What a crazy week!

This is a short version of a message I sent to my volunteer David Cobham in hospital last night. It’s all true. You couldn’t make it up.

Dear David

Sorry for the non-visit this week. Several of Dan’s carers are still off sick but we had only one car accident this week. The son of one of my carers rolled (or flew) off the Bedford bypass leaving his car upside down in a field having jumped the fence, in a Fiat! Fortunately he is OK but for concussion. His mum is still shaking, which is why Hanna and I have had Dan to ourselves all day. The farmer (who owns the field that’s growing Fiats) can’t be too pleased though. Even if he claims the right of salvage the car isn’t worth more than a couple of hundred quid which is less than the value of a ton of grass I guess.

That reminds me of the RSPB warden from Loch Lomond who complained about the couple who “parked" their speedboat half way up a tree about 100 yards from the shore. He called them all sorts of names and I don’t think he even went to see if they were still alive! I had a similar experience in Costa Rica.

It was New Year’s Day and our boatman looked a bit rough and worse for wear. I never saw his eyes because he wore huge black sunglasses. We were travelling north up the inland lagoons that run parallel to the Caribbean coast, heading for Tortugero. As we sped around a wide, jungle-lined bend at full throttle I realised that we were not going to make the corner. I looked at the boatman but he was completely blanked out so I yelled something ( I have no idea what) grabbed onto Nick and Hanna and braced myself for the inevitable bang. Fortunately we went off into the sawgrass between the trees and eventually stopped in the woods with all the passengers in a heap up at the front. (I think they call it "the pointed end" in the Navy?) The boat was full of plants and scattered cameras and bags as well as an amazing collection of insects and spiders. It’s a great way to get a random sample of bugs if you want to try it.  Anyway, a rather smart young Californian lady with a big voice was the first to stand up. “If anyone wants to sue over this, I’m a lawyer”. She was already handing out business cards.

So back to my week, which like yours, probably started on Monday. We were scheduled for a meeting at the Cambridge Regional College at 10 am. The college is just off the A14 so, to get there at ten, assuming the road isn’t closed for the night so that they can re-arrange the cones, you should really leave on the evening before. Luckily we spotted the stationary traffic at Spittals (near our house) and bailed out by going via St Ives, Cottenham and possibly Norwich. We were late of course. The meeting was held in a room with no heating, off the college library. We were in there until about 2 o’clock with no tea of coffee! We did get the job done though and we now have a draft of Dan’s education goals for 2016-17. 

I was hoping to get into the Botanical Gardens or even go to the Wildfowl Trust at Welney for lunch but the day was shot, so we went shopping, but only after a really nice lunch at the Michael House. Do you know it? It’s a converted church, just along from the Cambridge Press.

The agenda for Tuesday was to be more shopping. Can you believe it? Well this time it was to buy a car, which should be a bit more fun than Tesco’s but isn’t always. Dan has his own Motability car that his carers drive him around in. (Which is just as well as he is a rotten driver. He backed one of our cars into a wall when he was about seven and so I always remove the keys these days.)

This next bit is like a version of Top Gear for people who are not “petrol-heads". You can skip it if you like.

We’ve had a bit of trouble with Dan’s behaviour in the car which could cause an accident. It doesn’t happen often, but once would be enough. We decided to terminate our lease on the Renault and get something with seven seats that would enable us to put Dan way in the back. You used to be able to buy SUVs that had seven proper seats. The Plymouth Voyager and the Ford Galaxy were available here, but now they have either stopped making the vehicle altogether or they have put toddler seats in the back that fold into the floor and have no legroom when they are up. We have looked at every seven-seater on the market including a rather nice Ssanyong Tourismo that sounds like a Chinese blend of tea made for Italian visitors but is a Chinese collaboration with Mercedes. Trouble is, it costs a bomb.

We were pretty sure that we were going to go up to Peterborough and order a Fiat Doblo Estate which does the job and is cheap. The young salesman at Stoneacre’s was great and we were to be his first Motability customers. We could have almost had the car there and then but I wanted to see one more vehicle, a Nissan NV 200 Combo, which looks like a Ford Transit with windows. 

After promising the Fiat guy that we would soon be back we hopped over to the Nissan dealer on the off-chance that he could show us the car we wanted to see. (It’s quite hard to find one). The Nissan salesman didn’t try very hard but we got a look in the NV 200 Special which is very smart and runs on a battery. We got to sit in that and play with the seats and they are pretty good. We could get Dan in and out of the back without unbolting any of the seats. We were sold on the seats so we asked for a test drive in the diesel version. They have never actually seen one in Peterborough but there is one somewhere out there that is for sale, if you don’t mind it being white. We got a test drive in the van version which is bit basic but good enough. We made our decision.

White vans are a bit of a joke in the UK. All vans are white, partly because you have to pay extra for fancy metallic paints. The real advantage is that white van drivers can drive like morons with impunity. Imagine trying to describe the vehicle that ran you off the road. “Well officer, it was a big, square-looking van”. “What colour was it, sir?” “It was white, I’m sure it was white.” You can’t even see what make they are usually. 

The advantage for us in having the van in white is that people will give us a wide berth, expecting us to cut them up then park suddenly, blocking the whole road while we deliver a tiny envelope containing a nut and a washer. The disadvantage is that ours will look a bit more friendly, like an ice-cream van. Kids will chase us down the street. 

When we get our Nissan, we will order a plastic taxi-style screen that will protect the driver from flying objects (like iPads and bottles of squash) and fit it ourselves. Job done then? Well the phone calls and paperwork took me most of Thursday to sort out and we still have to go back up the the showroom on Saturday to fill in more forms. Delivery in three weeks if the white one hasn’t been sold, otherwise late April.

If you are not asleep by now, you might have noticed that I left Wednesday out? Well done!  This bit is more interesting, honestly.

I was at work on Wednesday and bumped into the mid-week volunteers at tea-break. It was great to see them all and they asked about you (David; keep up!) The nest boxes are all done now. They were pleased to find that some of the “ tenements" by the VC had been used by tits at least. The vols are hedge-laying near Debbie’s and building a proper screen at the start of the trail near the lifebelt. Matt is having a week off so they didn’t do any more on the new hide.

Debbie (our education officer) still has no internet or phone, two weeks after the quarry's contractors put an auger thorough the cable. There is mains electricity in the same trench but, luckily, they didn’t hit that, however they did cut through the spare service duct. To make matters worse, the cable wrapped around the auger and wound itself up until it snapped, somewhere back under the ground. They also snapped the rope that is used to pull any new cables though the pipe. They came to fix it again this week but found they would have to dig a bigger hole than planned. They only had permission to dig a round hole, not an oblong one, (I’m not kidding!) so they went home! This reminds me of a song. You too? Also the British Telecom contractor (they don’t actually work for BT so if anything goes wrong they can blame each other and you never get the right person on the phone, assuming your phone actually works, which Debbie’s doesn’t.) 

I told Debbie to sit back and enjoy the peace but she didn’t think that was helpful. She has spent the whole week trying to see who will fix the phone line, who will dig the hole and who will fix the service duct. This could be three different companies and it is quite likely that BT will fix the cable and instruct the contractor to fill in the hole. Then the other company (working for the quarry, possibly?) will have to come back, dig out the hole again and then replace the service duct. I’ve no idea who will fill in their hole, or even if they will come at all as Bardon’s gave them their marching orders when they cut two cables in two days. I can't see this being fixed for a while yet. Debbie keeps going out to see if any children have fallen into the hole yet. She is losing sleep over it all.

But that’s not all!!!! Bardon’s have another contractor in to replace all of those overhead height-barriers that are falling down. The new ones are made of fat plastic pipe that is quite light, so if it does fall on you it won’t quite kill you. I think Duncan (the quarry manager) said they looked “stunning” and he could be literally accurate because one fell down the day after it was put up! The fat pipe is lighter than steel but also more wind resistant so it didn’t take a great deal of wind to get it vibrating until it just lifted up and blew over. And this too was right outside Chez Debbie. They have redesigned them now and cemented the bases. 

While the bases were setting, they were surrounded by wooden shuttering that stuck out unto the road, so Bardon’s new contractors put some screens around them to stop cars hitting them. They didn’t actually have any screen of their own, so they borrowed some from BT’s hole that was conveniently near-by. (Yes, really they did!) You should have seen Debbie’s face!

The way height barriers work is that they warn you that, if you can’t go underneath them because your vehicle or your load is too tall, you have to stop. They should have a sign on them to tell you the height so you don’t have to guess. Unfortunately the posts arrived before the signs so now they are up there with no signs on. I’m guessing that they will have to take them down again to put the signs on when they arrive.

And that’s not all either! A character called Alf Peacock is occasionally to be seen spreading palings in our car park. It has been closed for over a week now because the weather hasn’t been great and he ran out of material (i.e. his estimate was way out). We had to pay for a second lot of material that he pushed around for a while, then he buggered off again. He’s got more scraping to do, then we have to wait for some gunk that Alf calls “poor man’s Tar-Mac”. You brush it on and then scatter coarse sand on top. I can’t see this getting done by the weekend so we will have cars parked all up the road. 

Then, on Monday we have the lorries coming back to buy gravel. They will have to squeeze past all of the cars that can’t use the car park because it will still be closed. Debbie is so worried about the danger the lorries will present to children and parents over half term that she has mounted a huge awareness campaign called “Are you quarry-lorry ready?” The latest idea is to place a mannequin in the car park, dressed as a quarry-man in full orange overalls, hi-viz jacket, big boots, goggles and a helmet. Don’t laugh, but the mannequin has no legs so perhaps he will be wearing a long skirt instead? I’m going to suggest that he has a flashing orange light on top his helmet. His name is Quentin, by the way.

We are in the middle of storm Gertrude right now, so I’m expecting more chaos today. I have to feed the cows their hay, but it will blow all over the place. They will have to chase it.

I’m so looking forward to facing Alf, Debbie, Quentin, Gertrude, the Meadow Ladies et al. I’ll keep you posted.