame squirrels who live in the park – who frolicked about my feet begging for crumbs.

I’d had the foresight to take my kindle with me, so was able to get in almost at hour’s guilt-free reading before my mobile rang and it was the mechanic – “can you come back in? We need to talk!”

He sounded very serious. In my head I had fixed the figure of £500, in that I had a feeling this was the amount he was going to quote me to keep Basil on the road for the two years I needed. I have no idea where that figure came from, but it was in my head as I walked back to the garage.

When I got there, he looked at me sorrowfully and sucked all the air in over his teeth, the way mechanics do when they’ve got bad news for you.

Him: It won’t last another two years, I’m sorry, but it just won’t.

Me: Oh, really? Not even if we do some work on it?

Him: Well, we could sort it out, but it’s going to cost a lot of money.

Me: How much?

Him: A lot.

Me: Yes, but how much is a lot?

Him: I’m not sure, a lot.

Me: Worst case scenario?

Him: About £500.

Me: ….

Him: ….

Me: Okay, let me ask you a question. In your professional opinion, would I be able to buy another car for under £500 that has an engine in the condition of mine? With only 41,000 miles on the clock like that one? And one that has a known history of reliability?

Him: Well, no, you couldn’t.

Me: So, what choice do I have? The work has to be done.

Him: I suppose so, when you put it like that.

Me: If I buy a car for under £500 will I just be paying for somebody else’s problems?

Him: Yes, you would.

Me: And you’ve done all the work on this car since I bought it in 2013 so you know how much it’s cost me to date.

Him: Hardly anything.

Me: So, add this £500 onto what I’ve spent already and then spread it over the ten years I will have the car. Does it make it a cheap and cost-effective drive?

Him: Yes, well, when you look at it that way…

Me: There’s no other way I can look at it.

Him: Right, the MOT isn’t until October so when do you want to book it in?

Me: Now. I’ve got two weeks off work, this is my last holiday until December, so you might as well do it now.

Him: Oh, okay, leave the keys then and we’ll give you a call when it’s done.

So, I walked home, leaving poor Basil in the garage to get his rusty bottom fixed, and hoping that after spending so much money on him he will go the distance and last the next two years. Just two more years, my trusty steed, and then you can rest in peace.

Once home, I swept and tidied up my front steps and pathway as there was rumour that the Bury in Bloom judges would be passing down our road sometime soon, and I wanted everything to be perfect. I fed and watered the plants to perk them up and made sure there were no cobwebs anywhere.

Then I went out into the garden to pick some cherries and sweep up all the split ones that the birds had dropped everywhere. I had only been out the back about ten minutes when Miss F came running out in great excitement – a certificate of merit had been pushed through our door! It’s only the second one I’ve ever received, and I’m cuffed to bits with it.

Along with a few other chores and cooking dinner, that was more or less Monday finished with. Tuesday, I had the house to clean, more cherries to pick, long overdue correspondence to respond to, bills to pay, and laundry to do, and that was day two of my holiday.

Wednesday, another early start, my old boss called round at 8:30am with a card and a bottle of wine for my birthday and we sat in the garden for over an hour chatting. I worked for him for over thirty-four years in one capacity or another but hadn’t seen him since he retired in January of this year and I left his employ for good, so it was nice to catch up.

He left, and one of my best friend’s turned up. Again, we sat in the garden and drank a bottle of prosecco. I’ve seen her once since lockdown eased – we sat in the garden that time as well – and again the weather was horrible, growing colder and colder as we shivered into our cardigans and clutched our champagne flutes.

We had decided to risk going out for lunch so wandered into town to Edmundos Lounge Bar. We had to wait for a server to escort us to a suitably sanitised table with single use menus. The tables were spaced 2ms apart and the servers wore gloves when bringing us our food. I felt safe there, but also very odd. It was the first time I’d been out to eat since the beginning of the year, and I couldn’t help feeling I was doing something wrong. But it was nice to eat a meal I hadn’t had to cook myself.

Thursday, day four of my holiday, and the paperback proof copies of the three Blackwood series books which I’m hoping to publish next week, turned up. I sat down and had one last critical go through them, and as I expected, there were a couple of silly, minor things that leapt out at me. Probably no one else would even notice them, but I know they’re there, so they had to be corrected.

I had a facetime meeting scheduled that morning with another best friend, the lovely Becky Wright. A fellow local author, we have been friends for over thirteen years, and it was going to be her birthday the day after mine. Our facetime chat was to watch each other open our presents to each other, and to have a professional consultation about the books. Along with her husband, Becky runs Platform House Publishing which offers printing and publishing services to indie authors. They had made the covers for me, so she was keen to get a look at them and assess whether any tweaks needed to be made.

We finally finished chatting at lunchtime, then I had just under four hours to go through the three books and make all the amendments and send them off to Becky, before my parents turned up to celebrate my birthday with a meal delivered from a nearby pub that does nice food. We had more prosecco and wine, I opened my presents, and we chatted. It was the first time my parents had been in my house since the start of lockdown. They are in our bubble so are allowed in, although I must admit to finding all the new rules about what you can and can’t do a bit confusing.

I have been forced back to work to mingle in close proximity with four work colleagues and deal with hundreds of germ-ridden strangers, yet one of my closest friends isn’t allowed in my house – but I can go and sit in a restaurant with her and be inches apart at a small table! And then there’s the new legislation that from the 24^th July no one will be allowed into a shop without a mask on, yet you can sit in a restaurant and eat food without one on. You can go and get a facial, a tattoo, or a piercing, but you can’t go to your dentist and good luck getting a doctor’s appointment.

There’s a real sense of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, about the whole mask situation. And enforcing the wearing of masks four months into a pandemic is rather like taking condoms to a baby shower – too little, too late! Why weren’t masks enforced from the word go? If they have now decided that they are essential, why weren’t we all wearing them every time we left the house all through lockdown? What would the death rate be at now if there had been simple, tough, no arguing with rules right from the word go? I am worried about what the situation will be like at work when I return after my break. If all customers are being forced to wear masks for the duration of their time in our shop, then I don’t think that’s going to be particularly good for business.

The fact is that people hate wearing them. They are hot, itchy, and uncomfortable. If you wear glasses, then they steam them up. If you’re a woman, then they wipe all your make-up off leaving you red-faced and shiny underneath. And if, like me, you suffer from hayfever or asthma, they make it very difficult to breath and cause you to constantly hack up with a dry cough that scares everyone around you. That’s not very conducive to wanting to wear a mask for long and will maybe deter people from shopping in stores altogether. Good news for online shopping, a further kick in the nuts for the high street.

I’m also worried that I’ll be expected to wear a mask all day as well. I hate wearing them for all of the above reasons and also because when you work in sales, you rely so much on customers being able to see your face and your smile, to be reassured by your facial expressions and trust your words. It’s really hard to connect with someone when you’re wearing a mask. We do have visors at work, so maybe I could wear one of those instead. They’re annoying and leave me with a red angry welt across my forehead, but at least I can breathe in them, people can see my face, and, most importantly, they don’t make me cough.

Oh well, I have another week in which I don’t have to worry about it, and who knows, maybe things will have changed again by the time I go back!

I am hopeful of being able to finally publish the first three books in the Blackwood series next week. It was planned for Tuesday, but an unforeseen tiny hitch in getting the covers tweaked means it will probably be more likely Wednesday now. It’s fine, so long as they’re launched before I go back to work, I’ll be happy.

I’ve almost finished editing The Book of Eve now as well. A couple of hours work on it today and then it will be off out for beta reading and we’ll be on the final stage of having that ready for republication the moment I receive back copyright, which should be the end of July or the beginning of August at the latest. And then I will be completely up to date. All my books will be as perfect as I can make them, and it will be time to move on with fresh new stories. It’s been a long, two year project, and now the end is in sight I can look back and say it was worth it, even though two years of non-stop editing, formatting, and cover designing did at times reduce me to despair that it would never end.

Friday was my actual birthday, and following all the rush and busyness of the week so far, it was nice to simply kick back, relax, and spend the day eating and watching films with Miss F. As it was my birthday, everything was my choice, so I chose to watch “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café” and “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” – two films I watched back in the nineties and remember enjoying, although I hadn’t seen them since.

It was wonderful seeing Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy act together in the first film, I love Jessica Tandy, she was one of those actresses who seemed to be permanently old. I mean, did she even act as a young woman? Or did she not get into acting until she was white haired with dignified wrinkles? The Ya-Ya sisterhood was also good fun, and I’d forgotten it was one of Sandra Bullock’s very early films, and that the marvellous Maggie Smith was in it.

Miss F gave me her presents, which were thoughtful and rather wonderful. She knows I’ve always wanted a clicky-clacky keyboard so she bought me a Bluetooth one with a wireless mouse which links to my laptop so I have a keyboard with proper chunky keys that go down when you press them and actually make a noise like a typewriter.

She also bought me a chart of what are considered the 100 most influential books. The idea is you scratch away the circle of the books that you’ve read. I would argue with some of the choices, but it did surprise me how many of the books on there I’d never even heard of, let alone read. She also bought me a proper writer’s mug with the opening lines of dozens of books all over it, a pair of slate coasters bearing the Game of Thrones logo and the words “Mother of Wine”, and a big box from Whittards containing an assortment of nine different coffees from around the world. A thing of beauty, it will keep me in coffee until the next millennium, and I have a sneaking suspicion probably cost more than all my other gifts from her put together.

I’d like to take this opportunity as well to thank everyone on social media for all the birthday wishes and messages, the cards, and even the presents they sent. Thank you. I was incredibly touched at the thoughtfulness. I did try to respond individually to each and every message, but when the numbers reached hundreds, I realised it was a task with no end.

Saturday, a quiet day. I’m writing my blog, thankful for once I have quite a lot to tell you. I won’t lie, some weeks I do struggle to have anything fresh to talk about, and I wonder just how much I can ramble on about my quiet little life before you all get bored with me and go and read the blogs of people who do extreme sports, or travel the world…

More cherries have ripened on the tree, so later today I’ll put on old clothes and go out there to pick some more. So far, I’ve taken 26lb off the tree, which isn’t actually a lot compared to most years, but I haven’t really had the time to seriously harvest the tree and climb to reach the highest fruit laden branches. The birds have been stuffing their little beaks full as well, then pooping purple splatters all over the garden, or worse, all over my washing! Red stains on your white bed sheets – so not what you want!

I really want to make a start writing my new book during my holiday, but time is running out. What with all the normal household and garden chores, plus more birthday shenanigans next Monday, then launching three books simultaneously and all that entails, time will be scarce. The rest of today is taken up with chores, but maybe tomorrow I can shut myself away somewhere with my new keyboard and let the story that has been buzzing around my head for two years, finally have a voice. At least with this new keyboard, Miss F will be able to hear if I am actually writing, or just staring dumbly at a blank screen.

So, that’s it for this week. I hope wherever you are you are safe and well, and I look forward to chatting with you next Sunday. In the meantime, look out for the launch of “Lost & Found”, “Fixtures & Fittings”, and “Sugar & Spice” next week. To celebrate their launch, all three books will be available at special publication sale prices, and there will even be money off the paperback versions as well as the eBooks! So why not treat yourself to all three.

Take care.

Julia Blake

Wheels on Fire!

This week I want to talk about the cars I’ve owned over the years. Now, don’t get me wrong, I can look at a nice car and go “mmm” just as much as the next person, but pay out three years wages to buy a status symbol car? Nope. Never. Even if I had that kind of cash lying around, I doubt very much, I’d ever waste it on what is basically just a mode of transport, one step up the evolutionary ladder from a pony and cart. And I don’t understand those who do. It’s a car, get over yourself, and telling me straight away what type of car you drive and what horsepower it is, well, to quote Shania Twain – “That Don’t Impress Me Much”.

Of course, cars need to be a comfortable ride, reliable, safe and economical, but you can get all of those things without paying out a small fortune, and as for those people who get caught in the sticky web of finance deals and pay hundreds of pounds every month just to have the latest version – well, a fool and his money are soon parted.

Over the years I have owned precisely six cars, which considering I’ve been driving since I was 19 is not bad. It took me a while to pass my driving test, four attempts to be honest, and that wasn’t because I found it hard to learn, but because I fell apart in the test. Quaking with nerves, I’d do stupid things that would have my lovely driving instructor shaking his head with disbelief when I got back clutching yet another fail notification. Finally, on the fourth attempt, I took the test with a raging temperature, a throat that felt like sandpaper and a head that was threatening to explode. I didn’t care if I passed or failed, I just wanted to get it over and done with so I could go back to bed. Of course, taking the pressure of myself meant I passed with flying colours.

My first ever car was a Ford Escort Mk1 1300 four door saloon in metallic bronze. Built like a tank, it was in immaculate condition and had hardly any mileage on the clock despite being reasonably old. The engine was as clean as a whistle, as was the paintwork, and I cut my teeth in that car. It cost £600 which back in the 1980’s was a lot of money for such an old car. My dad bought it because of its pristine condition, low mileage and because he knew its provenance. The deal was, my parents would have use of it while I was learning to drive. During that time, I would make monthly payments to pay off £300 of its cost. Once I’d passed my test, the car would become mine completely. As it took me almost two years to pass my test, my parents had a second car for that long for only £300, so a pretty good deal for everyone.

It was a clunky though sturdy car, with a face only a mother could love. There was no power assisted steering, if you took it over sixty miles per hour the force threatened to shake your arms from your sockets, and there were no rear seat belts. But I loved that car. It didn’t matter that I felt like I’d done an aerobic workout on my arms every time I drove it, it offered me freedom and independence. Living out in a small village with an irregular bus service, having my own transport was gold.

That car went everywhere, I drove it to Kent on holiday and up to Hull to visit my boyfriend’s family, and it took it all in its stride. Maybe it wasn’t the quickest mode of transport in the world, but it was certainly the most reliable and the most economic.

As it was brown and usually full of crap, my friends christened my car the Shed and teased me about its old-fashioned appearance, and the fact it was so noisy when travelling at speed the radio had to be cranked up to full blast to hear it. It became habit that the passenger would automatically turn the volume down as we slowed down, in order to save our eardrums from being shattered when the engine noise suddenly dropped, and the full force of the music would hit us. Once, the rear door locks broke and the doors wouldn’t open, so my friends had to climb over the front seats to get in, clutching mini skirts to thighs and shrieking with laughter – much to the interest of my elderly neighbour who I suspect had to have a little lie down afterwards to recover from the sight.

But all good things come to an end, that little car last me from 1985 to 1997. When I got married my husband used it to get to and from work, and although I could never prove it, I think he thrashed it a little too hard and the engine blew. And that was the end of the Shed.

After the Shed, my husband decided he wanted a status symbol car, something more in keeping with the ace guy he thought he was, and he bought himself some kind of Ford turbo thing – please don’t expect any more details from me, other than it was silver and low and sleek and growled like a bear on heat when you stepped on the accelerator. Totally impractical for town – we have a lot of speed bumps around here and having to baby your car over them in case you rip your undercarriage off is a complete pain – and no good for country lanes, I hated this car with a passion.

Technically, it was supposed to be my car as well. I had paid for half of it after all, but my husband snipped and criticised me the whole time I was driving it and, in the end, made me so nervous about it that I flatly refused to drive it anymore. We had the beast for about nine months and then my husband’s parents offered us a lovely Ford Mondeo as my father-in-law was getting something smaller and easier for him to handle.

Reluctantly, my husband agreed it was too good an offer to turn down, especially as we were thinking of starting a family and the beast was a complete no-no as far as car seats and fitting a buggy in the boot were concerned. So, the beast was sold, and the nice sensible Ford Mondeo joined the family.

I didn’t mind the Mondeo. It was comfortable and practical, a nice smooth ride which behaved itself very well over the next couple of years, including managing two holidays in Cornwall with lots of driving about on very twisty steep roads. However, I always felt it was a little too big for the road we live on. There’s residential parking up our street and spaces are extremely limited and purely on a “first come, first served” basis. On numerous occasions we’d try our hardest to get into the last space available, before having to give up and watch in seething frustration as our neighbour’s mini side stepped into it.

Time ticked by, I had Miss F in 2003 and the Mondeo was the perfect family car, roomy enough to fit all the paraphernalia one small baby seems to need just to be taken seven miles down the road to visit her grandparents. Then my marriage fell apart and I was left with a one-year old baby and a mountain of debts.

My ex-husband was struggling to pay any child maintenance and I accepted the Mondeo in lieu of two months maintenance, despite the fact it had been a gift to us both, was now in dire need of repairs and that he’d also left with me a pile of other debts. This was in September 2004. The following January I was driving Miss F home from a birthday party in a nearby town when the car suddenly slowed to ten miles an hour on the motorway. Nothing I did would convince it to go any faster, so I limped home with my foot flat on the floor and other cars speeding past me on the motorway honking their annoyance. I got home and phoned my mechanic, who told me it sounded like the clutch, and that once the clutch goes in an automatic that was it, the car was done for.

So, I went to bed that night feeling a bit grim. I couldn’t afford a new car, and as it was natural wear and tear, I wouldn’t be able to claim on the insurance. In the middle of the night, I was awoken by the sound of a car roaring at speed down our road and then a very loud crunch, like metal on metal, before the car revved up and roared off into the night. Next morning, when I went to get my daughter’s pushchair from the boot of the car, I discovered the whole driver’s side had been removed from boot to bonnet – that must have been the sound I heard in the night. I telephoned the insurance company, who sent an inspector and wrote the car off on the spot. I didn’t get much in the way of insurance – it was an old car after all – but anything was better than the nothing I was expecting.

My next car was a dear little Vauxhall Astra hatchback in a sort of metallic peachy pink bronze colour. I bought that early in 2004 and it was a good and faithful workhorse for us. It was reliable, sturdy, nippy and very cost effective. Requiring hardly any repairs, it sailed from MOT to MOT costing me very little in between. I have very fond memories of that car, although its demise has gone down in family history as being the most spectacular car exit ever.

It was early one Monday morning in 2012. I was rudely awoken at 5am by the sound of someone pounding frantically on my front door. Pulling on my dressing gown, I stomped irritably downstairs and threw open the front door to find my neighbour from across the street standing there clad only in a flimsy nightie. I blinked at her in surprise. Not what I’d been expecting, I must say, and she grabbed my arm yelling at me to look at my car!

I looked at my car. My car was on fire! Yellow flames were licking at its insides and fire was oozing out of the bonnet. For a moment, my neighbour and I had a completely girlie moment on the step, where we just shrieked and did a little panicky dance. Then I pulled myself together and rushed to phone the fire brigade. Now, I’ve never had to call an emergency service before and must admit, despite the severity of the circumstances, it was very exciting but a bit daunting and the conversation with the operator went a bit like this.

“What is the nature of the emergency?”

“Fire! There’s a fire!”

“Where is the fire please?”

“In my car.”

Sigh. “Where is your car please?”

“Outside my house!”

Eventually, I calmed down enough to give them my address which is literally five minutes around the corner from the fire station. By this point, fireballs were ballooning inside the car and we could feel the heat from it. My neighbour ran to get something more covering on as lights began to snap on up and down the street and people were coming out to see what was happening.

My lodger sleeps in the basement and his window looks out onto the street, so I was concerned about smoke and fumes going into his room and ran to bang on his door. Very excited, he of course grabbed his phone and started posting updates to his Facebook page. By now the fire engine had arrived and lots of chunky men in fire breathing apparatus were tackling the blaze which was pretty impressive and very scary.

I ran to get Miss F up and we all huddled on the front step to watch, united with the rest of the street in excitement. Finally, it was over, and the fire was out. My poor car was a smoldering blackened wreck and the smell of acrid smoke and burning plastic was horrendous, making the whole house reek for days afterwards.

Of course, it was a write off, there was nothing left to salvage from the car and the insurance company paid me a few pennies. Again, it was an old car and unfortunately the way insurance works is they pay you what the car is worth, not what it will cost to replace it.

So, there I was, car less again. I managed a few weeks without one and wondered if we could get by permanently relying on walking and public transport. After all, we lived in the middle of town, and both Miss F’s school and my work were within walking distance. But I quickly discovered it’s just too inconvenient not having a car. The whole having to have my shopping delivered or pay out for a taxi, not being able to visit family and friends when we wanted to and never being able to go anywhere on the spur of the moment. Nope, we needed a car, but I hadn’t got much money – the insurance pay-out had only been a few hundred and was not enough to buy anything reliable.

Then my parents stepped in with a small cash gift to my brother and I, and I used mine to buy a new car. I bought it off eBay, and it seemed like a good deal, but I really wouldn’t recommend you do it that way unless you are a trained mechanic or have access to one. The car was a bright red Citroen C3 which looked beautiful but was an absolute bitch to drive. It rattled alarmingly and every time we hit a bump in the road, things would shake and move around us. It felt like I was driving a tin can and if I went at any speed, I imagined the car was running away with me. It cornered like a cow, was a pig to park and was so delicate that if the temperature overnight dropped to the point where a light cardigan was needed, the car would refuse to start in the morning.

It was considered a higher performance car, so my insurance premiums doubled, it ate petrol like it was going out of fashion, and there was a funny smell in it that no amount of air fresh seemed able to get rid of. I stuck it for six months before deciding enough was enough, it had to go.

I traded it in through a local second-hand car company who I must admit were brilliant and very fair with me. Given all its faults I didn’t think I’d get much for it and was thrilled and delighted when I saw what they offered me. A 1996 Nissan Micra automatic in British racing green. Absolutely immaculate inside and out, and with only 26,000 miles on the clock, it had had only one owner, the anecdotal little old lady, and it had been kept in a garage all its life and serviced every two thousand miles. It was a gem. Lovely upholstery, it smelt nice and handled beautifully. A comfortable, sturdy and reliable little car that we took to right from day one. My daughter christened it Basil because of its colour, and for the past seven years it has served us faithfully.

Most years it sails through the MOT with minimal repair work necessary, but last time I was advised it needed about £150 worth of welding underneath to ensure it would pass the following year. I really did mean to get it done, I honestly did, but the year has flown by and I somehow never got round to it, and suddenly it was the beginning of October and my MOT was due at the end of the month and I still hadn’t got it done. Deciding I really needed to get it booked in, I found the folder where I keep all the car details and pulled out last year’s MOT paperwork, only to find my memory had let me down as usual. Far from being due the end of October, it had been due the day before! Panicked, I called my garage to see what they could do.

They could fit the car in for a MOT that afternoon, but there certainly wasn’t time to carry out any welding. But what about if it failed, which it probably would do, given their insistence last year it would without the welding. Well, then I would have ten days to affect the necessary work and submit it again for the MOT. Oh, right, well can I still drive the car in those ten days. No, it would have to be off the road. Now I was really panicking. Not only do I now need my car to get to work, I also had to get Miss F to her work placement nearly a 40-minute drive away. But there was no time to do anything else, so I took Basil to the garage and left him there, convinced when they called it would be to tell me the patient was terminal.

It was a long hour before they called with amazing news. Basil, bless his little spark plugs, had pulled through for us and sailed through the MOT needing nothing more than a new bulb. But what about the welding I asked? Well, they replied, he still needs it but because you haven’t done many miles it hasn’t deteriorated to the point where it has to be done. Maybe by next year though… yeah, well, next year is a long way away, a lot can happen between now and then.

You can imagine how relieved I was that instead of £150+ bill, it ended up only costing me £58 for another year’s worth of motoring. Thank you, Basil, I may even give you a wash to say thank you.

Thank you for joining me again this week, and I hope you’ve enjoyed my trip down automobile memory lane.

All the best.

Julia Blake