Maybe Not An Essential Journey

On Friday I take the Golf in for its first service. The car itself has been nagging me electronically for months but it was hardly an essential journey. I take it to VW Parkway near work in Derby then get the bus back.

The VW Garage is impressively set up as Covid-secure (or whatever the correct phrase is) with screens, a one-way system and tape everywhere. Afterwards they send me a video of the actual car service, which I’ve never had before, then send me code to retrieve by key from a locker when I collect it. I’m impressed but, then again, it wasn’t cheap.

The Red Arrow bus was less impressive with no obvious measures apart from the front seats not being in use and the bus being very clean but that may be just have been through lack of use. There were only five of us on it and everyone was very spaced out but there was an absence of masks. They’re not compulsory until a week on Monday but I thought the drivers would be setting an example but they weren’t.

The Derby Book Festival has put a quiz online. We get the questions on Friday and then the answers on Saturday. I’m not expecting to be much help to L. This week’s beer keg which is Atlas Stout from the Lenton Lane Brewery will see me through it.

Over the weekend we watch a new two part documentary about Lance Armstrong that is on ESPN, which I sign up to for a free week. There is some new information but he’s still keeping a lot of things close to his chest.

The Black Lives Matter protests move to the UK despite a ban against mass gatherings due to the coronavirus. Again there was a shortage of face masks and you suspect that those who were wearing them were wearing them more to stop the cameras identifying them than anything else.

(Saturday 6^th June)

A New Set Of Wheels

We don’t have a Sunday run over Easter and for the first time that I can recall there in no Easter Monday 10k on Wollaton Park. They are being very coy as to why not.

After a draw at Birmingham on Good Friday, Derby beat Queens Park Rangers 2-0 to keep them in the Play Off hunt. The match is preceded by a big explosion and a fire in Derby coming from one of the industrial units. In the evening, Daughter comes over for a dog run. Having survived Saturday's parkrun, I join them and manage not to re-injure anything.

Over the Bank Holiday weekend I have taken the plunge and have put down a deposit on a new car, a 2017 VW Golf. I go see it on Tuesday and afterwards L asks me how it was. Quite good, it’s now sat in the car park at work.

Motorpoint, from where I bought that car, had tried everything they could to sell me add-ons such as a super valeting, a super waxing and numerous super expensive extra insurances but I'd declined the lot. Although they tell me that their standard valeting charge is unavoidable. You are not allowed to drive away a dirty car. Then bizarrely after all that pressure selling they chuck in the Vehicle Excise Duty for free. We will be keeping the old Astra as a dog-mobile.

Also on Tuesday, L has her final PT session saying that her young boy’s obsession with heavy weights is doing her back in. Hopefully she'll find some more appropriate ones as she’s been wanting to do this sort of thing for years.

Wednesday is dogging and Thursday is tennis for L but there’s still no sign of any tennis or squash for me. So I attempt a small run after work, not all the way home or anything like that, but my calf goes almost straight away and I abort.

Friday is my only bike day of the week which is very pleasant in the morning but the weather insists on livening it up for the ride home.

(Friday 26^th April)

A Game Of Two Doors

We sleep well. It must have been the Hobgoblin. Then we’re up at 6.30 and off to the airport. The car park won't recognise my booking but it's soon sorted. Check-in goes smoothly too, which is a rarity. The security queue doesn’t and takes ages.

The security checks are an entertaining game of two doors. The ‘right’ door opens for me. The left one, which is the wrong one, opens for L and she has to dance in front of a shape painted on the wall and take her shoes off. I'm sure they're just having a laugh at her expense.

The flight is a little late but the pilot makes up time. Hitting the ground way too fast in my uninformed opinion. Car hire goes smoothly despite being served by a lass with a 'I am new' name badge stuck to her chest. That’s kind of cruel but at least she gives me a Golf. A proper one. Not an estate, not an automatic, not even a diesel. I never ever get the car I ask for.

It even has a key rather than a lump of plastic to start it. I still can't start it though and it angrily flashes something in German at me via the dashboard. Ah, hang on a sec, I remember now. De-clutch before you turn the key. Vroom. Off we go. To Liechtenstein and then Switzerland.

(Friday 9th March)