Momentous Moments

Yesterday was momentous for two reasons - firstly because we finally got the Playstation 3 working, and secondly because we bought a car. Now, but my reckoning, if we have a bought a car, we must live here - so it all must be real.

Buying a car wasn't easy on account of the fact that we had got the Playstation working and therefore had to surgically remove the children from it before we could go out. It was also troublesome because we don't know very much about any of the models we saw, so we went to a garage, test drove a car we liked the look of and was the right price and then bought it. Probably not a text book method for spending such a lot of money, but it seems to have worked because when we looked up the car on What Car later, it seemed it was rather a good car, and at a good price (well - by English standards). So the car we have bought is a 2005 Kia Sorrento. Never heard of it? No neither had we.....but I have included a picture to help you. Lol. Ours is a kind of goldy colour (I think) and it's all leather with walnut trim. Most importantly it has a 6 CD changer and a roof rack for Andrew's surf board (as now we are Australian, Andrew is a groovy surf dude....). I will be mainly driving it, as Andrew will be getting the Express Bus to work, so it is important that I like it - and I do.

As part of buying the car, we had to sit through a sales pitch regarding all sorts of external and internal treatments to protect the car from the horror of salty air and acidic bird poo. Andrew looked pretty tortured throughout as he really hates anyone trying to sell him anything (and God help anyone who tries) and I buried my head in a magazine and tried to look like none of it had anything to do with me. Left to my own devices, I would listen politely then buy everything on offer, horrified at the potential embarrassment involved in saying no. Andrew just said no and added that he hates being sold anything. I felt particularly bad as the woman trying to sell the stuff was about 11 months pregnant and clearly her child might be born into poverty if she doesn't sell enough of these treatments.....

A pleasant surprise was that to ensure the car for the two of us, fully comp and without any claims history will cost $600 - the equivalent of about £250. Luckily they didn't ask about how often I have crashes, so I didn't need to tell them about my recent crash on the M42 causing £7000 worth of damage to Andrew's Mercedes (not my fault) and then about the subsequent crash I had two days later in the hire car provided by the insurers (also not my fault). Otherwise they might not have insured me at all.

Apart from purchasing the car and playing on the playstation, nothing much else happened, apart from marvelling at the rain (which is not exactly a novelty for us). However, I am able to share some interesting snippets of information with you - for example, did you know that there are more chickens than there are people in the world (which is not good news for avian flu)? Or that mosquitos are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas? Or that Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns? Now, I imagine you are wondering how I could be such a font of scintillating news. Well, I can tell you that I have gleaned all this from the packaging of sanitary towels. Someone out there in Australia obviously thought - how boring to have to take a sanitary towel out of its packaging. What women need is some interesting snippets of information on there to liven the process up! Sigh. Obviously - now I know I can be educated at that time of the month, I'm almost looking forward to it.....