The other day I was bragging about the fact that I have yet to work between Christmas and New Year – although I think calling it bragging is somewhat uncharitable, it was more just stating a fact about something I feel quite strongly about, namely that I do not want to work in that period – call this random if you like, but that is simply the way it is.
Be that as it may, the reality is that I found myself having to do various things over in the yard every day this week, just quickly do this and just quickly get that done, so you might want to take the above with a pinch of salt…
One of the small chores I wanted to get sorted was to take the VW Crafter in to be serviced. I thought this would be a good idea as it is less disruptive than doing so during work time and hey, it’s easy! I thought. So I fixed an appointment last Tuesday to take it round to the garage – shouldn’t take more than an hour or so, I thought.
There has been a switch with the local VW dealership, so it is a new garage we are dealing with, but that is not a problem, I looked it up on the map and drove round (The Crafter, I have to add, is about the size of a smallish aircraft carrier, I have considered painting a big H in a circle on the back so that the helos know where to land). So anyway, I found the garage in an industrial estate just outside Basel, and fiddled the vehicle up a number of tight ramps and twists and turn in order to get to the service area. I rock up to the desk and explained the lady I have an appointment for a service on this vehicle. She looked at me, totally non-plussed. We went back and forth for a couple of minutes, just for me to realize I was suffering from a major onslaught of fuzziness and had come to the wrong garage – the one I wanted was 200 meters further along the road. Duh. I sheepishly extracted myself from the office to make a speedy getaway.
Well, I say speedy… when in actual fact the getaway started with a thousand-point turn to point the Crafter in the right direction. Once I had managed this, it was back down the ramps and over to the other place.
The garage I wanted was the Grosspeter garage. Gross Peter? Sounds like a guy called Pete with… a big wart on his face (whoops, I probably should not be making fun of people with big warts on their faces in view of Motörhead’s Lemmy just having passed away, RIP). I pulled up on their parking place a bit self-consciously, feeling a bit of a twit – but hey, they don’t know I have just been on a cruise to the wrong garage, so I collected myself and went in and repeated my spiel about the appointment to the lady behind the counter. A mechanic came over and told me that they cannot service the aircraft carrier here, as it is too big. The receptionist explained to me that this is why they ask customers to send the papers, so that they can decide where to do the work. I DID scan and send the papers, I replied to this, on the same day that we made the appointment – but it transpired that no, the e-mail had never arrived… probably still whizzing around somewhere in the electronic wasteland we call the internet. Ahhh, the joys of our modern communication technologies! They make our lives so much easier. Not.
So anyway, next I drove the vehicle over to the place they service commercial vehicles, where finally they could get to work. I, meanwhile, cycled home through freezing fog.
These antics took up a bit more time than merely one hour.
The following day I went round to pick the Crafter up. I drove it back to the yard and parked next to one of our other vehicles. No no, I think, that is a little bit too close, so I reversed out again – and as I was doing so, I managed to clip the plastic part of the wing mirror and the cover broke off. Arghhhhh! Wing mirrors! Who needs them, totally over-rated anyway. Thankfully I as alone in the yard, being an idiot… because after all, NOBODY ELSE WORKS BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR! ? The damage was not too bad, just the plastic threads of the cover snapped off, blinker and mirror were ok.

So I phoned the folk at the Grosspeter garage, very sheepishly by now, to say that, yes, indeed I had just been there and that I now had just had a teeny weeny incident with a wing mirror and could I come by. So yesterday afternoon I went round again and ordered the part.
Guess what? This morning I am going around AGAIN to fit it.
Hello? Whatever happened to easy?!
Thank goodness I do not work between Christmas and New Year, I would have struggled to fit any work in around my busy schedule of blunders and fuzziness!