Bringing Up Esmé

We collected Ez from her school on Thursday and she wanted to go to 'the butterfly park', which was shut. But Ez played in the park instead as it got extremely cold.

We all went back to Gaby's house for more playing and tea. We ate tea. Gaby arrived so we chatted about stuff while Ez had a bath.

Off we went home to Walsden. I knew that Alex and his crew at New Barn Garage had been working for about 13 hours on the motor home, fixing a new cam belt and all the other things that go with that: new water pump, drain down radiator and refill; auxiliary belt; alternator belt (or are they the same). What a list! It had only gone in for its MOT so I can tax it, but Jake say two cracks or tears in the cam belt. They looked quite small, but after 47000 miles in 10 years the experts said the risk was maximum for a catastrophic failure of the engine.

It's fixed now and we are £955 poorer. I did some maths on the cost of this van over three years. It's cost us £1500 a year in repair and maintenance bills and it has been driven about 6,000 miles a year - all that carefree pleasure seeking visiting old churches, momients and musey rooms, at such a cost.

I picked up the van this morning with the outside temperature in Walsden at -5C. I was expecting it to run differently - better perhaps, more quietly, with less visible diesel emission. Not a bit of it! So we didn't go out in it as we had planned. We had thought it would be fixed and MOT passed in one day, off we go, singing a song. I think I want to use it a lot given the outlay, but not just now.

So I went to Walsden site and helped as best I can for an aged volunteer of little brain. I dug out the drainage ditch a bit. That was nice, as it was rather childish to watch the ditch water swish away. Michael says that the oily deposit on the surface of the ditch water is organic from microscopic creatures, which he will look up. That was very interesting as I thought it was spillage from old cans of noxious waste.