Tag Archives: car cleaning

Small Cars and Wine Gums

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I’ve put some really interesting stuff on eBay today, but as I left my camera at the shop I won’t be talking about that until tomorrow.

The man from the car repairers called today, dropped off a car and took mine away. As part of the process we had to fill in a sheet detailing all the blemishes on my bodywork. Two wheel centres missing, crumpled wing, damaged door, mystery paint transfer, mis-matched mirror shrouds, scuffs on the back bumper from dragging heavy loads out of the boot…

And there are a few minor marks too.

That is before we actually got round to the dinged wheel arch, scratches and paint transfer from the minor accident last week.

This is the car of a man who really needs to get a grip on his driving and the care of his car.

I might add that to my list.

I’ve done everything on the list and the two new haibun are now resting a while until I start the re-writing process.  The results of my car emptying are currently stacked in the house. I found four pairs of cheap reading glasses, which sort of makes up for the pair I lost last week.

I also found eight pens, two pairs of scissors, a bag of salt and  half a packet of wine gums. The wine gums are only slightly fluffy and soon cleaned up when I started sucking them, so all in all it wasn’t a bad day.

The courtesy car is a SEAT. I don’t know what model, but I do know I need Vaseline to get in and out. It’s a bit of a snug fit. Add that to a manual handbrake. a petrol engine and a clutch with a biting point that requires me to put my knee up to ear level when changing gear and you have a car that I’m not altogether familiar with. I also have a problem with feet which are bigger than the space allowed by the car designer.

Due to my generous proportions and a small door aperture I had to exit the vehicle by using a technique that looks a little like limbo dancing. Once I have enough of my lower parts out of the car I put my hand on the top of my head to compress my stiff neck and get my head out. With head and legs out I hook my elbows round the door frame and extract my body in the manner of a wine waiter brandishing one of those corkscrews with the two wings.

I may start adding sound effects tomorrow,

Fortunately it’s only for a week.

The top coin is a 1724 Guinea of George I, from the days when coins were better and monarchs were, quite frankly, uglier. In that year Jack Sheppard the highwayman was hanged and Longman, Britain’s oldest surviving publisher, was founded.

No Moon Now

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It’s not been the most industrious of days, though I don’t suppose that will surprise my regular readers. I have read a bit, shopped and cooked two casseroles and a pie filling. That still leaves a few hours and I can only suppose that they were spent napping.

Julia’s working day on Sunday is 6.00 to 4.30 and at this time of the year her shift is considerably longer than the length of daylight. I checked the day length before writing that, and found there are three types of twilight. There’s astronomical twilight, nautical twilight and civil twilight, which all follow on from each other and have various uses.  I’ll let lawyers and sailors worry about the various definitions.

There is also, it seems, a popular series of books and films billed as “Twilight”, which makes a Google search a bit annoying if you want proper information on twilight. I imagine that anyone who has a man called Harry Potter in their family tree will suffer similar frustration in their searching.

The header picture shows the street at the time we got home – that glaring globe with starburst effect is a streetlamp, rather than a blazing desert sun, as it first appears.

The lack of smears is due to me spending time cleaning the inside of the car and windscreen. Assuming that cleanliness is still next to Godliness, as I was always taught, then, as well as having a better view of the road I am close to being a saint.

The closing photographs are two where I tried to take a faithful rendition of the sky colour. It was quite a deep orange, but the camera tends to remove much of the colour. I eventually managed to approximate the colour by using the Pop Art filter, which often gives quite a false rendition.

Sky at dusk – Nottingham
Sunset over Sherwood