Christmas Complications

We live in a group of houses that has a stream running behind it and a hard surface area in front.  It is like the letter E with an absent middle bar.

We live at number 6 and for the past 12 years, at Christmas, Caroline has, with the permission of the other owners, hung a string of soft, warm, white lights around the bottom of the roofs of the four houses that makes up our block, facing the courtyard area.  45 metres of Christmas delight.

In her opinion, and grudgingly, mine too, they look quite nice.

Last week, when Caroline retrieved the lights from their storage cupboard, she found a fault.  The socket at the end of the chain of lights that enters the transformer that goes into the three-point plug, was cracked and falling off.  

A message on the box was very clear, stating that if such a thing were to happen, no attempt should be made to repair them and they must be thrown away.

Caroline, confident that her grade A in Advanced Level Physics was enough to protect her from harm, decided to ignore that instruction,.

“I’ll fix them,” she said.

“Are you sure you should try,” I asked.  "It states very clearly that you shouldn’t.”

Caroline scoffed.  

“They tell you to throw them away because they want you to buy another set,” she assured me.  

“It’s a sales issue, and nothing to do with safety.  You wouldn’t know where to start.  For me it will be easy,” 

She was becoming more determined by the minute.  

“Just a simple matter of reversing the polarity of the terminal condenser.”

Ten minutes later, she called me back into the kitchen to witness the big test SWITCH ON.

“Ready?” she asked.  

From my crouching position behind the washing machine, I nodded.  She pressed the switch and 720 tiny light bulbs glowed a very bright soft, warm, white light.

Then, a tiny fraction of a second later, they all went out - permanently.

Later that afternoon, Caroline set off to various retail outlets but was unable to find any that were soft, warm and white.  All that was left on the shelves this close to Christmas, were light strings with bulbs of red, green, blue and yellow.  

A neighbour suggested that she tried Frosts, a nearby garden centre.  They turned out to have exactly what she wanted and they were surprisingly cheap as well, at just £25.

The moment she opened the box, it was obvious that there were to be huge problems.  Neither of us could see or find either of the ends of the string.  By digging into the centre of the knotted ball of wire and bulbs, we eventually found the transformer that was at the plug end and that, at least, was a start.

We wanted to transfer the chain of lights from the box on to a revolving reel that our neighbour, Patrick, had made for us a couple of years ago but with less than a metre of untangled lights discernible, it was impossible to even make a start.   An hour later, we had put possibly three metres of the total length of 50 metres on to the reel.  

After four hours, with tempers that had passed the fraying point and were now laying in shattered pieces on the kitchen floor,  we gave up, took off what was on the reel, and threw the whole lot into the bin.  £25 and made in China!  What did we expect?

Caroline went online, where she found and ordered some that are reassuringly expensive at £140.

They had better arrive soon!

They did!

  

197 Another £70 please

There was a time when Caroline believed that one of her marital duties was to inform me whenever she thought that there was something about my driving that needed correction but whenever she was kind enough to bestow her opinion upon me, the atmosphere in the car would become more than a little tense.  

She always seemed surprised how ungrateful I was for her opinion or advice as I drove and I believe that now; after trying many ways to end it, I have finally got her to stop.  

These days, instead of her saying something, I am occasionally aware of a sharp intake of breath from my left, a muttered expletive, or her adoption of the brace position. 

My driving record was unblemished for 48 years. It was in 2012 when it all changed. I spent one Saturday morning driving around rural Bedfordshire where I collected six driving points in just 20 minutes for twice exceeding the 30 miles per hour speed limit by just five miles an hour in both cases. 

Five months later, I was caught marginally speeding in Milton Keynes and so after driving for more than half a million miles in half a century, I accumulated nine penalty points in 20 weeks.

At the time of writing about that, eight years ago, I was under the impression that it was almost impossible to be penalised for any driving offence in London, where I had lived for the previous 40 years, because the volume of traffic was so high that it was virtually impossible to offend without intending to do so.

Things have changed in 10 years.  How they have changed!

Caroline and I went to the theatre in London three weeks ago and what we saw was dreadful.  The cast was just one actress who was on a stage with no props other than a table that had an envelope and two glasses of water on it.  The envelope contained a script and the first time the actress saw the script was when she opened the envelope on stage.

It became obvious very quickly that the script made even less sense to her than it did to me.  Thankfully, it was all over in an hour and then we had a nice meal in a good restaurant before driving the 55 miles home.

To my horror, the ordeal had not ended.  It had just begun.  Five days later, I received a letter from the Metropolitan Police informing me that I had driven in a bus lane.  There was an accompanying photograph as proof.  I was certainly in the wrong but the fact that the bus lane was completely empty and I was only in it as I intended to turn left in 40 yards, was ignored.  I was not causing a problem, inconvenience or danger to anyone.  £60 please.

Two days after that, I had another letter from the police telling me that six minutes after encroaching on the bus lane, I had gone through a traffic light while it was amber.  Had I?  I don’t think so but how can I prove that I didn’t.  Another £70 please.

This morning, my new friends, whom I hadn’t heard from for two weeks, wrote to me again.  Somewhere on the Holloway Road, which is in a 20 mph zone, I had been detected travelling at 24 mph and consequently, they would like £100, if I would be so kind.  

I certainly was not doing 24.  As soon as I entered the 20mph zone, I set the speed limiter to 20 and so that means that either the police’s monitoring device is faulty or KIA’s limiter doesn’t work as it should.

For 40 years, from 1972 to 2012, I drove in London every day and never committed any driving offence but in 90 minutes on November 9th, 2024, I breached regulations three times at a cost of £230.

But that’s not all.  On November 21st, I went to London to visit a friend who was in a hospital I’ve never driven to before.  I am a Blue Badge holder and so I park in bays for disabled drivers where there is no charge.  There seemed to be 30 or more such bays but they were all occupied.  I parked in a standard bay and displayed my badge.

Guess what?  Yes, you’re right.  I have been fined £70 for not paying the parking fee.

I’m not sure that I believe her but after the speeding letter arrived, Caroline claimed that she knew every time I was at fault when I drove back from the theatre. She also declared that there were two other times I was in the wrong on that journey but as requested, she had kept silent.

You may think that I don’t deserve any sympathy for the fines and got what I deserved.  That’s fair enough but my point is not that I have been hard done by but that London never used to be like this.  

So, there are now two reasons why I’d never move back to live in London. The cost of housing and the costs of safe driving.