Dearie me, the day has become very difficult indeed.
I am writing this from the camper van. We are on the motorway somewhere between Glasgow and Carlisle.
We are not driving. We are on the back of a truck.
We have not even broken down.
We were stopped by a policeman somewhere around Perth, who said that he wanted to take us to have a full DVLA inspection. We had to follow him around a network of industrial estates to a DVLA testing station where they practically dismantled the camper van. They tested everything, and discovered that one of the rear brake cylinders was leaking fluid.
In fact we knew this, and it was on Mark’s to do list, but since the brakes are all working perfectly well at the moment we thought it could probably wait until we had recovered from the economic disaster that is always a taxi MOT.
The DVLA man said that this was an MOT failure and that it was not all right to drive a vehicle with any braking fault at all, and so we had to take it off the road instantly.
We could not drive it off the road. We had to have it taken away by a truck.
The man said that we had one hour to do this or he would have our poor camper van clamped and impounded. This is the rule with all vehicles no matter what, he was not being horrid.
In fact actually he was trying to be rather kind. He said that he would leave the paperwork for as long as he could, and that the hour did not start until he had given us the paperwork. He gave us the number of a company that might help, so we rang them up.
They couldn’t collect us, but gave us the number of a company that would take us to Glasgow, after which we were on our own.
They managed to collect us in one hour and ten minutes, so that was all right.
We still could not drive it from Glasgow, it would flag up a red light for every police car within a thousand miles. We had got to get it carried back on another truck.
This proved very difficult, because every towing company everywhere was having adventures in the weekend traffic, but in the end we found a chap with a truck and a flexible attitude.
We had to wait for him in Glasgow for two hours. This was very nail-biting indeed, although he turned up in the end.
Hence as I write these very words we are in the camper van. We are being driven home.
Apart from the obvious financial implications of hundreds of pounds of towing fees just before Christmas, we are sanguine about it all. The camper van does not need a serious repair, just one that we already knew about, and an indicator light seems to be out. He mentioned that it was rusty, and was intrigued by the light switch on the dashboard that works instead of an ignition, but we knew about all of those things as well. They did not give us a Naughty Motorist’s ticket, the sort with points on your licence, and so on the whole things could have been worse.
Nevertheless it has been a bit tiresome, not least because whilst we were at the DVLA Lucy called to tell us that she had just arrived at our house. This was a complete surprise because we had got no idea that she was coming, so it was a good job that we had left the key under a plant pot.
She is home for our Christmas adventure going to the pantomime next week. I am not sure if I just do not listen to the things my children tell me, or if actually they just don’t tell me stuff. I am very excited to see her, and that we will have a house full of children for the rest of the week, but I would have liked to be there and able to cook dinner and talk to her about police stories, instead of flapping down the motorway on the back of a truck.
Ah well. These things happen.
I was going to tell you about Oliver’s school stories but probably it will have to wait. The truck is swaying around like a drunk on the High Street, and it is difficult to write.
I will see you tomorrow instead.
PS Just so you know, and are wondering why we did not do it, the AA will not collect you for this sort of thing, we called them and asked. They only do breakdowns.
Anyway, we are not in the AA.
