Often, during very busy periods, one longs for a time when one is not at the mercy of a very exacting schedule. The choral course was a bit like that - very busy, especially if one also had a house and dogs to see to. I am not sure even if car troubles had not intervened, and I had a forced period of being dependent on others for lifts, I would have been able to keep up the pace.
Well, I found myself longing for periods of pottering, book reading, télévision watching and generally loafing about my house, with the odd potter down to the village, much in the same way that a busy working mother must find herself longing for a good night's sleep. But, thanks mostly to the car, the pleasant loafing time did not happen. For one thing it might in theory be possible to have a pleasant stroll, but having to combine exercising one's dogs with buying groceries does not constitute a potter, if one of the dogs is not easy to walk with.
Honda's idea of walks and mine are different. My idea is to take dogs who walk obendiently at my side, then as I let them off have a jolly good sniff round doing their own thing and always come back when called. Honda's idea is to pull ahead for her life's worth (she might be missing something?) and then when I put her on a long lead she charges off, this time legitimately, because I want to give her a bit of freedom, but she is still pulling on the lead.
One of the tasks I accomplished on the Monday morning was the collection of a parcel at the post officd (it only opens for two hours in the morning) which was as 'figure of 8' dog lead which ties round the dog's neck and then round the dog's nose. I was really exciteD a) to have completed and b) to have got a solution which might work. It does work in the sense that it prevents dogs pulling, but they dont like the way it covers the nose. So when I now take H for a walk, I am always having to balancd her dislikd of the Halti with my dilike of her pulling. I tried to persuade her to listen to reason, but did not get very far.
Any way, having at least got her a lead where there was a small chance she might give me a slight respite from her usual pulling, I felt a sense of achievement.
That slight triumph was short-lived - I mean not the fact that I had bought Honda a lead which solved her pulling problem, although it hasnt, but I then discovered that the insurance hadn't rung me, so I rang the insurance broker who said I should chase the AA, which I did and from whom I got little clear result. So in the end I spoke with the garage direct and persuaded them to come up with a written estimante. Thank heavens for speaking French! The next day the phoned to say they needed some special implement to check the tyres which we enventionally found our was the wheel locks, but for the moment I felt in a deep linguistic morass.
Jean Charles very kindly came to lunch to take me to Rennes airport, and I picked up a little Renault Twingo, the cheapest hire car I could find, which got me around when my car was being repaired. The garage emailed me through an estimante late Tuesday night, which I forwarded to the insurers.
Waiting for the insurers then became a nightmare, not because they took particulalry long - in fact, I think Service was the model of customer support. My friend Simon said that I should sell it off as scrap metal, and buy a new car, several of which he found. However, it would have entailed a trip back to england which would have been costly and difficult to leave the dogs when so many people o away and the kennels are full.
When they came back to me on Thursday with a settlement of over £24000, I was relieved and overjoyed and told the garage to get on with mending m car.Hsd the insurance want me to write jt off, I would have had to go back the UK to get a new one, which would have been a great hassle, although my dear friend Simon proposed several cars to me, which was a great help.
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