Shopping

No chance to recover from the holiday, this morning it bright and early to make my way across town to ISA Motors, my service garage of choice. Traffic was slow, so I phoned to say I'd be late. Patrice, the wonderfully knowledgeable receptionist, warned me that they'd so their best to 'work round' the fact that they'd been warned to expect power interruptions because of works on their street. I'd prepared a list of problems which needed attention and went through it with Niall, the chief mechanic.

ISA are close to where Carl lives, so he picked me up at the garage. We whiled away the time until 4pm, at which point there'd been no phone call about picking up the car. We decided to turn up at the garage in person. Patrice and Niall were very apologetic and explained that the power interruptions had been more frequent and longer-lasting than they'd expected. No work had been done on my car, since they'd only got ip up on the hoist shortly before I arrived. Niall had taken it for a spin, though, and took me through what needed to be done. The list was long, but we agreed that replacing the regulator and another less significant job should sort things out to be going on with. The car's booked in again on the 14th, by which times the parts will be in.

While passing the time we went for coffee and spent a while in the refurbed Blackrock Centre. I was seriously tempted by a rather dapper jacket in a shop there and we also browsed in a book shop (a long time since I've been in a bricks-and-mortar one of those). The jacket may be re-visited.