Grumbles and gasket.

Part nine and fifteen sixteenths

I’m still in bloody Suffolk, I still feel poorly and Himself is being obtuse as only Himself can. The car (not the Landrover) decided to throw a hose, eject quantities of coolant and start to heat up. As I a) cannot see the warning lights on the dash without craning and b) felt too shit to care anyway, I may well have cooked the engine and blown the head gasket, which means bye bye Berlingo L Himself has been full of prognostications of doom, and rather unhelpfully said ‘that’s what warning lights are for…’ as I clutched my mobile in one hand while trying to wrestle with the bonnet, grovel underneath and peer inside for the leak whilst pouring water into the reservoir, all one handed and while running a significant temperature. One of his nicknames isn’t ‘Rainman’ for nothing! This latest disaster has meant that I cannot plan my next trip to Ireland as Himself currently has custody of the Landrover. It also means that I have to walk to the current job. The dog is reasonably happy about this. I am less so. Since coming down with this bug, which started with enlarged and extremely painful glands in my neck and has subsequently meandered around my body making other things hurt, I haven’t had a single days rest. I have compensated by living on a mixture of Ibuprofen, codeine and wine (but just Ibuprofen during the day, the others don’t mix well with nailguns and assorted sharp objects). I think my brain may have gone a-wandering, focus is becoming harder to find. In my (possibly fevered) imagination, I am planning garden parties in Ireland, what shall we eat? What will I wear? How shall I decorate the event? (Ok, enough codeine now I think!) I am also using the house as a setting for murder mysteries (in my head of course), sort of Midsomer Murders in darkest rural Ireland. Speaking of dark, it seems to have eased up, the dark I mean. There has actually been some sunshine. Not enough to persuade me to remove a layer, but almost. The dog’s behaviour is a sort of barometer. She’s chilled and playful when it’s nice, which at the moment means any temperature above 10 degrees and without too much precipitation. When she’s feeling springlike, she goes and finds a stick to deconstruct. This stick is often bigger than her, and a pantomime of stick wrestling, complete with vocals ensues. This also brightens my day. She’s been very patient while I’ve been working. When not sunbathing she’s hunted moles (unsuccessfully), completely failed to spot a pair of large deer twenty feet away,  chased other dogs (and on one memorable occasion, a cat on the other side of some French doors), demolished sticks and generally kept guard. Today she played at being a tortoise and half lay under a little dinghy. 

Eventually we both had to take shelter in the boat I was working on as a thunderstorm swept in. She kept us both entertained by eating a butterscotch sweet, which is impossible to imagine unless you have a dog yourself.

All reports to date tell me that the weather in Ireland is just as crap and at least I have missed the joys of the ferry in a force 10.