BUILDERS AT WORK

Is it my imagination, or is this builder, aka my husband, scratching his head? This is not good news as this is the remant of the front of our house. Wallless, roofless and hopeless! I have to have faith that these two scalliwags will read the instruction manual before reassembly! The good news is that I'm on extended GGM duties in Switzerland.

















Sunday went quite well really after a few testing issues in the qualifying session.

I was feeling good and really eager to get in the car and when I went out for qualifying I immediately hit a problem on the first lap – the final chicane has quite high kerbs and when I bounced the car over them the engine completely cut out so I was able to coast into the pits where my mechanic looked all over the car but couldn’t find a problem – I tried to start it and it fired up first time!
So off I went again, trying to get some heat into my tyres but now I was having a slight problem with my brakes in that I had none! well very little anyway, the car just didn’t want to slow down very much which makes life a little interesting at the end of the Revett straight (the longest and fastest in the UK!), I found I could drive around the problem but it was compromising my lap in several places so I made the best of it – whilst setting a reasonably tidy lap I rattled the kerbs again on a different corner and again the car cut out on me so I pulled off the circuit and waited until the session ended before climbing back over the barrier.
Unbelievably the car fired first time again! hmmm, this was going to be fun trying to find the gremlin this time…

Back in the paddock I was told that my lap time prior to the 2nd engine problem was good enough to give me 2nd in class and 19th overall in a 38 car grid, quite happy with that but there were 5 cars between me and class pole – Mark James, something I would try and rectify if we could get the car running correctly.

We went over the whole car and found that a fuel pump fuse had blown and that the master electrical switch had developed a fault which was modified and a bigger fuse was sourced, fingers crossed it should be ok!

I shouldn’t have worried, the engine was fine and I got a reasonable start and managed to dive through a smallish gap to make a place up into the first corner – my target was to make up as many places as possible in the opening laps to close the gap on Mark – I managed this and within 2 laps I had closed the gap to 1 car between us, I figured that within 2 or 3 laps I’m going to be on his tail and the power of my 16v engine would be too much for him – well best laid plans and all of that…..

My brake problem from qualifying came back to haunt me and caused a little excursion off the circuit when I pressed the brake pedal and nothing happened which is a little concerning at 90mph! I dragged it back onto the tarmac and set about trying to close the gap that had opened up now, problem was that the brakes were just ineffective now and I was really struggling to slow the car down – I was having to brake really early and was virtually standing on the middle pedal to slow it down but it just wasn’t playing ball and the gap to Mark was just stretching out bit by bit.

After 20 minutes in the 28°c heat (more like 40° in the car!) I settled for 2nd place in class D and 7th overall which was quite respectable considering the starting position of 19.

In the current championship standings I have risen to 4th in Class D, that’s very pleasing as I have missed a few rounds – lets hope I can get a few more points yet!

Silverstone International Circuit is in 3 weeks time, I currently hold the class lap record around there so I hope to go well – there is a little bit of work to do to the car but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem, new brake pads are needed I think!

HEIGHTENED NERVOUSNESS

Our builder started this week. We waited over a year for him to come. My husband was determined that HE WAS THE ONE. Who am I, a mere woman, to question this. My husband keeps me well away from the builder. He won't let me ask him probing questions like, why are you taking my roof off in this rain? My husband is very, very nervous that I might upset the builder. Why? It’s not as though I am a difficult person. By this time next year I will either have a superbly refurbished home or an Ex-husband!

THE SECRET PLAN?

I’ve been trying to work out why retirement has been so traumatic for me. It may be because I’m nosy and can’t come to terms with being “out of the loop”. Or is it that I invested most of my life in my family and business and now half of my purpose for living has gone? Also my husband is attempting to retire too – a double whammy! I guess all of the above and much, much more. It has been pointed out to me that this is not just my problem. Apparently I’m causing mayhem wherever I go! Good.

My husband’s retirement plan is to build stuff. This seems a bit odd considering he was a builder in his former life and hated it. But he assures me that this is different. He will be doing it because he wants to not because he has to.

We have had plans drawn up to remove internal walls and the ceiling in the kitchen to create a huge vaulted kitchen, dining, living area with suspended walkway through to a new 1st floor bedroom suite. As if that’s not enough we have plans to build a swimming pool. And that’s just the beginning!

Is his secret plan to keep me occupied too because, unlike wifeinthenorth who has sensibly moved out whilst the builders demolish her house, we will live on site? Or is he trying to recapture our youth when we did this for fun? Every time we renovated a house we swore that we would never do that again, but here we are, raring to go and looking forward to disrupting our comfortable, boring life. Isn’t one definition of madness that you keep repeating the same mistakes but expect a different outcome?

I did initially think, ah! this is a good way to spend the inheritance money until I realised that it will increase the value of the house and they will still benefit. The plan to waste money on travel is not working too well either because the wretched airlines will only charged me £1 to travel around the world. Luckily the government is more co-operative and is obsessed with depriving heirs of their rights by taxing everything out of sight.