Rose, washed, ate my muesli – all without a cough: the illness is officially over! The tempest has been downgraded into snuffles. Snuffles are manageable.
Yesterday was supposed to be the final act in my rehabilitation with my ‘free’ afternoon accommodating the end of my coughs and sneezes. A leisurely lunch with Toni and lazing in the unseasonal sunshine went according to plan but the car was the complicating factor.
What I took to be angry shouts following us as we drove to the restaurant were actually helpful comments telling us that the brake lights were not working. As I had previously worked out that one of the fuses had conked out I expected (foolishly) that the brake lights would be similar and simple.
My garage of first resort turned out to be open (in the afternoon!) but did nothing with the electrics of the car. The Peugeot garage was, of course closed. When I got to the Peugeot garage eventually when they had deigned to be open I was met with a positive torrent of Spanish from the workshop manager of which I understood virtually nothing, but the import of which I understood to be that repairing the car would be an extraordinary feat of engineering and not the simple fuse change as I hoped.
They wanted me to leave the car there, but this was not a practical solution and I arranged (with much sorrowful head shaking by the workshop manager) to bring the car in when I finish work today.
In what can only be regarded as a flash of inspiration when I returned home disconsolate with the prospect of driving to work in the dark with no brake lights and plenty of Spanish drivers, I phoned the RACC and asked for their help. This Catalan version of the RAC responded in English (eventually) and arranged to have a person call. Which he did and within a few minutes he had diagnosed the problem which he told me (in Spanish) was a small piece of plastic which would take five minutes to change.
He then went into a rant about expensive cars which were immobilized by trifling pieces of plastic etc etc. I was rather proud that I was able to follow all of this – or perhaps I should be impressed by my ability to retexture random Spanish words into some form of convincing narrative!
It will be interesting to see what the garage makes of the little slip of paper on which the RACC man has written what is wrong. And how much they charge!
This of course depends on how quickly I can get away and drive the car to the garage. I have a negative feeling about the helpfulness of the garage and have no confidence whatsoever that they will solve the problem. I am already feeling a rising sense of injustice at what they will try and get away with. I feel a letter to RACC asking to sort things out and prosecute them for attempted robbery rising unbidden to my typing finger tips!
My wearing of contact lenses has been something of a success. I have managed to read everything I have had to read and the kids are fascinated by my change in appearance. From their responses I assume that they thought that my glasses were surgically welded to my head!
We shall see how this experiment continues; especially as at the end of the month I should have my new pair of lightweight glasses remade by the opticians in Cardiff and brought over by my ever helpful friends who will be in Catalonia to celebrate United Nations Day in true style.
Meanwhile I am looking for a new book to read. I have been promised one by a colleague in the English Department who is able to feed my craving for fantasy or science fiction. In those genres I am able to read virtually anything; and read it with relish. I will have to beg one for the long weekend of freedom that we have ahead of ourselves.
And another lacuna interposes itself and suddenly it is Sunday.
I did get the books; three of them – and they are all now read. I’ll perhaps wait until Monday (another day off!) before I get around to writing about them.
I underestimated the lack of concern of the Peugeot garage. I rushed home from school on Friday to get me car to the garage before half past five and was met by the loquacious manager with vague apologies but there was no way that they could spend five minutes correcting a fault in the car that they sold to me at vast expense two years ago. I have no wish to make threats that only hurt me, but if it is at all possible I will go to any other garage than that one again. Their lack of concern is astonishing.
It did however force me into what I like doing least in the Spanish language: telephoning. I had been given a card for a garage in Gavá and I decided to take the plunge and try and arrange something. I should perhaps have prepared a little more for the conversation as phrases like “rear brake lights” do not come tripping off the tongue in my Spanish, however, as usual I was understood. Or more accurately they understood something; whether it was the same as what I was trying to communicate remains to be seen. Next Tuesday I will rush after school to a previously unknown part of Gavá and hope that they can do their stuff.
In a pitiful gesture to the great work of Samuel Smiles I have purchased a little box full of brightly coloured fuses of the sort that cars have. These are flat squares of coloured plastic with two flat prongs jutting out. I assume that the colours are indicative of the voltage – and that is just about as far as my knowledge reaches. I am still mystified as to which one of the masses of fuses my car needs might be the one linked to the cigarette lighter.
It is surely a sign of the times that my car did not come with a cigarette lighter presumably because most people use the socket for their GPS or iPod or some other gadget. I need to find the fuse because the GPS is the only thing that is going to get me to the garage on Tuesday! If all else fails (and it will) I can merely charge up the unit at home and use it on battery. Such journeys are always a delight in Spain as the road system seems to change on a daily basis so The Voice is always urging you to take a road which isn’t there or a turning which has obviously been blocked off or, on one humiliating occasion, to turn into a largely pedestrianized area where I was glared at my vulnerable pedestrians as I crawled my self-abasing way along until I turned into the first ‘real’ looking street I could find and escaped!
I trust my experience later in the week will be a little less traumatic than that!
Yesterday was supposed to be the final act in my rehabilitation with my ‘free’ afternoon accommodating the end of my coughs and sneezes. A leisurely lunch with Toni and lazing in the unseasonal sunshine went according to plan but the car was the complicating factor.
What I took to be angry shouts following us as we drove to the restaurant were actually helpful comments telling us that the brake lights were not working. As I had previously worked out that one of the fuses had conked out I expected (foolishly) that the brake lights would be similar and simple.
My garage of first resort turned out to be open (in the afternoon!) but did nothing with the electrics of the car. The Peugeot garage was, of course closed. When I got to the Peugeot garage eventually when they had deigned to be open I was met with a positive torrent of Spanish from the workshop manager of which I understood virtually nothing, but the import of which I understood to be that repairing the car would be an extraordinary feat of engineering and not the simple fuse change as I hoped.
They wanted me to leave the car there, but this was not a practical solution and I arranged (with much sorrowful head shaking by the workshop manager) to bring the car in when I finish work today.
In what can only be regarded as a flash of inspiration when I returned home disconsolate with the prospect of driving to work in the dark with no brake lights and plenty of Spanish drivers, I phoned the RACC and asked for their help. This Catalan version of the RAC responded in English (eventually) and arranged to have a person call. Which he did and within a few minutes he had diagnosed the problem which he told me (in Spanish) was a small piece of plastic which would take five minutes to change.
He then went into a rant about expensive cars which were immobilized by trifling pieces of plastic etc etc. I was rather proud that I was able to follow all of this – or perhaps I should be impressed by my ability to retexture random Spanish words into some form of convincing narrative!
It will be interesting to see what the garage makes of the little slip of paper on which the RACC man has written what is wrong. And how much they charge!
This of course depends on how quickly I can get away and drive the car to the garage. I have a negative feeling about the helpfulness of the garage and have no confidence whatsoever that they will solve the problem. I am already feeling a rising sense of injustice at what they will try and get away with. I feel a letter to RACC asking to sort things out and prosecute them for attempted robbery rising unbidden to my typing finger tips!
My wearing of contact lenses has been something of a success. I have managed to read everything I have had to read and the kids are fascinated by my change in appearance. From their responses I assume that they thought that my glasses were surgically welded to my head!
We shall see how this experiment continues; especially as at the end of the month I should have my new pair of lightweight glasses remade by the opticians in Cardiff and brought over by my ever helpful friends who will be in Catalonia to celebrate United Nations Day in true style.
Meanwhile I am looking for a new book to read. I have been promised one by a colleague in the English Department who is able to feed my craving for fantasy or science fiction. In those genres I am able to read virtually anything; and read it with relish. I will have to beg one for the long weekend of freedom that we have ahead of ourselves.
And another lacuna interposes itself and suddenly it is Sunday.
I did get the books; three of them – and they are all now read. I’ll perhaps wait until Monday (another day off!) before I get around to writing about them.
I underestimated the lack of concern of the Peugeot garage. I rushed home from school on Friday to get me car to the garage before half past five and was met by the loquacious manager with vague apologies but there was no way that they could spend five minutes correcting a fault in the car that they sold to me at vast expense two years ago. I have no wish to make threats that only hurt me, but if it is at all possible I will go to any other garage than that one again. Their lack of concern is astonishing.
It did however force me into what I like doing least in the Spanish language: telephoning. I had been given a card for a garage in Gavá and I decided to take the plunge and try and arrange something. I should perhaps have prepared a little more for the conversation as phrases like “rear brake lights” do not come tripping off the tongue in my Spanish, however, as usual I was understood. Or more accurately they understood something; whether it was the same as what I was trying to communicate remains to be seen. Next Tuesday I will rush after school to a previously unknown part of Gavá and hope that they can do their stuff.
In a pitiful gesture to the great work of Samuel Smiles I have purchased a little box full of brightly coloured fuses of the sort that cars have. These are flat squares of coloured plastic with two flat prongs jutting out. I assume that the colours are indicative of the voltage – and that is just about as far as my knowledge reaches. I am still mystified as to which one of the masses of fuses my car needs might be the one linked to the cigarette lighter.
It is surely a sign of the times that my car did not come with a cigarette lighter presumably because most people use the socket for their GPS or iPod or some other gadget. I need to find the fuse because the GPS is the only thing that is going to get me to the garage on Tuesday! If all else fails (and it will) I can merely charge up the unit at home and use it on battery. Such journeys are always a delight in Spain as the road system seems to change on a daily basis so The Voice is always urging you to take a road which isn’t there or a turning which has obviously been blocked off or, on one humiliating occasion, to turn into a largely pedestrianized area where I was glared at my vulnerable pedestrians as I crawled my self-abasing way along until I turned into the first ‘real’ looking street I could find and escaped!
I trust my experience later in the week will be a little less traumatic than that!
No comments:
Post a Comment