Giving up the car after 55 years

A cool and cloudy day. Woke up just after eight. Weeping from my repaired nostril has dried up. This is reassuring, in the light of the clot busting meds I'm taking! I just have to be very careful not to avoid any anxiety or effort that will cause blood to go to my head. Not easy for me. I've been driven with a tendency to be over active for many years, taking advantage of good health and fitness. All is now up for review.

Listened to an excellent 'Thought for the Day' about how our legal system works, and how it reflects the diverse cultural origins of our language, then got up for pills and breakfast. While I was eating I had a briefing call from Callum at Occupational Therapy where we talked about what I can and can't do, and need help with, to facilitate rehab. My recourse to past learning from Chi Gung and Alexander technique when I was admitted to the stroke emergency ward enabled me to walk steadily and safely, aware of co-ordination blips, I understand how important Tai Chi is going to be to regaining full confident movement, so I'll soon be engaged in a class with a group of other stroke patients. I also had a clarifying email from King's Road surgery, setting my mind at rest about Blood Pressure checks.

Trump and his team have exerted enough pressure on Israel and Hamas to agree a cease fire and follow up plan which will secure the release of hostages and hostage bodies and the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and 1,700 detainees from the Gaza offensive. Further negotiations are pending in the disarmament of Hamas and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. A surge of humanitarian aid is now expected into Gaza where a state of famine has existed for several weeks. Will this cruel nightmare now come to an end at last? I hope and pray it will.

We've discussed getting rid of the car for the past year. Even slight visual impairment is enough for me to give up driving after 55 years as a motorist. I no longer enjoy driving, it's too demanding and stressful, and Clare's glaucoma prevents her from seeing well enough to drive. We must let go of our dear VW Polo which has my initials in its registration plate. Given that it's nineteen years old, and would no longer be acceptable as a legal road vehicle a few years from now, despite being sound and reliable, its scrap value is only £50. I phoned NG motors who sold it to us and they have agreed to take it away and hopefully find a new owner for it, perhaps a learner driver, who will be able to get a few more years of use from it before it is no longer legally usable on the road. One of the team will collect it and do the admin in a few days from now.

I needed a snooze after lunch to clear my head. Then I got dressed and went out with Clare for a walk. We got separated when I stopped to send a message from Owain and chat to Nick from church who stopped to ask me how I was recovering, and I couldn't spot her anywhere. She was OK and walked home separately from me, but I found it distressing to lose track of her. I went to the top of Llandaff Fields and back. Joints are a bit stiff but warmed up as long as I kept a steady pace and didn't push myself. It wasn't exhausting. The fresh air and exercise did me good. I feel walking benefits my blood circulation. It reduces tingling in my left hand, which is I think a tell-tale stroke symptom in my case.

Owain called MSDEC and got some information about what it means to be a 'virtual ward' patient. I have an appointment there in a week's time at UHW to measure blood pressure and a meeting with the cardio consultant for a briefing and a heart monitor fitting. Heaven knows what this is all about and where it leads. Owain left us at tea time. We won't see him for a while as he's off for a week's respite in Berlin's techno community. It's been marvellous having him here for a few days. Clare and I are back on our own this evening. We're both holding our own, not getting worse, maybe improving a little, conscious there are friends and family close at hand whom we can phone if we need to.

Longest day

I walked to the wound clinic for my weekly visit, and then walked across to Splott to collect the car, which has been there nearly three weeks, in an attempt to diagnose and fix an electrical fault which left the nearside car window half shut, and the central locking system working, but in a somewhat eccentric manner. 

Our very experienced VW mechanics had no success, and took it to a specialist auto-electrical company, which also failed to diagnose the problem. The locking system works, but needs checking each time the car is opened from the passenger side, and the window is shut. We need to avoid using it for the time being, while the garage tries to source a complete functioning door mechanism from a car of the same age, going for scrap.

Passing through the city centre on my way there, I stopped to take some photos of St David's House site clearance, and got chatting to one of the workers letting lorries in an out of the site's only gate. He told me that once the rubble had been cleared to ground level and excavation to remove buried concrete foundations of the old structure were getting under way, an archaeologist had been working there to see what was still there from the Temperance Town area levelled in the sixties to make way for St David's House.

Houses were built on land freed for use when the river Taff was diverted from its course to its present location, when Brunel's navvies constructed the GWR line and Cardiff General Station. As well as tenement building foundations, iron-work and pottery shards, whole fireplaces from cellar rooms were uncovered. After Newtown, on the other side of the South Wales line from here, this was an area much settled by immigrants from Ireland or deep rural Wales. It's an era documented by photographs, in a way that the old course of the Taff, and the ruins of St Mary's and its churchyard, prior to the railway, never were.

After lunch and a much needed siesta following my 3.7 mile walk to Splott, I felt fresh enough to go out again for a few laps of Thompson's Park, to bring my day's total up to 5.4 miles. I'd like to sustain this, if not improve on it. The extra exercise this week has done me good, I know.

Birthday girl

This morning I felt able to sit comfortably enough to get the 61 bus to Splott to collect the Polo from the garage and drive it back again. It was a pleasure to get out and do this. The window winder and door locking fault seemed something of a mystery to the mechanic who worked on it. They had a spare driver-side winder mechanism from a comparable scrap car, and it worked a treat, activating the central locking system perfectly, instead of acting as it it was a passenger side winder and lock mechanism. Perhaps at some time or another it had been swapped over, but finally broken. Anyway, it's been fixed now, and very kindly at no cost to us.

After stopping at Lidl's to stock up on a few items I missed out on earlier in the week, I went home and cooked a stir fry for lunch. John our plumber came by to see what he could do about the short plastic overflow pipe under the sink which has cracked as if perished in several places. How this occurred in a confined space where it's subjected to no movement stress and not exposed to sunlight is inexplicable.

I walked to Riverside Surgery for another wound dressing this afternoon, while Clare was out at a physical therapy appointment. Both of us require regular maintenance outings to keep us functional these days.

Sister June is eighty four today. I rang to sing her Happy Birthday and we chatted for ages. I think she's in better shape than the Edwardian building she lives in, long ago converted into flats, showing its age, and suffering from a selection of owners or sub tenants who seem indifferent to problems with the property's condition, or everyday safety and security of its occupants. 

I wish she'd move, but she's determined to stay and complain to the property management company about discharging their contractual obligations, wit well informed and detailed emails. Working on drawing up plans for engineers and architects for much of her career means that she has acquired a fair amount of technical expertise about buildings, expertise she still relishes using, since her mind is as sharp as ever. 

Thankfully, she can still get out and walk to the shops, although she's not quite as fit and spritely as she'd like to be since having replacement knees. Wandsworth Common where she lives, is a fairly safe area, but life is made precarious for elderly pedestrians by the presence of cycle riders with whom they are obliged to share the sometimes narrow and uneven pavements. It'll be a long while before public realm areas are reshaped by the local Council to accommodate safely both cyclists and walkers. Meanwhile it's elderly and vulnerable people who have to suffer, and cyclists who get the media attention.

Different kinds of wires crossed

Clare took the car into the garage this morning, as the same fault affecting the central locking system and electric window on the driver's side has returned to haunt us. It's a puzzle. Something has worked loose or perhaps damp is affecting the wiring loom. It'll take a while to find out so it's just as well we have no need of the

I was surprised to receive a phone call from the Cardiology department at the Heath Hospital after breakfast calling me in for an ultrasound scan. Surprised, as I'd been told in a 'phone call Thursday last that the anaesthetist didn't consider I needed one for my postponed operation to be performed. I asked if there were crossed wires again in hospital communications and was reassured the initiative arose as a result of the pre-op, as one of the heart consultants reading the report noticed that I was overdue for a heart check-up.

My GP referred me for this after I complained of palpitations, which turned out to have been triggered by drinking too much coffee, or perhaps something digestion related at that time. The cardiologist at that time gave me a clean bill of health, stating that my heart condition was normal and healthy for my age. He said he'd I'd get another check in two years, and that was that. But when did it happen? I couldn't remember, so checked back through old blog entries, only to discover that it's three years since my first scan. 

How time flies! Has the checkup system been slow in catching up with me? Or did the cardiologist say two years when he meant three? It's a mystery, but now is as good a time as any for a follow up check, so I have an appointment booked for Thursday at eight forty. It's early to be out and about as I'm usually needing a change of wound dressing around breakfast time, but we'll figure out how to manage this. As the car's unlikely to be returned before then, and buses to and from the Heath in heavy traffic are unreliable. I have walked the distance in about forty minutes, but the weather may not be in my favour, so I'll need a taxi to get there.  At least I won't have to wait long so early in the day, and the scan only takes twenty minutes. Here's hoping.

Finally, a letter giving me a date for surgery on Valentine's Day, a month from now. Here's hoping there'll not be another cancellation. I don't know how I'd cope. Diagnosed as needing surgery on 18th October, it's taken three months to get this far, and four to the op - for minor surgery they call it?

  

By Polo to Penarth

Finally this bright and breezy afternoon, we got around to taking the new car for a drive, so that Clare could familiarise herself with its workings before taking it out on her own tomorrow. We went first to Lidl's in Leckwith, then on to Penarth for a photo opportunity, a walk on the pier and an ice cream. We're very pleased with it, as its interior is spacious for a small car, with more headroom than the old Golf, and being a little higher off the ground, slightly easier to get into.

I hadn't so far read any of the car's documents, nor checked out its technical specification on-line, apart from knowing it's a 1.2cc engine. The sound of the car on the move was different from what I expected, and this aroused my curiosity. A little research disclosed that this car's engine is the three cylinder 'Blue Motion' engine, designed for lower emissions and economy. I was delighted by this on both counts. When this design was announced fourteen years ago, I hoped that one day I might own a car with such an engine. Since then, we've had two Golf Mark 2s in succession, and both served us very well. I'd forgotten my earlier aspiration, and surprised that all along this particular Polo had my name (well my initials) on it all along. I know they say 'Be careful what you wish for', but on this occasion, it couldn't be better. I'm looking forward to the day when I can sit comfortably in it for an extensive period and take it for a long drive.

In the evening, I watched ITV's current mystery drama serial 'Strangers', set in Hong Kong, which is shaping up nicely into another exploration of police, political corruption and organised crime in the former UK colony. I like the fact that it's bi-lingual, with subtitles for what I presume is Cantonese being spoken. I may have mentioned this before, but it's interesting that we live the the Parish of Canton, which not only has Cardiff's Chinese Christian church, but also a fair number of Chinese residents and children in schools, not to mention shops. Perhaps the place name was a magnet back in the days after World War One when Chinese people started to settle in Cardiff. 

It's a coincidence, however as this Canton is Canna's-town abbreviated, St Canna is supposed to have been a sixth century Breton princess who converted to Christianity. Canna is the name given to the stream which runs through the Parish. Not that it can be seen nowadays, as it's more of a storm drain nowadays, running entirely through culverts from Penhill down to Riverside Embankment where it enters the Taff, if there's ever any water. Nowadays, it's just a memory imprinted on old maps from 16th to 19th century, before the suburb developed the way it is now.

  

New car arrives home

Mid-morning yesterday I had to visit the GP surgery to have some blood taken to test for infections. It's never an easy experience, as even the most skilful phlebotomist can spot my veins, but has trouble getting into them. It general takes two or three goes and leaves me feeling like a pin cushion.

Then, at lunchtime I went again over to Splott on the 61 bus to pay for and collect the car. With the MOT certificate done, having insured it last night, there remained only the tax to be paid. It was not possible to do this on-line as the paper documentation of change of ownership had only just been signed, but it was possible, thanks to a bar code attached to the registration document to visit the Post Office in Splott Road, and pay for it there, knowing this would immediately be registered if I should get stopped on my way home. 

After a brief introduction to the car's layout from Phil, I took to the road and drove across town. It's the first time I've driven for seven weeks in any country, so I needed to go carefully. I wasn't pleased that the space outside our house was still occupied by a car that occupied space carelessly, so that another smaller car could squeeze in behind it, which could have been possible if this car had parked closer to the one in front of it. This often happens in our street: un-mindful parking. So I had to park a little further down, so I can't look out of the window and admire it. Here it is!

Today I had an early appointment with my regular GP Dr Jordan, and basically we reviewed all that had happened in recent weeks, and my treatment. Where we proceed from here depends on success in dealing with the abscess. My blood test result had already been logged on the practice network. Very speedy! I'll have another one next week to see if the remaining traces of infection are eliminated by the penicillin I'm currently taking. It seems that apart from this my vital signs are normally healthy, which is good news. And so on it goes, getting fully fit for purpose again.

Today is the 49th anniversary of my ordination to the Diaconate and the start of my full time public ministry. so went to the usual Thursday Eucharist at St John's to give thanks. How blessed I felt, to be one of a dozen congregation members, on the receiving end for a change, and to feel I'm back home in the Parish I call home. Afterwards, I had a chat with Emma our new priest. She expresses her delight at being in Canton enjoying the people of the three churches, and settling into a lively community and making a new home here. I'm so pleased for her and her family. On my way back, I bought one of those foam doughnut shaped rings to sit on. It'll protect my healing wound from excess pressure, and make life less uncomfortable when sitting. This really makes me feel my age!

I cooked lunch for us, then later we went out food shopping together. Clare's been laid low with a virus this past few days, so it was her first proper outing since Monday. We had nothing better to do than watch different TV programmes in the evening, me live streaming an episode of 'Vera' with an app on my tablet, something that wouldn't have been possible in this household three years ago. How times have changed!

  

Goodbye Golf

I walked to the doctor's surgery before eight yesterday to queue for a 'book on the day' appointment, and got one for ten forty with a young doctor, Dr Mullaney, who I think has joined the practice fairly recently, as she shares a consulting room with Dr Dyban, and has a name plate on the door. I gave her a summary of Friday night's little drama, and as a result, she booked me in for a blood test. Also she ordered an appointment for an ultrasound scan of my gall bladder, about which I should hear in the next few days, hopefully. It's a good idea to get as early an assessment as possible so a treatment plan can be made.

Phil of NG Motors got in touch to say that the VW Polo the garage has for sale is ready to be seen by us, now a small amount of remedial work has been done. He arranged for a couple of his mechanics to drive over with a spare charged battery to get the Golf working and drive it back to their place. It will save me lots of hassle. These guys are so kind and helpful. With a live battery plumbed in it burst into life with gusto, as it usually does. I admit I felt a small pang of regret at letting go of it. This car I've kept longer than any other I've had in fifty years of driving, and it's certainly been the best value to us, scruffy or not. Here's the Golf, taking its leave of us.

If we're happy when we've seen the Polo, Pil will MoT it and take the Golf in part exchange, rather than dispose of it or send it for scrap. I arranged to take a look today, and went over to Splott at noon today, all the way on the 61 bus. I was surprised by its good looks. Even more surprised by the fact that its number plate ends JKK - my initials. It has my name on it, evidently!

The car is twelve years old, with one owner, looked after by the garage for most of its life. It's in immaculate condition for its age, and in a stylish metallic slate grey. It only has thirty nine thousand  miles on the clock. It's a bargain at £1500 for someone like me who prefers a car that isn't internet connected, with lots of advanced technology. Having said that, it does have electric windows and central locking, I think. It has a 1.2 litre engine, so it's in a lower tax bracket and does 50mpg at 50mph. Adequate performance for me, with no need to commute to work, or drive great distances non stop any longer, and best of all, it's economical.

I transferred ownership of the Golf to the garage, and will take ownership of the Polo when I return tomorrow to with the money to complete the exchange. I only sat in the car, to make sure, as Clare insisted, that it was big and comfortable enough for me to sit in and drive. At full stretch I'd take someone with legs three inches longer than mine.

Mission accomplished, I returned home via the city centre, on the 'clockwise' city centre circle number one bus, making the same mistake as last time, as it went a time consuming roundabout way back to the centre, from thence I caught the usual 61. I can't yet identify where to pick it up over in Splott. Next time I must try the anti-clockwise circle bus instead.

Back home, after a very late lunch, I modified my Aviva car insurance policy to cover the new car, using the excellent  MyAviva app on my tablet. The change only cost me seven quid, which was most pleasing. The rest of day, I lay low, watching catch up episodes of NCIS on My5.

Car quandry

It's been cold, dry and clear skied this past few days, snow elsewhere, although not here. I've been asked to take a funeral in two weeks time. It'll be a burial. Never easy, especially in winter. Clare is slowly recovering from a cold, so I did the big shopping trip of the week, on foot to the Coop store on Cowbridge Road. I'm always amazed at how well planned Clare's shopping lists are. Everything is ordered around the sequence in which they can be found on a walk through the store, very logical, and most helpful. My lists aren't nearly as thorough. I figure out what I need, and take from what I see and recall, then walk around again to find what I missed first time. It's much more haphazard.

While I was away, the car heater died again. It could be a fuse, but may a solenoid burnout, judging from the smell after it stopped working. Well, it is 23 years old, and whilst it is mechanically sound, the cost of replacing the heating unit, parts and labour, is likely to be more than the car is worth. In this cold and damp weather, it's less than safe to be  driving a car whilst having to clear condensation manually. Sad really, after eight years of reliable use, I'm fond of it. It's still a good drive. 

I wonder if we could do without a car altogether, use public transport and hire a car if needs be for occasional use, but this has limitations when you need to ferry other people, transport bulky objects, or make short trips to places not well served by public transport. Getting out to Duffryn House or the coast for a few hours would take up much more time and planning. Neither of us is prepared to use a bike any longer, and that's not such fun in bad weather or on polluted congested city roads. We don't use a car that much either. It's relying on the convenience of having one to use that matters, it fits with lifestyle habits we're not yet ready, or compelled to change.

So, what kind  of car do we look for? Another Golf would be my choice. For Clare it'd be a Polo, as long as its seats are comfortable enough for longer journeys we make. We have to dispose of the car we have as well. It seems that may not be difficult as there's still interest among old car hobbyists in the Mark II Golf, either for restoring, customising, adapting for racing or rallying, because they are reputed for their robustness. To those who are keen of fixing things with money to  burn, replacing a heater is less trouble than it would be for us. I've driven a variety of cars on locum duty, so I know I can adapt to anything, though too small is less than fun, and the simpler and more standardised the dashboard layout the better. We'll have to see what's out there among affordable second hand cars around town.