I don’t meant to be pedantic in any way, but when “they” say that good things happen in threes, I’ve also heard “them” say that bad things happen in threes. But I must make the point that many things happen during the course of a day, a week and many other timescales. Thing is that lots of things happen at all sorts of times, not in threes, not in 5ives or 2wos but all the time, sometimes even in 7evens. Its basically as load of bollocks for an opportunity to continue the conversation with a kind of “I told you so” air of knowing. It serves no purpose but to make the respondent of the statement of utter nonsense say “yeah, I guess so”. What I’m trying to convince people is to ignore the person who says that and cut them out of your life forever. It’s just chance and wether it be 3hree, 4our or 8ight doesn’t matter, what would we have said if we hadn’t learnt to count? Mmm? That is of course a far too deep a question and one i’m not qualified to answer, but have you noticed how those type of questions always come in ones?

Today I had 4 notable car related happenings or 5 if you count the taxi, which was exciting as I haven’t been in a taxi for months.

1. I’m driving down a really steep, and very narrow lane in wet Herefordshire the sun is out and  long shadows are cast over the lane disguising the surface and hiding the rough edges of the road, the water sparkles as it runs down the tarmac occasionally catching the dappled sunlight shining through the branches of the hedgerows. I met a van and another behind that first van; we both stopped, I could see a gateway 20 metres back for him and as I looked in my mirror could only see an awful line of reversal, of which I’m not great, used to be but the camera on the back of my car has made me lazy and so using the mirror is a real chore, like answering a riddle from 3-2-1 in the 70’s and 80’s. What the fuck was all that about? So we both gesticulated and acted exasperated each of us willing the other to back down. A Mexican Stand off, or Shobden in this case. There is a massive amount of water in Herefordshire ate the moment, too much for the rivers to keep within their channels, and so its spread all over the fields, roads, everything, in fact just fields and roads, thats all there was. Anyway I won and he reversed the short distance up the hill and straight into a bank, and big clump of mud, he got stuck and the wheels were spinning with no traction. I got out, went and apologised and took some branches to put under the wheel and heaved my shoulder into the front of the Transit. The bloke behind was just sat in his van on his phone, so I shot him a disapproving glance, a kind of, “do you want to help out” type of look, then a farmer in a Landrover arrived and we both gave the other van man a disapproving look. Still playing fucking Pokemon probably, the tool. 2 of us budged the van and we then went about our business with a little chat about flooded roads and the best way to Presteigne which I immediately forgot. We all love to give directions but no one in the history of receiving directions can ever remember past the first line. God its all so dull.
2. 3 miles later and i’ve driven through increasingly high flooded roads, taking the approach to drive really fast and really slow and riding the clutch to prevent the car stalling. But then I came across a mother of a flood, a give way sign about 2 feet deep and decided i’d best go back through all the floods again and try another way, which thankfully was flood free.
3. I got to Presteigne to the industrial estate where I had to be, did my job and noticed a flat tyre, well nearly flat so I went back to the garage I filled up with Diesel at (forgot that bit, see loads of stuff happens to me) and asked them to fill up the tyre with air which when the machine stopped buzzing gave off a slow but fairly audible fffff sound. Masked Garage man sent me to a tyre place back on the industrial estate i’d just visited and so I found myself chatting to a nice chap who went about fixing my tyre. I watched and chatted about “Other punctures I’ve had”, which will be the title of my bestseller a racy erotic novel, and let me tell you watching a professional fix, not replace, a tyre is truly fascinating when we are in lock down and all the shops and pubs are shut otherwise I would have been in the Royal Oak, but so fascinated was I thew I asked to keep the offending article which caused me so much grief and excitement a couple of hours before lunch and after paying I was praising the tyre shop and had the repaired on a rubber pedestal made of tyres; michelin and pirelli (rRestaurants and Dr S’s calendar if you must know) I went as far as to lionise the bloke and told them I would put a review on Trip advisor. Trip advisor FFS! The rusty drill bit shown above, cropped my hand so as you techno thieves don’t steal my fingerprints and do a bank job.
4. I went about further work type stuff further into Wales and saw this: The surviving members of Chic and Shalamar live there and hold regular bashes at the village hall, I saw the glitter ball through the cracked reinforced glass window.

5.  About 3 hours after bombing and crawling through the flooded puddles and roads of Pastoral Herefordshire, (remember them?) I found the car really struggling to get up a hill in the middle of snow covered large hills, the road was steep, but no one was around so I moved closed to the windscreen and leaned over the steering wheel willing the blue workhorse on so I could summit and then free wheel down to New Radnor which was near to a main road and so probably a shop to buy some crisps. I cruised down hill like a maniac and pulled up on the edge of the village next to the church and opposite a grey pebbledash bungalow, curtains twitched and i set about sorting recovery out. 2 bloody hours I was going to have to wait, because of the weather and covid and everything. Christ we’ve all got so used to blaming stuff on Covid i’m not sure how anything will get done when its all over. So I checked google and found the shop and set off the 5 minute walk to get there. Shut, the fuckers have a 3 hour lunch break. 12-3pm! Why do they need a siesta, i needed a drink much more than they needed a bloody nap and they advertised piping hot coffee, well this wouldn’t do and I needed a piss and there was no where near to go and the bungalow person kept sneaking a cheeky peep. The rest of the wait was pretty uneventful but I did speak to M about roads, houses and addresses for a while when the recovery lorry came. He didn’t try to fix it, just put it on the back of his truck and told me that I couldn’t come in the cab with him, covid, and so the AA had ordered me a taxi which I could track and was about an hour away. So John, the recovery man said I could sit in my car onto of the truck and keep warm; the bungalow person was nearly having kittens by now and must have called all his mates because folk kept walking past looking and smiling at me when I met their gaze. It was like a Brontosaurus had landed in New Radnor. 

6. The taxi arrived, a man in an Audi A6 (he corrected me, quite forcefully I thought, when I asked is this an A3). And we got home with only one u-turn to avoid puddles, the wuss. Maybe he wasn’t sure what the taxi protocol was for a broken down taxi driver with passenger. Nor do I and I don’t care. 

So folks, 6 things, car related, I could have mentioned how I got a hand written receipt for petrol which now means I need to fill in an additional hard to find form when I am filling out my expenses, and I have to claim for my tyre repair with another elusive form when I do my expenses. The fun never stops here. Tomorrow I doubt there will be any breakdowns but I will probably have to sit in some Honda garage while some one sucks air through their teeth and tells me this will cost a fair bit. It’s a company car and so I don’t care, if I didn’t have to drive I wouldn’t but I do and so I have to.

Night