Ok, first for the bad stuff. My car failed it's MOT on Wednesday. It needed 2 new tyres and it failed the emissions test. The garage suspected that it was an engine mis-fire that was causing the problem and after doing all the obvious stuff to sort it out, and failing, the garage finally came to the conclusion that it's not going to be financially viable to find and fix the problem and that the car is now basically only good for scrap. As you can imagine, I am really, really REALLY upset about this, not least because I had to pay the garage for the work they had done trying to fix the car and now I am £170 poorer and I still have no car.
For most people, although it would be an inconvenience they would at least be able to hop on a bus or a train to get to where they needed to go but as I live in the middle of nowhere, it's a 20 minute walk to my nearest bus stop and a 45 minute walk to the nearest train station. Ok, I know there will be people out there saying it's my own fault for choosing to live where I live and I appreciate that fact but nevertheless, with no money to buy another car it's going to be a difficult time over the next few weeks until I have scraped enough together to figure something out. Anyhow, as I have said before, I'm all for making lemonade when life chucks me a bag of lemons and with this in mind, I thought I would write a few blog posts about how I manage to live without a car living in the depths of Cornwall.
As my MOT doesn't officially run out until midnight tonight, I have spent the morning running around trying to get a few things sorted that I probably won't be able to do when the car is gone. I fetched 6 more 56ltr bags of compost so I can get my veg potted on into their final tubs, buckets and beds and I stocked up on loo roll, bread for freezer, milk, pasta and pesto and a few more essentials that I thought might be useful but from now on, all my shopping is going to have to be done online from the supermarket and delivered by a man in a van. I am going to have to be super organised too so I don't run out of anything because there will be no nipping to the shops if that happens. Not ideal I know, but not much I can do about it.
The main problem is going to arise when I try and do my monthly animal food shop. At the start of each month, on payday, I go and I buy everything I will need to keep my animals fed and happy. This means enough llama food, chicken food, dog food and cat food to last a whole month along with cat litter, dog treats, sawdust and hay. I know it sounds a bit bizarre but I at least have the peace of mind then, knowing that if things go a bit pear shaped financially, the animals will all be cared for. I also then know exactly how much I have in the kitty to budget with for that month. I have no idea how I am going to manage to get to the 4 different shops it takes to sort all this out. The bags of dog food weigh 12kg each, the llama food bags are 25kg each and the big slabs of cat food I buy have 12 cans in each and I buy 9 slabs each month .... and that's just for starters. It's going to be a total nightmare but it will be interesting to see how I manage. So ........ tomorrow will be day one without a car.
And now to the announcement.
Yesterday, I became a Granny for the first time :-) My daughter and her husband welcomed little Archie into the world just after lunchtime yesterday and although my poor daughter had to have a cesarean after being in labour for 36 hours, both mum and baby are doing brilliantly.
He weighed in at a healthy 8lb15oz :-)
Congratulations on the birth of your grandchild. Can you afford to rent a car to do your heavy shopping? We had a rental company here, Enterprise, that will bring the car out to your house.
ReplyDeleteFirst f all congratulations on your new grandson he looks beautiful , Hopefully i will become a granny in the next couple f years , If you have never done any on-line shopping before sainsburys and Tesco do big money of vouchers for first n line shops when we were without a car fr a few weeks i signed up for both of them and did one shop with each it might be worth a try in the meantime xxx
ReplyDeleteMany congratulations on the birth of your lovely Grandson! I do hope your daughter is soon feeling better and enjoying her little one.
ReplyDeleteBig commiserations on the demise of your car though, Kay. What a shock. I agree with shabbychic that online shopping might help in the short term until you can sort things out but the animal provisions will be a bit of a headache. Do you have a neighbour who might do the animal feed run with you if you chip in for some fuel? Or perhaps a family member might help as it's only once a month? Good luck anyway, hon x
Congratulations on the birth of your beautiful grandson and sorry to hear about your car - hope you manage to sort something out soon xxx
ReplyDeleteAny hope that the feed supplier would deliver? You'd probably have to pay but it would be a solution, and probably cheaper than hiring a vehicle unless you could also do lots of jobs on one day.
ReplyDeleteBut none of that will be nearly as important as drooling over your new grandson. Enjoy!
Congratulations on becoming a first time granny. We just had the same happen to us after giving up hope that we would ever be grandparents, and we are in our late sixties.
ReplyDeleteThe solutions offered above are all very helpful, and the Enterprise car rental sounds a good idea as they pick you up, you can do the chores and take your things home, and then drive back to Enterprise and they will then give you a ride home too. I do this when I go home and the Penryn Enterprise people are very obliging.
Most feed suppliers do deliver, but as you are in Cornwall - who knows? Things get done differently there it seems to me - spoken as a fervent Cornish supporter and home owner.
Thanks you for your lovely warm wishes about my new grandson and thank you for all the useful suggestions to the lack of car situation. I will be looking into all of them to see which will be the best option but so far, it's looking like bribing one of the neighbours with wine and chocolates to give me a lift to the shops is going to be the most likely plan :-)
ReplyDeleteI am catching up on my blog reading and this post is one of the first that I came across. Such wonderful news about the birth of Archie, many congratulations to all. Being a grandmother is amazing and such fun. Will you be granny, grandma or nanny? Xxxx
ReplyDeletePs shame about the car :(
congratulations on the new baby.bad news about the car. x
ReplyDeleteHave you considered getting Amazon Priime? It's around $90 a year and for that I get free shipping on nearly everything I buy from them. And I buy loads from them. We live 10 miles out of time and it's cheaper than driving into town.
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