if Fortune begin to stay still, she is no longer Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune was much beloved of medieval minds.  Blindfolded, Fortune spins her wheel. Some rise, others fall.  That's been me, this week.

Yesterday I collected the car, complete with new MOT, from Rob at Chevronics. I'm not sure it wants to be Hortense any more. I think it wants to be Steve McQueen, and try jumping over things. But that's not my point. It sounds a lot less rumbly now that it hasn't got a failed wheel bearing, which is interesting (but isn't my point either). It also sounds like a farting frog, because the exhaust is blowing. The positive turn of the wheel is that the exhaust isn't blowing because I did a bad job replacing the silencer - it's blowing because there's a hole in the cross box, which I'd tried to get away without changing. So although, on the face of things, it's bad news, it's actually good news because I did the job well. Just not far enough up the car. And I enjoyed yesterday's deluge an unreasonable amount, because I was sitting in a car in in appropriate shoes looking out at the rain instead of sitting out in the rain.

On the falling side of fortune's wheel is my sat-nav. 36 hours before I leave on a tour of the more obscure roads of North Yorkshire,  the Garmin cradle has given up passing power to the unit.  The Zumo itself still charges from a PC, but unlike Boffin, I don't have a 3-pin socket in one of my panniers so that isn't a massive help.  Also on the down side are my army boots. The soles have split and are attempting to make a break for a new life on their own. I took them to Timpsons and the man with the apron on said "Time to buy a new pair love."

These are the only boots I have ever had that are comfy to walk in as well as ride, and I found them by accident in Waterside Antiques in Ely  after a whole day at the NEC trying on boots in the company of the Midnight Mud Wrestler. I can't face doing going through that again.

Does this come with matching shoes?

I am still thinking about girl stuff. Specifically, how my wardrobe choices are dictated by my transport choices. This morning I cycled to work, even though my knee is still dodgy, because I am porking up to an unacceptable level. So this morning's question was, what will fit in the basket on the back of the pushbike, and look OK with trainers? Answer - vintage flowery sundress. On other days, the question is, what can I fit under all-weather bike trousers and wear with boots? And the answer to that is usually one of my posh Jaeger frocks, with tights.

There are days when I think how lovely it would be to choose an outfit based on mincing 5 feet from my front door to the car, and then the same from the car park to the office. How lovely it would be to arrange a hairdo and a face in the comfort of my own boudoir, not the office lavs, and not have to wory about helmet hair. 

More importantly I am wondering what I need to pack for the Simmer Dim. I am not sure I want to take my irreplaceable Crowtree jacket to a five-day drinking festival. Mainly because I can't get any jumpers under it.

The wisdom of crowds

Relationships are on my mind at the moment.

I live on my own and have done for 2 years. It is hard and often lonely, but the rewards are self- indulgence and freedom.

The risk that lurks at the back of my mind is that I am in danger of making a totem of solo living. It is not too far a step from believing that it is better to live alone than with the wrong person, to believing that it is better to live alone full stop.

The stern Scots who lurk in my family tree would have me believe that there is virtue in taking the stony path even if a comfy sedan chair were to be put on offer.

Part of my fear is that relationships involve unequal compromise. But that’s based on a very small sample of two, which both crashed and burned. So I asked twitter. As you do.

90% of these replies are from bikers. In a world where the media would have us believe that the most important things in a biker relationship are big tits and leather trousers, I love that Trust and Respect are the two words which most friends put at the top of their list.

These look like fantastic relationships. They might even be worth compromising for. But I still want to be able to sit and watch Eurovision in my pants.

This was my question:  Lady tweeps (and chaps?): what makes a relationship a good one? Bit of a challenge in 140 letters. But I'm interested. And #doomedtobesingle 

And these are the replies.

• finding the right person i think, the rest is simple : )
• late answer re: relationships: being able to talk, walk, etc. And a bit of a spark ; )
• Trust, commitment and a healthy sense of perspective
• Trust. Friendship. Similar likes/dislikes. Don't be a quitter. Work through the bad times. Sign up 4 the long haul. Cuddle.
• Trusty, loyal, bestfriend & lover, courageous, careful, respect for others. :-)
• Gosh, that's a big question. In my limited experience, it's having time apart and not being afraid of it.
• one thing's for sure: you do need a bolt of lightning at the start. I do believe that. Everything else is natural after that.
• Trust.
• Always remembering why you fell for the person in the first place, accepting who you both are and not trying to change them.
• Mutual respect, reciprocity, companionship all help
• Friendship, openness, compromise, give & take, lots given, little demanded, only positive games, sex, togetherness thru strife
• Realistic expectation and lots of give and take! Luck has a lot to do with it too!
• Absence of any need to compromise? #likemyownspace #menallrightbutwouldnthaveoneinthehouse. OK, compromise may be necessary, but the value of what you get back outweighs what you gave up. On both sides.
• make time for yourself ... it's important to take care of "you" so you can take care of "us" :)
• Starting as, and always remaining, friends. The rest comes and goes, but true friendship can make it through anything :-)
• Trust and respect.

Beer, bikes, bands....

Finally I get to write my triumphant "car is fixed" post. Bear with me, it's a long story.

This weekend I had three tasks - go to the BMF Show, go to the Fake MA Party with friends from work, and put a new fuel pump on the 2CV.  Friday, Saturday night and Sunday morning. Should have been simple.

I reckoned without the careful attention to detail of the people behind the BMF show. It was very good of them to provide excellent beer, great company, and a ZZ Top tribute band who (I think, but my memories may be confused by the beer here) rounded off their set with La Grange, which I absolutely love to dance to.

But the excellence of Friday night meant that Saturday morning started in a slightly wobbly and uncertain way.  I managed to chat to Sue and Uki from the Guzzi owners' club about camping, mainly because they provided coffee and ginger nuts; caught up with Andy and Sheila in the grandstands for the White Helmets;  and then tripped on my heels and fell arse over tit down the grandstand steps to land at the feet of Leon Mannings. I don' t think that was quite the entrance he was expecting me to make.

I have a dodgy left knee, I dislocated it dancing at one of my sister's housewarming party in the days when she liked renting cottages in very remote parts of Scotland. One minute I was throwing groovy shapes, the next I had crashed to the floor.  I think some of her friends thought this was just an extension of my startling moves. After only 12 months of physio I was able to walk on it again. I got married with a full-length support stocking on that leg, just in case it collapsed halfway up the aisle. So some sort of karmic echo has probably made it necessary that I get divorced in a similar state of immobility.

Knees are a bad design and when you bugger them up they really, really hurt, in a "putting a brave face on it but actually on the verge of throwing up" way. So I didn't see much of the show. I said hello to the Oval Motorcycle Centre,  and I joined the Trail Riding Fellowship so that when I go back to Australia I can ride the lovely red roads, and then I had to go and sit down.

Hell for me would be sitting in a room while all my friends are at a party and I am not. So you can imagine how happy I was on Saturday night to realise, after 20 minutes making small talk and eating excellent onion bhajis, that unless cold sweat had suddenly become what all the cool kids are wearing, I was going to have to admit my limitations and retire hurt.

This morning I woke up at 4.30, and it was raining. Attempting to remove a vital organ from the car in the rain seemed to be an unwise idea but by about half 10 the rain had decided that staying in the cloud would be fine so I lined up the instruments and got stuck in. "Oh dear, is the car still poorly?" asked the neighbours, to whom my endless struggle with machinery is a source of bafflement and entertainment.

My toolkit has expanded and the teeny-weeny sockets were a perfect fit. I find it interesting that when I start a job like this it seems impossible to wrestle past all the bits of engine to get a grip on the object of my desire but by the end of three hours the spaces feel twice the size  and I seem to have developed extra thumbs to hold the spacer, the washer, the bolt, the socket on the extension bar and the petrol hose. Although this may just be because I have been in the Fens too long and have acquired the local adaptation.

Having got everything off and the new bits lined up, greased up and stuffed into hoses, I had to persuade myself to take the final step and fit them. I think this was fear. If this didn't work, I would be out of ideas for what was wrong with the car.  But the great joy of a 2CV is that you can stick a starting handle in the front and turn the engine over with it. As the pump is mechanically-driven off the engine, I thought I would be able to tell whether it was working. It didn't chuck any petrol out of the top hose but it did make a magnificent sucky noise,  like wellies in mud. Which the other one hadn't.  Which gave me great confidence, which proved to be correct . The car now runs, the exhaust doesn't leak, and the boots? They're still shiny boots of rubber. All I need now is the MOT and it will be a success to be proud of.

* I don't have any good pictures from the show, so here is the Travelling Moose of happy memory.

Neverending Story

So it started with new boots, and then a new exhaust, and now I am trying to fit a new fuel pump, but to fit a fuel pump I need a smaller socket set, because my robust half-inch drive set, while good for driveshaft flange bolts, is too chunky to fit the fuel pump bolts. So I have spent 40 quid on a new set of slimmer, more elegant sockets.  I console myself with the thought that spending money on tools is never wasted. Until some low-life comes and nicks them. I used lots of cool tools fitting the exhaust, including my impact driver, and even though it was nicked in 2002 which means I've had the replacement for 10 years, it still pisses me off that I am using an impact driver the insurance company sent me and not my dad's, that he gave me along with a set of spanners when I started working on 2CVs in 1990.

The fuel pump came from a German company called Der Franzose. They are my new best friends, because not only has the lovely Jens answered all my questions about when the pump might be expected to land on my desk here in Blighty; and not only have they sent me a catalogue stuffed with every part my 2CV is likely ever to need (hopefully not immediately after the fuel pump, I would like a break from car maintenance); they sent me a small packet of Haribo 2CVs. They are not in the picture. I ate them.