The car has been making its funny noise again. So I took it back into the service place on Thursday to get them to look at it. The service dude rang me that afternoon, saying that one of the flange-gespacho defribulators seemed to be loose, thatlast time round the engine guys who had done the repair had only replaced one, and they all need to be checked, all eight of them, bless ’em. Of course I don’t actually remember what the real name of these things is, and I have no idea what their usual function is, apart from making annoying noises when they go wrong.
And so we were once again into the situation of the car triangle: me, the service place and the engine repair guys, who put the replacement engine in last year, and who thankfully have to repair it for free because it’s still under warranty. Problem is that ironically for people who specialise in engines, they are not exactly speedy, and there was no guarantee the car would be ready for the weekend, when I really needed it. I would have to drop it back on Monday.
Friday night rolled around, and I was at a kinda bar/cafe/restaurant place in Footscray (gunzel heaven, it sits above a major rail line, with passing trains a la Blues Brothers) withsome
great
people for some booze and some food. Mind you, Tony was a bit critical of the guacamole that came with the nachos. Not the real stuff, you see, not quite right. Lack of avocado. Why would I bother mentioning that? Keep reading.
For much of the weekend I was up in Seymour for the annual PTUA planning junket. Well, it would be a junket if we didn’t have to contribute so much time and towards the costs. And it was, say, on the Gold Coast, rather than at Seymour’s Commonground, a kind of mud brick hippy convention centre, set in a valley inhabited by kangaroos. Being in the middle of nowhere we drove up of course, and yes there is some irony in public transport advocates all piling into cars, but dammit there is no PT to where we were going, and we car-pooled, so none of your smart remarks.
I’ll spare you all the excruciating detail of planning a year’s activities for a community organisation, but Saturday night was worth mentioning for the Thai food (Seymour’s finest, no less), the wine, the mozzies (partially deflected by a heap of insect repellent), more wine thanks very much, night trampolining, yesh another glass of wine pleashe, star gazing, and eventually sitting around a big table outside in the warm air, quoting Simpsons and Monty Python, glugging down Bourbon and Coke (after the wine ran out) and eating chipsh and dipsh. Mind you, Tony (a completely separate Tony from Friday night’s Tony) was a bit critical of the “guacamole-style dip” we had got. Not the real stuff, you see, not quite right. Lack of avocado.
I guess Tonys are fussy like that.
On Sunday morning Mother Nature put on a show, as I was awoken by a huge thunderstorm working its way across the valley. A flash of light and a huge thunderclap immediately afterwards showed it was directly overhead at one point, and the rain gushed down. No, gushed is scarcely accurate. It was pissing down, making it a comfort to be indoors and under the covers.
After wrapping up we drove back from Seymour that afternoon, yacking away merrily, and the car made the distance okay despite the funny noise. It’s gone back to the service place now, and touch wood, will be fixed, ready, and no longer making the funny noise, sometime tomorrow.
