It is still daytime, and I am writing in a few spare minutes, because I don’t think I am going to feel much like writing anything at all by the end of the day, after what I very much hope will be an uneventful, if lengthy drive back across the wilderness to the relative metropolis of Windermere.
(LATER NOTE: The Gods were listening. I should have kept quiet.)
I have fixed the relay. That is to say, I have mended it with the new one that I found in the glove box, and it works.
It was terribly cold. So cold that I had left the cup for my flask in the cup holder, and it had frozen in so hard that I could not get it out. The gearstick would not budge, and I looked at the windscreen, thickly painted with Jack Frost’s finest illustrations, and knew that without a heater, there would be no way I could move at all. I had got to fix it, because there was no possibility of taking it to a garage.
It took ages, because some helpful enthusiast had thoughtfully taped it up, just out of reach, in the dark and utterly inaccessible hole at the back of the glove box. It would have been the work of a few moments to remove it if only a person possessed a spanner to undo the bolt holding the glove box together, but I didn’t, and had to fish about desperately, for what felt like forever, hopelessly trying to release it.
I can hardly tell you my relief when I finally tugged it free.
After that it was the work of a couple of minutes to replace the part and stuff it all back in, so untidily that I can promise you that the next time anybody unfastens the glove box clip, all of the wiring will just collapse out into the footwell, and anybody will be able to get hold of it.
I have got a working heater.
I have fixed it.
I retreated to my bedroom flooded with an absolutely liquid relief. The weather is going to be awful for the overnight drive, but if we have a heater, we will survive.
It is now two in the morning, and we are home and dry. Well, my hair is still wet, but that is because I have just got out of the shower.
I am tired, so I will give you the news in brief.
The dance show was ace. I have been trying, and failing, to add a photo, if I can’t manage it before I finish it will have to wait until tomorrow, but it was splendid. Oliver is an astonishingly good dancer, and got a special congratulation at the end for his efforts in persuading lots of other boys to dance as well, hurrah for Oliver. Then we set off for the long haul south.
Actually, most of the journey was pretty all right, with one or two excitingly snowy moments. Then it happened.
We were on the top of Shap Fell, one of the most bleakly desolate places in the known universe, in the rapidly falling snow and the bitter wind, when we got a flat tyre.
I was chilled to the bone in seconds.
It was not my finest hour.
I tried, unsuccessfully, to blow it up with the plug-in-pump and some tyre weld, but it was having none of it. Then we rang Mark, in Newcastle and woke him up, to ask if there was something I was doing wrong.
He said, sleepily, just to drive home on it and he didn’t care if it was completely trashed when we had finished.
We drove on, crashing and banging and crunching and clattering.
We had almost got home when it started to make such a dreadful noise that we knew we had to stop. Also there was a police car coming in the other direction, but fortunately he failed to notice and carried on pursuing other criminals.
There was no tyre left at all. We had to change the wheel. This was not as easy as it sounds. The spare wheel was jammed underneath the wheelchair ramp, underneath an huge stack of luggage, and wouldn’t come out. Then we had to jack the car up and get the bolts out, in the dark and the mud.
Fortunately it was not snowing in Windermere.
Lining up the bolts and the holes was not easy either. Wheels are heavy.
Oliver did almost all of it.
He seems to be completely unflappable. I was flapping and squeaking enough for a clutch of ducklings, but Oliver just got on with it, torch clutched between his teeth, until it was done. Then he explained why I couldn’t get the wheelchair ramp to go back, and fixed that as well, after which we hurled everything back in the car and drove home.
I was very proud, not to mention relieved. And exhausted. I am going to sleep right now.
It was a huge adventure.
Have a picture of a Youthful Hero. He is the one on the right. Obviously.
