Derby Day

Well, of a sort. The Lions Housing Society were in the position of 'losing' the caretakers at two of the blocks of flats: one was sacked, the other resigned. The stories behind both happenings are pretty complex and, in one case at least, have been dragging on for a couple of years. Anyway, we decided to employ just one caretaker for both blocks. As he would have to travel, we would buy a small van for him to use. Our esteemed chairman decided to buy this from a 'car supermarket' he has used before. But this is in Derby - nearly 200 miles away. Bill had intended to go up there himself, but of course he was away on holiday when the vehicle became available, so it was down to me. No problem getting to Derby by train (just one change in London) and the dealership was in walking distance. Had it been raining, I would have got a taxi, but it was a fine day and the exercise did me good after sitting on trains for three hours. Then I had to kick my heels for another two hours before my turn in the queue of people collecting cars. I wasn't all that happy by the time I drove around the corner to a petrol station and considerably less happy when I found that I couldn't open the filler cap. Back to the dealer and a mechanic freed it very quickly. Fill up, and it's no problem to get on the dual carriageway out of the city and on to the M1 - except that the turn I thought should take me onto the dual carriageway took me the wrong way round the ring road! It wasn't very long before I was able to correct things and from then on everything went smoothly - until I reached the M25 round London. After just a couple of hundred yards, everything ground to a stop. From then on it was stop-start all the way round to the A3, which is what? 30 miles or so? I got back just in time to buy a helping of chips for my dinner and to watch the 10 o'clock news.

And it's pronounced 'Dahby', not 'Durrby'.