Tag Archives: Driving

Open letter to the Highways Agency

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Dear Mr Highwayman

Please take note of the following points and act accordingly:

1. When you set up a contraflow system, give me plenty of warning you are about to divert a lane so that I have time to pull into the correct lane in order to get off the motorway at my usual junction

2. At the NEXT junction, bearing in mind I just missed my usual exit place due to lack of road signage, don’t stick up a BIG sign saying WORK ACCESS right next to the exit. This will confuse me

3. At least give me some idea where to get off now, I don’t want to go North but that’s what the next exit says

3. Don’t fill the whole road up with an array of cones, misleading signs and trucks. It’s not an obstacle course, it’s a motorway

Oh, and going back to the time I was returning from my holiday late at night the other week:

4. Don’t decide to close a slip road that I want to get off at and omit to tell me the junction beforehand so I have to go MILES and MILES out of my way to get back to where I wanted to be

And finally:

5. Hurry up and finish these bloody road works! I am developing cone-phobia and an intense hatred of signs

yours sincerely

Mrs Angry from Essex

There.

I think that should sort it

The curse of the wobbly pollen filter

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Having sorted out the mystery of the faulty central locking system on my car, I started noticing a KERCLUNKING sort of noise on closing the door.  I did the obvious – checked that there was nothing rattling around in the glove compartment or the side pockets and established it wasn’t anything silly like that

I decided to pretend it wasn’t happening until it got to the point where I couldn’t start the car one day.  This attitude is probably not the most sensible (it resulted in a cam belt disaster on my previous motor) but it is how I roll…..

So anyway, this afternoon I left a meeting, got into my car, and was greeted by the now strangely comforting KERCLUNK when I shut the door.  What I didn’t expect was the KNOCKITY KNOCK noise that went on for a couple of minutes after that

Oooo dear, I thought.  Something is about to FALL OFF

Always the risk taker though, I decided it wasn’t going to stop me going home

However, at some point during my journey, after remembering the horrific moment when my cam belt broke and I ‘fizzled’ to a stop on a motorway, I started to worry again 

I convinced myself the car was veering to the right (I did this by letting go of the steering wheel and observing the direction the car went in – it went to the right – the fact we were on a bend is neither here nor there)

By the time I was almost home I decided that something MUST have fallen off the steering mechanism – it was the only explanation!

So I phoned my garage, who know me well, and asked if I could swing by (in a veering rightward sort of way)

After a lot of door shutting and opening and a bit of a fiddle about, they decided that I probably have a ‘wobbly pollen filter’. Ok, they didn’t say that exactly but that’s my interpretation of it

I haven’t a clue what that means

But it isn’t life-threatening. Or, indeed, car threatening

I have to use the ‘recycle’ facility on my air vent system for the next few days and see if it stops.  If it does, we’re laughing.  New pollen filter and it’s sorted.  I now feel very eco-friendly, using my ‘recycle’ facility.  Even though I am now having to breathe in OLD air 

If it doesn’t stop, well, they’ll get to the bottom of it I suppose.  As long as nothing falls off in the meantime….

Stupid car