Now then, dear reader. Let me continue with my ramblings. I took the day off work and Tim and I stripped out the old suspension arm, me lying down under the car and Tim sitting on a chair doing the Tim bits. It went fairly well and soon I was able to hold the suspension arm with the – dare I say it- perished rubbers. The man in the car spares shop phoned at 10.30am to say the new one had arrived so I got in Pickos car and went to fetch it. He actually apologised for the state of the box it came in but it wasn’t his fault he explained, it arrived like that. “Looks like a well travelled car part “ said he. I told him about Eurocarspares and he wasn’t really amazed. He told me that was the reason why he fell out with his brother because he has got three shops and a massive internet trading arm and he prefers to give the individual personal service and he certainly did that.
When I worked at South Leicester pit there was an old miner called Enoch Cresswell whose nick name was – wait for it – Kezzer but he wasn’t a Kezzerbabe, more like a Kezzergrumpyoldgit. One day we were extending a steel armoured conveyor – each length weighed about four hundredweight and was called a pan and you could only get four men around to move them about. We had had trouble with some of the others because they were old pans that had come off another coalface so they were caked in dirt which made them heavier but it also made it difficult for them to dovetail together. Everyone got in position to move the next pan in position. “Right” said Kezzer, “We will slide this one in like a carpet.” We all collapsed in a fit of giggles. You had to be there I suppose but the reason I am telling you is because when Tim and I are now doing tricky jobs we always say “slide it in like a carpet.”
The new arm is fixed at three points and is a right tricky piece of work to get all three fixing points lined up. After several attempts finally it did slide in like a carpet and then we went back for a retest and hey presto, it passed. Amazing scenes. Now all I have got to do is get the wrongly sent parts back including the spring whose box bears the legend “wrong part in box.” The back is not too bad – I did lie on an old carpet, so actually I slid under the car like a carpet on an old carpet and apart from getting up afterwards I have come through it remarkably unscathed. But just you wait until morning! So thanks to everyone for their messages of support and rest assured I will not be having any baby suspension arms – I have kept them apart so they can’t do those sort of things. What’s next? A new kitchen floor? Finish off the ersatz brickwork in the kitchen? Finish off the hall and stairs? Decorate the bedrooms? Finish off the bathroom? Who knows, the opportunities are endless.
