On A Mission!

 It was a long day.  My car needed a service and an MOT (an annual road fitness test).  SO I booked and the idea was (I thought) get the service done so they can sort out anything that needs to be done and then test.  I knew it would be a couple of hours to do.  So I duly left the car and went into the local town (about 15 minutes walk) and did a circular walk, had breakfast, looked around some shops, walked up the river past the locks and weir, wandered around and came back, went for a coffee and basically spent 3 hours away before commencing walking back.

So when I get there, I see the car has been turned around facing a different way only to be told that the MOT is done but they haven't started on the service!  FFS, so another hour and a half to wait - to which I expressed my surprise as the email and text I had received didn't say this but had emphasized to be there when I had turned up!  SO I took myself off for a long walk (they did offer to put a film on but I declined) and so I walked the outer ring road and then down past the Mill and the Church and when I felt that I really was getting tired and didn't want to go around the blocks again I popped into one of the very old pubs.  I'm not drinking but they had a list of non-alcoholic beers available and my favourite one is Adnams Ghost Ship and at 0.5% it fits the bill and it's a nice tasting beer.  

I spent an hour having two delicious beers and catching up with the Crypto Market which, after all these years, has taken off again.  It's been an interesting ride and probably still will be - like a roller coaster on steroids! 

Anyway, finally I got a call and went and got my car which seems, for its age, to just need a few tweaks to get it back up and fighting fit.  It passed its emissions tests and that's what is annoying with all the ULEZ and LEZ zones.  If my car passes all the governments tests why should some snotty council clerk make me pay to drive into their area.  Which I don't anyway (except London which I can't avoid).  Well, I say London, it's not really, it's green countryside but that doesn't stop them.

Currently, I'm doing everything in my power to not pay parking, not pay LEZ and so on.  They can all go and sod right off.  If they could, they'd tax the air you're breathing. What I was encouraged by was that the majority of car parks in town (where they've put up prices and increased the time these are payable) were at best half full.  They always used to be packed and so maybe, they will see this loss of revenues.  Big name companies are showing signs of going bust and it appears to me that everyone is hunkering down after the budget and I'm sure that there will be a big fallout soon as prices have to go up and taxes too.  People aren't investing and so that is going to cause some problems further along the line.

I'm just being me and being stubborn and obstinate.  I'm sweeping my chimney later today so I can get my log burner ready for winter.  I hope to get that all functioning nicely ready for next week's cold snap!