Hiking O'Hara

Just dropped my van off for its MOT. Its going to be a long, anxious day. My last van failed its MOT massively and ended up going to the scrapheap in the sky. But this time, it’s my full-time home, so if its fucked, I’m fucked.

My mechanic is confident it’ll pass, from what he’s seen of it, but that doesn’t calm my nerves. It was originally booked in for a full service first, but I can’t afford that now, after a winter of things needing repairing. So, the actual appointment isn’t till 3pm.

Currently I’m set up in a Costa, but I have 6 hours to kill before I find out the results. 6 hours of trying to distract myself, 6 hours of barely managed anxiety, 6 hours of trying to think the best but fearing the worst.

I’ll probably go for a walk at some point, (I mean, why not, I have time) and swap locations for lunch. I’ll come back later and finish this blog…

Later

So, not great news. Failed the MOT. The rear brake alignment is off, and the handbrake is ‘faulty’.

Thanks to the lovely folks at my garage, I can camp out for the night in their carpark, and they’ll try and get everything fixed and re-tested tomorrow. So I guess this will be a multi-day blog post! (I did however go for that walk!)

The next day…

Well, the keys were handed back to the mechanic at 9am this morning. He pulled the van in and got to work immediately, thank gods. I decided to forgo another day in a coffee shop, and instead stayed in the waiting room of the garage.

The lovely lady there kept me supplied with coffee and let me use a plug, so I did some reading and watched some YouTube. I wish that their great dane wasn’t such a scaredy-pup and would let me fuss him, as doggy cuddles make everything better.

Anyway, he finished the repairs at about 11am, but the test centre couldn’t fit us in till 1pm. Which kinda sucked, not gonna lie.

But SHE PASSED!

Finally. Some good news.

So relieved to have that done with for another year. Now I just have to find the money for my tax and insurance which are due in a couple of weeks… But thats future-Jays problem.

Thanks for reading!