It was my afternoon for volunteering at Attingham Park. The shift was more chaotic than usual due to unexpected quantity of volunteers and one volunteer stayed later than usual. The usual smooth teamwork was a little disjointed.
After my shift I went for a walk as I often do. I chose the mile walk, although I wasn’t able to do the extended mile walk because one of the pathways is closed. I took a detour to the suspension bridge where I chose the mysterious sign ‘Short Cut’ which follows a pathway through the deer park, over the stone bridge and back to the mansion. As I neared the mansion, I noticed a few sprinkles of moisture in the air but thankfully the ominous grey cloud chose not to open the flood gates.
Back at home, I noticed a lady standing between our house and our neighbours’ house writing what looked like notes of some sort. When I opened my door, I found a business flyer with a personally penned note on the back suggesting (with a price quote) what gardening services she could help us with.
After a while Mr C went out to purchase ingredients for the evening’s meal. Normally I would go with him but on this occasion, I decided to stay at home. Mr C was away longer than I thought he would be… Then I received a phone call. He had broken down on the supermarket car park with no ignition to the car and a smell of petrol.
He sorted himself out by paying the RAC for roadside assistance. Within minutes a patrol arrived and quickly identified the problem as loose fuel injectors. The problem couldn’t be fixed on the spot but the car was towed home to be fixed a few days later on our driveway at home.
Back home, Mr C brought the shopping in for me to sort out whilst the car was unhitched from the tow bar and sorted out the paperwork. A few minutes later Mr C charged into the house in a spin. The car engine was on fire and he needed water to damp down the flames. He dashed back several times with bowls of water as I dialled 999, thankfully, after a few questions about car fuel type and where the vehicle was located in relation to our house, the fire brigade arrived within minutes.
By the time the fire brigade arrived the fire was out, although the car’s engine was still smoking heavily. The fire brigade made the car safe, temperature wise, so the leaking fuel would not reignite and helped push the car from the middle of the road onto our drive.
The RAC patrol man had said it would be safe to fire up the engine to back the car onto the drive (but it wasn’t!) and in the moment had forgotten that he had fire extinguishers that would have extinguished the fire much more quickly and easily.
With the car battery removed for safety reasons by the fire brigade the car is now dead and positioned slightly awkwardly on our driveway making it difficult to get my car on and off the drive.
I think the ‘mystic ethers’ are playing with us; this is the latest of several, mostly electrical, oddities that have occurred in 2025…
Gosh! I hope you can get the car sorted out soon and you manage to get yours on and off the drive!
We are waiting on the RAC. The fault of the car catching fire lies with them but we will see what they come up with.
I am struggling with getting my car on and off the drive without bouncing it down the curb. It doesn’t help that one of my neighbours often has a car parked in just the wrong place for me to back off my drive easily at the best of times. They always have an empty space on their drive where they could park the car!
There are simply too many cars on the road.
I think the UK should follow Singapore to introduce Certificate of Entitlement (CoE),
to limit the number of cars. So ordinary people cannot afford to buy cars, but the government of Singapore are very clever. They make their public transport very cheap and very reliable. I miss my old days in Singapore.
Public transport in the UK has been problematic since the Beeching train cuts. Our public transport could and should be improved but that simply wouldn’t work for more rural areas.