Mr Fridge Happy Again, then Anxious then Embarrassed.

Mrs Fridge read yesterday’s entry and despite my eating half her chocolate egg she made efforts to repair my broken self by serving up spicy potatoes wedges with the chicken and green beans (we do eat healthily) last night. She even demonstrated her love for me by eating half of them herself!

Lydia Montana (my lovely car – see November 2007) is in for a service today and I am actually waiting and half expecting a call from Mr Murieston’s garage for him to tell me that I have a hairdresser's car and tell me my car is in need of big repairs and needs “At least a thousand” pounds worth of work : what do you expect from a Hearts FC fan? If it feels like this for a car then when Mrs Fridge is giving birth then I may well have to give up ideas of waiting for her to text me of the sex of the baby while I am in the bar and actually be with her when Ice Cube is ready to enter this world!

Mr Fridge is actually a little embarrassed : last night at 8pm Mrs Fridge asked me if I was going to Karate class. I had got my days mixed up, probably due to her day off on Monday and the chip fiasco, and thought it was Monday! Oh well. Seeing as the class started at 8pm I was a bit late.

Post Script : Lydia fine and Mr Murieston did a great job despite being a Hearts fan.

Old Man Monday

Oh God!!!! I have to remove to two huge eyebrow hairs and one of them was grey! They were thick and wiry and not like the rest of my eyebrow hairs at all. I had to use the trimmer I use to trim rogue nasal hairs. This aging thing is not quite what I expected, not that I had any great thoughts of it in my younger days. It takes longer to have injuries and cut and bruises heal and I occasionally make noises when I sit down. I have yet to find music just a noise and I think that many people think 'Girls Aloud' and 'Take That' are crap regardless of age.

You may have noticed the nasal hair trimmer's - I do need them and I do not put that down to age - more to hairs growing and I breath so they will be pushed down, like solitary trees that grow with the wind on hills and moors. Most definitely not aging.

I also got Lydia back from having some 'snagging' repaired from the garage where I got her from a few months ago. They ended up replacing the clutch and I think that may have made a difference to the transmission as it now accelerates about 40% quicker! I just wish I had not found that out accelerating out of a roundabout.

Parking Ticket Appeal

My first posted comment from a very helpful Neil Herron whose link to a site he recommended and I have included : Great info on Parking Ticket appeals which is really worth having a look through.

Thank you Neil.

Well I got my car, Lydia, back from the garage this morning. I bought her a few months ago and she had a bad passenger window wind noise and some judder in first and reverse gear. She had had a full 'blue-chip' check over and they missed that the clutch had to be changed! Hmmmm. Otherwise the service from the company has been great and the wind-noisy window is now quiet. She's lovely to drive and I never appreciated heated seats before. I must be getting older as such 'luxury's' never bothered me in the past. Still, I may be getting older, or just progressing through life, but I will still never vote conservative! Bad experience with them growing up - called the 80's and the 90's.

As a Scot I have been annoyed of late with the so called 'British' press. If you buy a London based paper or watch debate programs on TV - all channels except ITV which apparently only cares about London and circket and loves the Telegraph and also loves the Tories. Anyway, depending on what you read then us Scots get more money and everything free unlike England and Wales. It's not true but it depends on what statistics you get but the most recent I saw showed that Northern Ireland gets most, followed by London then Scotland. Hmmm. Could the Tory leaning papers, following the Tories themselves, be trying to stir up a divided UK and have Scotland leave the UK? How many people have looked through to the other side I wonder - without Scotland then Labour and Lib Dems would have significantly less MPs therefore a conservative English government looks much more likely. Power through division and manipulation. Can you imagine being governed by Cameron and - no names spring to mind . . .erm . . Boris Johnson. Oh -Oliver Letwin. So unengaged with the public! Never mind. As a Scot I was once pro-union but I have been moved towards Independence. Ireland do well, so with our natural resources and potential for renewable energies then I think we should. What does Westminster get for us apart from 2 wars and restriction of freedoms and liberty and the encouragement of a climate of fear. Perhaps a better solution would be for London to leave the UK and then let the rest of England to get on with it with us Scots and Welsh and Northern Irish too.

That was very serious of me there.

Q. My was George Michael's mouth all messy with chocolate?
A. Because he had been careless with his wispa.

Parking Tickets

I had to appeal a parking ticket that was incorrectly issued to me on Sunday Morning!!! You can see poor Lydia (my car) with her ticket on her window. I live in Edinburgh and the traffic wardens work for a private company that are contracted by Edinburgh District Council. They have a reputation for not caring and putting tickets out hoping that people will not appeal them and then they rake in the easy money! In the past people have received tickets while getting their parking ticket from the vend machines, an ambulance has been ticketed, a police car and even a hearse!!!! Charming! They wear blue uniforms and are known as, 'Blue Meanies'. Well. That is the polite name - more of an alliteration goes on with them.

To be fair, I have had mixed experiences with them - some of them have been very nice and helpful, especially in 1999 (when they started) when I was wrongly issued a ticket for being on a yellow for 5 minutes (you are allowed 10). I checked with a Warden and he marked the time so I was less than happy when I return to see a second Warden writing me a ticket. Luckily the first Warden appeared and he confirmed the time leaving the second Warden hanging and speechless - his paperwork and his problem. Good guy and a bad guy. Good guy won the day for me.

Anyway, I got a ticket for something that had no signage therefore another Warden I asked said it should not have been issued - seems like some of these people put out tickets and hope they will not be challenged. I challenged today and expect it to be cancelled. If not then I may be happy to go to court over it. Brave words! We shall wait and see if the cancel or if I bottle it.