Two birthdays and a funeral

Nearly two week since my last confession..........Oh, Sorry, wrong box!!

Drove down South on Thursday to pick up aged Parent and bring her home for a long weekend. As it turns out, very long indeed. It was Noodles 3rd birthday at the weekend, celebrations all round and lots of fun had by all. We bought her some noisy instruments to augment the "sitting in a circle, singing, clapping, clicking and rolling" game that Noodle loves to orchestrate. Well.......loud or what!! But great fun. Even 'im indoors saying "I told you so" didn't spoil the pleasure we got at seeing Noodle's face when we were all making as much noise as possible!

On Sunday we took aged P home and stayed over (sleeping on cushions on the floor with the sound of fish tank bubbles in our ears!) as Monday was Get-the-Caravan-Serviced Day. We were up before the sun to get the van over to the service place in good time. Which we did. Unhitched van and left with a promise from them that they would phone before 4pm at the latest. Before we got home my phone had rung twice! It was the service place saying that the caravan was unserviceable as the axle had gone!! Poor aged P. Her pride and joy dead at the first hurdle. Nothing for it but to arrange for disposal. As we were only there for the day, 'im indoors having to get back for work the next day, we had to find a breakers pretty quickly. Scrapped plans to visit depressed sister-in-law (secret tee hee) and set to with yellow pages.
Found a place not too far away as now we were towing a van that we KNEW was in danger of collapse! Set off for the Service place to pick up the caravan and towed it v e r y c a r e f u l l y the five miles to the scrap yard.

'im indoors ran true to form and failed to give early warning of correct turning for our destination so we had to carry on until we found a roundabout as turning round anywhere else was not an option. After a couple of miles and a very steep, very scary, hill we found a roundabout big enough to go all the way round and made our way back to the scrap yard.

What an horrific place. Sad heaps of cars crushed into unnatural rectangles. Giant cranes violently hooked vehicles by one prong through the windscreen and swung them round into the crusher. It was like being in the middle of a horror film. Scruffy men in fluorescent jackets and hard hats, hovvered like vultures around the van as we arrived, looking for easy pickings. One or two offered to purchase the van from us until they found out the axle was gone. One even went in and helped himself to an out-of-date fire extinguisher! Driving carefully through the smashed windscreen glass that covered the surface of the road we brought the caravan to it's final resting place and unhitched. Somewhat relieved that we had arrived safely and anxious to get out of this awful place.

Another problem, aged P didn't have enough cash to pay the £50 disposal fee. They wouldn't accept any card. Luckily I was able to make up the difference or we might have had to leave aged P as collatoral (probably dangling from a crane over the crusher) while we went to find a cash machine! Poor Aged P!

At last, with the car loaded right to the roof with the contents of the doomed caravan, we made our sad way home. The scrap yard made me realise how fragile and insignificant vehicles are. All the love and attention we give them; washing, polishing, worrying about every little dent and scratch. Our cherished belongings are just so much scrap to somebody else. We were very pleased to leave the scrap yard before the predatory crane pounced on Aged P's beloved van.

Two day's later and 'im indoors is 66! We went to the dogs. (Well he went ages ago!!) We joined a large group of friends and had a very pleasant evening, managing to win enough to pay the bar bill! We'll go again.

Two birthdays and a funeral - what a weekend!