Ho! Hum! Over a week later we are still waiting for our van to return from its mysterious assingnation with MOBILE MECHANICS who are anything but mobile... There it is written on their big Yellow Pages add..."MOBILE MECHANICS...WE COME TO YOU!", but "sorry we can't get your car back to you...are you sure you can't come and get it??? " ..."Yeah sure I guess we'll just jump in our van nd ocme and get iy...whoops sorry you've got our van and we live miles out of town...Duh!"...If I travel with Don its not too bad , he gets a 50% discount for taxis so a trip in and out of town only costs $22 rather than $44.

Every time the mechanics speak to us they are soooo sorry about the bent parts in our engine... I can almost hear their tears plopping down onto their feet...ssoooo sooorry... you have to be trusting because these days because none of us...even those who could attach rubber bands to a car engine in the '70's and make it fo, none of us can compete with THE COMPUTER DRIVEN ENGINE!!!.

"Oh don't mind us we're just sending off to get you that new part...where from?... oh tee hee ...well you know that factory in the artic circle where we get these oh so spoecialised parts from...well no its not there, but somehwere quite like it but even further away from international shipping lines...surely you can understand that!"

BUT ITS JUST A VW VAN AND A COMMON ONE AT THAT...SOB! (sons of bitches ...not crying noises yet!)

And it all started out as the sound of crunching metal under the bonnet...

I could live on baked beans and toast and other vitals but the crusty old man I married whom I do love so much sounds awfully sooky at times,
"But there's nothing nice to eat...no chocolate... "

He reaches back in the dangerous depths of his brain and recalls that there should be chocolate in the freezer (yes he freezes his) and starts wondering out loud where those two squares of Cadbury's Old Jamacian he just knows were in there back at christnas could have gotten to...looking meaningfully at me... Okay yes sir! I did indeed eat those two cold tasteless moldy squares of your bloody chocolate way back in February and I had to fight the vweevils for them and yes! I did win that fight which is why I got that chocolate and not the weevils and which is why I got that chocoalte and not you...

and he sulks loudly...begorrah.

Please, please please Mobile Mechanics please fix our van tomorrow or at the very latest Friday. I think someone is going to drive me to do somehitng I might regret.

I might eat his Gingernut biscuits...sacre bleu!And that would be a tragedy. I really don't like Gingernuts but I am myself starting to do the standing in front of the food cupboard thing and windering how many baked beans, tins of corn, beetroot, pasta I can handle till we get out of here....