So I'll start at the end, you may recall I mentioned the van was playing up on the way home from Builth last week. Well it was checked out twice over the week and we were told there was nothing seemingly wrong with it. The knocking noise was from some brushes that needed replacing. With this in mind I was quite happy driving it to Malvern, ignoring the knocking and the occasional juddering from the steering wheel. On the way home at the Minffordd roundabout the knocking got so loud then there was a bang/snapping and a scrapping sound. I pulled off the roundabout and up onto a grass verge. The Blanik bus was going no further. The first port of call was to ring Steve, then the AA. So here comes another problem, wearing my driving glasses I couldn't read the details on the card, thank god for Jackie. A Police officer stopped, she was lovely and as I was concerned that something may have fallen off .. she went to check. It took ages to get through to the AA, who then sent a link to my phone for me to register the breakdown and give a pin drop of our location ... all easy I'm sure with reading glasses .. Impossible with driving glasses, and what about the people who are not able to use a smartphone? What about the places where there is no signal? What if it was my mother? Anyway with the pin drop sent we were given another number to call, it must have taken 20 -30 mins to get through and with a low battery it was a concern. I have to say that it took longer to get through to them than it did for the guy to come from Caeathro to pick us up!
Well if your my age or older you probably remember the AA adverts .. "The Man Who Can!" Well yeah this one was the man who can, but only because he had too. He was really grumpy and moaned about everything, as I think was his nature. Anyway he told me that the rear axel had collapsed and it could not be fixed he said replacing it would be over a thousand pounds and that my van would probably be off the road for a long time. He made me get on the floor to see, yeah I could see that it was much lower on one side than the other, but what no one took into account was that to get off the road I'd pulled it onto a grass bank so it was uneven. Jackie and I are not mechanics, we just drive them! When Mr Grumpy got me home, Steve came out to see the van .. he said, it doesn't look like anything has collapsed to me. I looked .. oh bloody hell now on even ground the van looked OK.
Yesterday our local garage came to collect it, he says the CV joint has gone on it, which is at the front apparently! Funny that, I think Frank had mentioned that last week. According to Ian it can be lose and go back into place, so it may rattle and judder on the move but be hard to spot in a stationary vehicle .. Ok so I'll stop threatening JP in my head, but I never warmed to him, and never will.
The van is now in the garage waiting its turn to be fixed, here's hoping once it's on a ramp that its an easy, inexpensive fix!!!
