Handbrake – Additional

Today I found out something else related to the work on the car’s hand brake last week – whatever was jammed/stuck was also obviously making some noise during the ordinary running of the car.

Driving the motorway route to be on-site today with my primary client, the car was even quieter than usual, and the only change is that work that’s been done.

For a diesel engine with almost 200,000 on the clock, twotting along at *cough* 70mph,  it’s now spookily quiet inside…


Handbrake

When the car got its MOT recently, one of the upcoming issues was that the handbrake was set too high, and not being particularly effective.  Not awful, not dangerous, but not great.

In fairness, it’s been similar since I got it. Every year at Service/MOT time the Kia place I used would fuck around with it a bit, but it was always high, and I just figured that’s how it was for that car. It’s never slipped or caused issues, so *shrug* what the hell, it’s fine.

Anyway, last week it stopped being fine. It was still working, but once released the handle would “bounce” back up enough to trigger the “brake still on” idiot light on the dashboard, and was showing all the signs that it now needed replacing. Like, soon.

So anyway, I rang up the KwikFit where I got it serviced and MOTd this time, booked it in (for yesterday) for the work, and that’s all fine. These things happen.

Once they’d looked at it, it turned out that it wasn’t ready to break (pardon the pun) but there was something in the run of the handbrake cable that had jammed, which they released and checked the entire thing (including a re-check of handbrake efficiency)  and all sorted. Additionally, it now doesn’t need to be set as high when engaging it. (I assume because I’m not fighting against whatever the jammed piece was doing)

And the price for this? Absolutely nothing.  I tried to pay, I wanted to – even if there weren’t any replacement parts, they’d spent workshop time on investigating, sorting, and re-testing – but nope, they insisted it was fine. OK, then – but they’re definitely getting any return business from me.


Just About Sorted

The new house is, I’m please to say, now pretty much sorted. It feels like it’s taken a long time to do – and a lot of stuff has needed to be sorted – so I also have to keep reminding myself that I actually only moved in a month ago.

In that time I’ve had to buy and build two bookcases as well as a new bed, wardrobe, desk, and office chair – oh, and a new hoover, as the previous one packed up. There’s a new sofa and chairs coming tomorrow, as well as a third bookcase – and getting that delivered and build will then allow me to unpack two of the last three boxes remaining.

Along the way there’s also been other stuff – car MOT etc., tip runs, and doing a bundle of other stuff as well. It’s been… busy, to say the least.

I’m feeling fairly settled now, although I’m still looking forward to getting rid of the final boxes. I know there’s another tip run in the offing (another load of Ikea Cardboard!) and a “bulky waste” collection has been organised for the old sofa and chairs once the new ones are sorted out. Once those things are done, it should be all but sorted.

Because of all this, my motivation levels have plummeted at the moment – I think/hope that it’s just the amount of energy that’s been being expended on sorting stuff out, not just of my domestic stuff but also work, and dealing with the ineptitude of organisations galore along the way.

It’s been busy, and I’m hoping that the next few weeks will be quieter/easier, allowing me to get on with things again.

But all told, it’s pretty positive, and I’m definitely happier with the new place than I was with the previous one.

 


Yet another MoT

This week the car’s been in for its MoT test – it’s October, so it’s been time to renew Insurance, pay Road Tax, and sort the MoT.   For the first time with this car, I didn’t bother using the proper dealership (the car’s on 200,000 miles, and I no longer give a sod about service histories and so on) alongside which, the dealership I was using were… less than professional on a number of occasions, so I wanted to try something else and see what they had to say.

I chose (on the basis of other positive experiences) to use KwikFit , albeit a branch/location I hadn’t used before. I booked a service at the same time, just to get everything done in one go.

As it turned out, it did fail the first MoT, and needed a couple of things doing. Which was fine, KwikFit sorted everything on the same day – although obviously it made it a long day all told – along with recommendations of what I need to do (in their words) “sometime in the next year”, which I’ll get sorted at some point soon.

But all told, that little Kia has done pretty well – I’ve put about 130,000 miles on it since I got it in 2016 (just under 22,000 miles a year on average!) and it’s still really running fine. (Mind you, I’ve been very clear to it on what will happen when it becomes unreliable, so no-one’s under any illusions)  That was definitely a good buy.


Relocating

A while back I said about moving, and that I’d explain more about it – and then of course didn’t get round to it ’til now.

Basically, the current house is tiny – four rooms, and an outbuilding for utilities stuff. It’s suited me fine for a long time – far longer than I ever expected it to, to be honest.

But over the Pandemic (and I know it’s not over, but we’re in the “living with it” stage now) I realised that without my rented office, this place was just too small. If the lockdown had been tight, it would’ve driven me mad. (I could justify using the office I rent, as it was just me driving to an office that contained just me, in a building that was closed to the public. But still.)

Alongside that, I’ve just got more and more tired of the limitations and hassles of living in this area. I’m tired of listening to my newest neighbours argue (at great volume, and at weird times of day/night) through the walls. I’m tired of fighting to get a parking space outside my own house. (Pretty much every other house in this area has at least two vehicles, and parking spaces are… limited) I’m tired of all the bullshit, traffic and noise around school commute times, and also of the general noise and arseholiness of people coming out of the pub opposite on most weekends.  And I’m tired of the ongoing dust and dirt from living with the windows open beside a busy road.

So, once things had settled post-Covid, I started thinking about Where Next.  It was difficult because there was no-where that I really wanted to be, unlike most other times I’ve moved. (In fairness, this place wasn’t one that was calling my name either, it was a practical choice for the time)  It’s taken me a fair while to figure things out on that score – and in the end I’ve stuck with practicality.  This place has been tolerable primarily because I’ve hardly been here – it’s been easy to get to pretty much anywhere else, because of proximity to the M1 and A1 for north/south travel, as well as the A421 for east/west.

The new location will be similar, an hour further up the road, but just off Junction 22 of the M1. It’s a location that also connects to the M42 and M6, which gives me even greater flexibility. It doesn’t grab me as a location in itself, but it’ll do on the “Getting to anywhere else” front.  It means that I’m (obviously) an hour closer to my friends up in Manchester and Newcastle, so it makes life easier on that score.  Weirdly, it also means that seeing my friends down in North Somerset will also involve journeys an hour shorter (because I can cut across to the M5 and straight down, rather than dicking about with the M1, M25 and M4)  So in those ways it’s actually more convenient than the current place!

The criteria for the new place are pretty easy to work out, given the things I’m tired of. A larger house, probably 3-bedroom, ideally with its own driveway and garden, on a quieter road, with no nearby pub or school. And ideally without paying a stupid level of rent – a house with that spec where I am currently would be at least triple my current rent, which is just insane.

Anyway, after some looking around, that’s what I’ve ended up with. A 3-bed semi in a small estate, with its own driveway, garage, and low-maintenance garden. No school, no pub. And for a rent that’s still a 50% hike over what I’m currently paying, but that’s expected – and infinitely better than a 300% hike!

I’ve done all the paperwork and finances, but don’t get the keys til the 5th of September, and then properly move mid-September. I’m really looking forward to it all.


Getting Stuff (Finally) Done

My local council are, to be polite, utterly fucking useless. Their skills in organisation, communication, professionalism and competence appear to be absolutely zero – in fact, most of the time I doubt they could even spell any of those words, let alone be good at them.

But, after literally years of nagging, they’ve finally done two of the jobs I’ve been nagging them about.

First, we start with The Bridge

Six years ago (I’ve probably written about it before, but can’t be arsed currently to check) we had a mains water line burst near the village – a burst that was so powerful, it destroyed the bridge wall that the pipe was next to. Now, it’s not a main road per se (i.e. it’s not an A-road or motorway) but it is one of the two main roads from my village to Milton Keynes and the motorway. So it’s not short of a fair bit of traffic.

Initially, Anglian Water put up some cones/barriers and traffic lights so that the road was usable (kinda/sorta) but reduced to one lane, on the side that wasn’t missing half a bridge wall. That situation remained for about six months (with regular failures of the traffic lights) until I asked Anglian Water what was actually happening, and had they forgotten about the bloody thing.  Turned out, they had forgotten. And there began the saga of getting it fixed.

Anglian moved things about, put in a temporary fence and barrier, opened the road up, and tried to get a repair done. (Which was fraught with its own issues around who actually owned the fucking thing, who was responsible for what, etc. etc.) The council insisted it should be done by their Highways department, who would do the work properly, and all that happy crap. So after eighteen months, Anglian handed the entire clusterfuck over to Central Bedfordshire Council, as requested, and washed their hands of the problem.

For four years I’ve been asking when it’s going to happen, what’s occurring, and so on. It’s outlasted four admin assistants, and two managers. And every time they’ve said “Oh, it’s all scheduled, we’ll hopefully have it done in about three months time“. I do realise there’ve been a lot of hassles – again, with who owns the bridge and the land underneath it, who’ll be stumping up the money, how it’ll all work and so on.  But it’s been four years where it would’ve been all too possible for someone to come off the road, through the fence, and end up twenty-odd feet down underneath it.  After every decent storm we’ve had, I’ve had to contact the council and suggest that they might want to come and put the fence back up, along with the holders/barrier that’ve fallen over.

But about a month ago, signs went up around the bridge saying that work was going to start, and take about eight weeks. And it actually started, and has been progressing nicely.  (Not that anyone from the council has thought to send a message saying “Hey, just to catch you up, it’s all happening”. That would be expecting far too much from them!

Second – the other bridge.

Back at the start of the pandemic, in the next village to mine, someone went on a graffiti spree, writing/spraying stuff on all the village’s road signs and so on. Nothing monumentally offensive, just stupid shit that no-one needs to see. And in fairness, Central Bedfordshire’s Highways department cleaned most of it off comparatively quickly. (I think it only took them a fortnight to get rid of the stuff that was nasty about Central Beds Council, and then about another two months to get rid of the less offensive but stupid stuff)

And then when Captain Tom hysteria was at its peak (Captain Tom was from the village I live in, so it was all relevant locally) they sprayed a big message about him on one of the other local bridges. You can see some of it below, or go to Google Streetview here for the full experience

Yes, it lasted long enough that it even made it onto Google Streetview.

That’s taken two and a half years to get rid of, but finally got cleaned off last month.  Of course, others who’ve seen how long it takes Central Beds to sort these things, have also taken to graffiti’ing local walls and so on. Fine, it may be an influx of new people, but before the first lot happened (and that person has since moved away) we never saw any happening. Now though, I can easily think of eight or nine sites that have been hit.

Again, allegedly there were problems for the council in gaining permissions/clearances to clean that bridge – it goes over a railway line, and they were saying they couldn’t clean/wash the bridge while things might be running underneath, although that sounds like bullshit. The cleaning job when it finally happened didn’t go over the top of the bridge wall at all, so nothing would’ve been affected.  But there we go.

Purely personally, I suspect that if that graffiti had said “Central Beds council are useless bastards” it would’ve only been there a couple of weeks. But because it was about Captain Tom, I wonder if they thought it would be worse to get rid of it than to leave it.  I don’t know.

Anyway. Both jobs have (finally) been done, and it’s really nice that I won’t have to nag the useless bastards any more.  But things like this shouldn’t take that long to get sorted.  If it had been me in charge of either project I’d have got the work done, and *then* chased whoever needed to pay for it, including court stuff if necessary.  But the general public don’t need to see those delays, regardless of the cause – we just want to see stuff that’s been broken get fixed.

I don’t know what the answers are on all this – but government (both local and national) at the moment just seems like one giant clusterfuck of ineffectiveness and general incompetence. And surely there must be better ways than what we’ve currently got?


Crunch/Scrape

Today I had my first ‘crash’ involving another vehicle. (I’d only had one other incident before, but that was an icy road in Norfolk, nearly 13 years ago, and it was only me involved) Before anything else, I’m fine – the car’s got a scraped body panel, but it was all fairly low-speed, no air-bags needed, no injuries, nothing.

As it was, I’m almost certain the responsibility wasn’t mine – although the other driver insists it was my fault, so I’m just letting the insurance companies fight it out.  Basically though, I was in the correct lane, the other car was merging in and for some reason expected me to give way. We’ll see what the insurance people say.

It was at a new-ish junction, and the signage isn’t the easiest to understand, but I’ve driven it enough times that I know how it works. (Although the other driver also does it fairly regularly, so should know better! 🙂 )

Using the photo below, I was turning right out of Mike Griffin Way. You can be in either lane (which is fucked up in the first place). If you’re in the left-hand lane then that becomes the direct route; the right-hand lane has another turn-off (the rough equivalent of a hairpin turn) and then merges into the direct route.  It was, in short, designed by a fucking idiot.

The junction – click to Embiggenify

So I was in the left-hand lane having come out of Mike Griffin Way, with the other car in the right-hand lane. And at the merge (top-right of the image) they decided to pull into the left-hand lane. No indication or anything, just pulling in.

Fortunately, I was aware they were there, and as they pulled across I was already braking hard and sounding the horn to let them know I was there. But still, impact. Rather than blocking the road, we went up to the nearest layby, pulled in, did the whole exchange of details, photos and so on, and then got on with life.  I’m happy with how I did everything – making sure they were OK, but also getting names, details, numbers, registration plates etc., and ensuring that they got mine as well. Basically, I didn’t want there to be any chance of miscommunications, or “he just drove off” accusations.

Because there’s been no injury, no road blockage etc., the police haven’t needed to be informed (another thing I also checked with the insurance company, to make sure they were happy with not having a police incident number or anything) and I’m quite happy to not have to involve them..

I don’t yet know what the outcome will be. My car’s OK, it’s got some nice new scratches and a dent, but it’s perfectly driveable, and I don’t know if I’ll even bother getting the scratches repaired. My insurance shouldn’t be affected (even if they decide it was my fault) as I’ve got a protected 10+ year No Claims Bonus, which means I could even have another accident (not that I’m planning to!)  before even beginning to worry on that score.

We’ll see what happens, but all is good so far as I can tell. I wouldn’t recommend it as a way to spend an afternoon – but equally, things could have been *so* much worse in so, so many ways.