Christmas Is Coming At An Alarming Rate.

I’ve been really busy over the last week or so. Here’s a quick rundown of events.

• Two Christmas dinners attended.
• One session of weekend cancelled
• One car almost bought
• One down stairs toilet still not completed
• 95% of my Christmas shopping completed
• One broken down motorcycle
• One mobile phone upgraded

It can’t have escaped your notice that it is Christmas party season. For the last two Fridays I have been out for company meals. Last Friday it was my current employers do and last night I attended my previous employer Christmas meal.

Friday 8^th

It was the office Christmas party at Tiger-Tiger in Croydon. It consisted of 80 people being crammed onto a series of long tables designed for about 50. There were elbows all over the place and 4 of our number fell off the end. They ended up sitting else where in the end. As is traditional at these events, copious amounts of alcohol were consumed by all those present, including myself. Despite my alcoholic stupor, on the way home I managed to take some quite good photographs, which I posted on my Flickr account.

Monday 11^th

I took my Wife to the dentist and ended up signing myself up for some similar financial torture next Monday. I don’t have a fear of the dentists work, but what really terrifes me is the bills at the end of the pain. However, I badly smashed a tooth a year ago and I all honesty I really need to have it dealt with.

Despite me agreeing that we should change our car, but not until sometime in the New Year, my wife keeps buying copies of car sale magazines. She will search for suitable vehicles and then go on about them. Well she found one such car in last week’s copy of the AutoTrader. It was such a bargain that I had to phone up to see if it was still available. It was, but someone was going to view it that afternoon. They promised to phone back. They didn’t, so I phone them. The viewing had now moved to the evening, but they would phone me on Tuesday.

Tuesday 12^th

By 10am the garage still hadn’t phoned about the car, so I phoned them again. Apparently they were waiting for a decision from the viewer as to whether they wanted to car or not. You’ve guessed it, they would phone us back within half an hour. An hour later they had failed to phone, so I rang them. “Come and have a look at it” they said. Half an hour later I was driving it around the back roads of a posh part of Surrey. It had a slight misfire, but I was impressed with it’s overall condition and agreed to buy it once it had been fixed. They would service it, clean it and arrange the tax so we could pick it up next Saturday (today).

Arriving home I organised the car insurance to be changed over at the appropriate point, happy in the knowledge to we had got ourselves a real bargain. The only down side is that it’s completely the wrong time of year to sell our Peugeot 306 Boat, but I have a cunning plan.

Wednesday 13^th

I was back at work again for the usual everyday excitement. To be honest I’ve been quite busy lately and this week has been particularly tiring. I’m not complaining as I love the job and the team of people I work with.

I received a letter explaining that I’m doing well and am now a permanent member of staff. I was surprised as my six months isn’t quite up yet. It has given me a sense of security that I’ve been craving for a long time and for me marks the end of a very stressful two year period. In my previous job I had very little work and the constant feared being made redundant too its toll. All the stress made me quite ill and I have since realised how close I came to having a nervous breakdown. 2007 is looking as if it will be very good. Time will tell of course.

Friday 15^th

The day started well. Bright, sunny(ish) and quite fresh out. The journey to work was quite easy and un-eventful and I arrived raring to go.

At about 10:30am I decided to phone the garage to confirm the car would be fixed and ready for collection the following day. I was informed that they were currently servicing the car, but there was a problem with the registration document. They told me that the previous owner hadn’t given them the log book and have requested a new one, but it hadn’t yet arrived. This surprised me as I’m almost positive that I saw the log book with the previous owners detail on it on Monday. My brother-in-laws girlfriend also recalls seeing it. Why would I consider buying a car without confirming the log book was correct? I can only assume they’ve misplaced it at the garage. They were hoping to find a way round the road tax and would get back to me asap.

They actually phoned me back this time, but the news wasn’t good. They’d found a major ignition system problem and the parts wouldn’t be fitted until next Tuesday. To be honest I’m very glad they found it and not me in two months time. It almost certain that a repair wouldn’t be covered by the warrantee. Lunch time saw my Christmas shopping all but completed.

And that brings me right up to date, for now at least.

Regards



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