A Random Blog About My Week

Having had a look back at my previous blogs recently, I noticed it has been over a year since I actually blogged about something about my boring life, besides all the driving lesson blogs, which I regret putting here, and I should have created a new blog site for them really, but what's done is done. The subject of this blog will be my past week. The highs and lows of the week more specifically.

Overall, last week was one of the better weeks I have had for some time. It included much more socialising than normal, it included much more spending of money than normal, it included good news more than normal and it included a bit more palaver than normal.

One of the main events of the week was the death of my car, which I had taken great care in naming 'Michelle'. Essentially, my car is an Orange (However, I think of it more as Terracotta) Nissan Micra. My thought process for naming it was that 'Mike' was similar to 'Micra', but due to it being the colour of fake tan, decided the car was female, and so 'Mike' became 'Michelle'. Anyway, Tuesday, Michelle died on a rough housing estate. Despite numerous attempts to get her going, nothing worked and we concluded the problem to be fuel related, seeing as no fuel was actually entering the engine, which I understand to be a fundamental element to move the car. It was time to call the recovery service.

I belong to Green Flag, not out of choice, just because it came free with my car insurance. Remember, other recovery services are available. Anywho, whilst I was sitting by the side of road, being on hold, their music of choice was 'Aretha Franklin - Rescue Me'. Certainly proves that there are a few people left who have a sense of humour. It certainly made me laugh during an otherwise sad event. When I eventually got through, you have to give them so many details to prove who you actually are, that you begin to forget while you phoned up in the first place. Anyway, half hour later, my saviour in the big truck with flashing lights arrived, and concluded the problem to be the lack of fuel entering the engine, which I understand to be a fundamental element to move the car...

The man in the big truck with flashing lights couldn't fix the problem, thus it was time to for the big truck to pull Michelle to a place where she could be saved - my local garage. This meant I got to go home in a big truck with flashing lights. The man was great though, and very talkative and just generally lovely. When Michelle was in a safe place, and it was time for the man in the big truck with flashing lights to go off and save someone else, I gave him a tip of a few pounds. Nothing makes me feel more pompous than giving someone money for doing their job, but I felt in a kind mood.

Michelle ready to be towed away

So, Wednesday came and the dreaded words 'We'll try to look at it today' were uttered from the lips of the Mechanic, who was strangely very dirty for 8am. Essentially, if a Mechanic ever says those words to you, you can almost guarantee that they won't even touch the car that same day. This meant Wednesday, I was house bound with no Michelle. How I missed her.

Thursday came, and still no car and no news. Thursday was also the day most 18 year olds dreaded - results day. I had planned to spend results day driving around, but instead had to resort to asking my Dad for lifts and lots of walking - I had blisters on my feet thanks to Michelle selfishly dying. Anywho, despite the walk to school to get the results being in the rain, it was a generally great day, aided by the fact I was actually happy with my results. In my head, I had already predicted that I would get a C in English, which is exactly what I got. I feared I would get a lower mark, but felt I deserved a higher grade, but was more than happy with my average C grade.

This is how the news regularly represents exam results. I have never seen this actually happen...

In amongst the happiness though, I was still angry, bitter and depressed. Those of you who are followers of my blogs, my Twitter or my life, will be more than aware that I got Chicken Pox this year - during exam season. This meant I missed an important exam, and of course couldn't receive my Photography results this year (or ICT, but I postponed them out of choice, in that I may as well make use of having an extra year at school). Collecting my one result was a lovely reminder of the fact I had another year of school to look forward to. I don't think I will ever forget the time when I got Chicken Pox.

My happiness was aided a little bit more with the news that the garage had actually begun to look at the car and believed the problem to be a wiring fault; nothing too expensive. Oh, and Ice Cream and company helped in making me even happier. Essentially, by the end of Thursday, I was a lot happier than I expected myself to be.

Friday came and I was still happy, but without Michelle and heard no more news. By about Mid-afternoon, I got fed up and phoned up the garage. The news I received made me smile. Michelle was alive and ready to return home! The fault ended up not being the fuel pump or wiring as people predicted, but instead the 'Engine Control Relay'; a little blue plug which acts as a switch in the circuit. A hard thing to diagnose I was told. I was made even happier by the price. Sure, it was still a lot, but less than anyone had predicted. The Mechanic enjoyed the challenging of diagnosing Michelle so much, that he only charged a small price for labour. Pompous Stuart came out again and gave the lovely man a tip (as well as paying the bill obviously), in return for my keys.

The little blue b*****d that tried to kill Michelle

Happy I was. After being without my car for three days, I took Michelle for a little spin around the local roads and then returned home to clean her - with a vacuum cleaner and polish, something I haven't done since the day I passed my driving test, which was over 5 months ago now. By Friday evening, I was very happy. The thing is I've not even touched Michelle since she came back. Why is it you want something really bad when you cannot have it, but as soon as you can have it, don't want it?

Other things have happened in between and since then. My week hasn't just consisted of my car breaking down and getting my one A-level result, which would be boring. Not much else has happened granted, but that is not the point. Other things in my week have made my mood change from happiness to depressed in moments, and vice-versa, but I don't want to talk about that.

So, that was last week. What does this week have install for me? Well, it may include a little bit of pubbing and definitely horse riding - not on the same day though, that is just plain stupid and dangerous.

First It Was Ash Friday, Now It's Ash April

The first few weeks of April remained pretty quiet. We had Easter, and people ate lots of eggs, before complaining that they had eaten lots of eggs. I think Easter is actually a very intriguing part of the year. I think that Easter is actually a more important, momentous and a generally better religious holiday - beating Christmas. Easter doesn't change days every year to confuse people; it stays in the same place every year. Okay, it is the same Sunday of every year, and occasionally it finds its way into March, but still. It is a more relaxing holiday, without people spending a month prior to the event, worrying.

I prefer Easter I think, whereas years ago I preferred Christmas. Maybe this is because I have become less superficial, or possibly because I like Chocolate. It isn't either of those reasons. I now prefer Easter as the weather is nicer and it just is generally a more relaxed holiday. You still find shops open on Christmas day. If you are lonesome at Christmas, you can walk around Tescos and do your shopping with all the other lonely sods yearning for human contact. Easter day, you can't (as far as I am aware anyway). You have to spend the day with family and friends without the option of going clothes shopping. However, you could always stay at home and sit at the laptop all day while eating the occasional bit of chocolate as I did.

April was also a sad month for me. The band Supergrass announced they would be splitting up. A band not many people have heard of these days, but you can guarantee that most people have heard a few of their songs. 'Alright' and 'Grace' are favourites for advertisers and television producers wanting a happy and cheery song to match their images.

Anyway, really those three paragraphs are just a waste of binary because neither Easter nor Supergrass breaking up were important events of April. I think we can conclusively say that Iceland and their impossibly pronounced Volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, shutting down the world was a reasonably big event for April. For a very small island, they are an angry bunch of people. First during the recession they effectively stole a lot of Britain's money and refused to give it back. Now, they try to not only shut down our country, but the whole of Europe, and the USA for a bit.

I done Geography at school, but I still do not know a great deal about Volcano's. Infact, I am very ignorant towards them, but of course here in Britain we don't get affected by Volcano's. Our country being shut down by a Volcano then is quite an unusual and a history-making event. 2010 clearly is the year in which the UK is not meant to travel. We go the first three months with snow constantly being in the news about it stopping people from travelling anywhere using pretty much any mode of transport. Then April has a cloud of ash coming from another country which stops us from travelling by plane. Maybe this is all just a lead up to 2012 when the planes fall from the sky, the boats sink and all the trains and cars are uncontrollable and all crash. Or maybe it is just coincidence.

Hundreds of thousands of people were stranded abroad and the radio was full of people phoning up to tell them their tale in the hope that someone might phone up and go "Yeah, I’ll go and pick your family up from Spain for you. Wouldn't want them to miss your daughter’s wedding would we and you're obviously so selfish you refuse to do it yourself." It is times like this where people’s true personalities shine through. Some were stupid and lazy enough to sleep at the airport for a week - just incase they were lucky enough to get a flight. Some caught buses and trains to get to airports which would take them closer to home where they could catch a train back to Ashford and go home from there. These were the determined, clever and rich people.

Then there were those that were damn right kind. While sitting at home doing my work, I heard many stories of people driving half way across the world just pick their loved ones up to go back home. There were also stories of people giving complete strangers a life home in their cars. There were other stories of people who had a few days off work, offering to go and pick people up. These are the heart warming stories of David Cameron's 'Broken Britain'. What did the Government do? Nothing for a few days, before they sent some war ships across the world to pick people up. These are the scenes I expect to see when War Of The Worlds come true, with the soundtrack playing all the time through some speakers.

The cloud sat over Britain for much of the week (insert depressing metaphor about clouds and a gloomy feeling here).  However, it was still a very sunny and hot week, and I found this slightly odd. I'm being told that about 4 miles up in the sky is a gigantic ash cloud, and all I can see is a blue sky, a sun and no planes. It made for an unusual sky. Another thing which I am sure the ash cloud changed, but no-one else can answer me, is the moon. During the period of 'The Cloud' the full moon had a distinctive red, ominous, shaded glow around it. I only speculate that this was caused by the cloud, but I would love it if someone who knows the answer could tell me...

Anyway, Iceland has cost us a lot of money. Firstly, the money lost in their banks during the recession when they collapsed and secondly all the palaver from 'The Cloud'. All that money wasted by passengers trying to get home or having to pay for accommodation. The money spent by airlines and holiday companies trying to get people home. Then of course the most painful for our economy, the money lost through no flights. I think the costs were in the edge of a billion, but I can't be bothered to research, and like proper journalists, I just write what I've heard. There was one company that profited from this, and it was RyanAir. It was revealed that it was cheaper for them to cancel all flights and refund their customers than it was to pay wages and for fuel. What an odd company...

Then there was all this hoo-ha about insurance. Were they going to pay or not? It is depended on whether it was an act of God or not. How do you decipher whether events which caused a lot, and will continue to, cause a lot of mayhem and chaos is an act of a religious creation? It certainly is an odd system which we have here. We have a country full of cynics and atheists, yet blaming an idea created by a religion means they do not have to pay out. As you can gather - I'm not religious and I don't care much for Iceland either. What can I say, I don't care about religion and I prefer Tesco's. I know everyone's made supermarket jokes about all this, but I hadn't, so I'm happy now.

As seems to always be the way in my blogs at the moment, I turn to Facebook. There have been numerous groups created, making light of another event in media. Some make jokes like my previous one: 'Volcano's in Iceland. What's Next, Earthquakes In ASDA?' Others were actually funny, like the one I joined: 'Whos laughing at Peter Griffins Volcano Insurance now?' which actually relates to the current situation and to Family Guy. People making Facebook groups should learn. Actually, people should stop making Facebook groups all together. It's campaigning for lazy people. Anyway, off topic.

Speaking of Volcano's, I have 'erupted' into Chicken Pox; thus why this blog is over a week late. Sorry about that; was not intentional. However, just a quick plug for those who care about me and want to know how I've been getting on (and I would not blame you if you did not want to - it is not exactly the most thrilling thing in your life), you can read my Chicken Pox blog here: http://chickenpoxat17.blogspot.com/

I hope you are not too fat from Easter, upset about Supergrass or stranded now or later by Eyjafjallajokull.