Mobile Mayhem, and the Suzuki starts to come back together

I needed to phone a chap about a replacement windscreen today, but needless to say, the phone's battery was flat and I couldn't find the charger.

Minutes after emailing Jackie, I found it, plugged the phone in, and rang the windscreen man.

He said he'd ring me back with a quote for a new screen as he thought Grunty Fen were grunting a bit loudly asking £35 for a secondhand one.

I left the phone charging on the ledge by the open shutters so I would still have a signal and hear the call when it came. Needless to say, on returning from the bathroom, the mobile was in the water, still plugged in to the charger, it's electrics totally fried.

Instead of swearing, panicking, giving up and going back to bed, (or a combination of all three), I coolly removed the sim card, dried it off, and put it in Jackie's old phone, which I then plugged in to charge.

It worked!!!!

Big deal, you might say. But this was a major achievement for a man who's understanding of phones stops at nice big heavy bakelite ones attached to the wall by coilly wire.

So I don't think I did too badly, considering.

I checked my voicemail and picked up a message from Windscreen Man, rang him back, and agreed to his quote of £85+vat. He's coming to fit it Monday 9.30-10.00ish. I've cleared it with our landlord, so no problems.

So, down one phone through being stupid, but all in all okay.

I've spent the rest of today fiddling with the battery tray arrangement I'm improvising to replace the one which had completely rotted away beneath the old battery.

The Honda bits I got have been persuaded to fit, but I need some off-cuts of steel to bend to bracket-shapes to secure it.

A trip to Emmaus yielded naught, but nothing daunted, I sloped off to the tip to see what I could find.

Well, not much in the way of sheet steel, but I did come away with a nice vintage felt-lined steel sliding-drawer engineers toolbox and a small roasting dish (which will be ideal for catching the oil dripping fom the leaking gearbox seal).

£3.00? Sorry, Jackie, it just had to be done.....