Exam results

The A level results have come out. I'm delighted for my nephew who has earned the place he wanted at the university he wanted. His mother is justifiably proud.
Ten years ago, I was in the same position, and my son won the place he wanted. He went on to the right university for him, coming out with a good degree, and then went on to get a Masters as well. A week later, on a French airfield, my daughter rang her school from the public pay phone to get her GCSE results. With no speaker phone, she repeated out loud what they told her for her nervous mother standing next to her.  She did herself and her school proud.
Like ten years ago, I've been planning to go to France, but things conspire. Elderly aunt might need some support this week; planes no longer fly to Grenoble; trains take seven hours, and no way am I driving 500 miles.  How did I do it in 1997 with two small children in the car? Even taking several days with a stop in Paris at friends and at a campsite on the way down, on my own, a single parent, - how did I do it? But I would now like to go away for a holiday in the sun.
At tae kwon do, I (discretely) asked a mother what her son's results were. His mother looked grumpy, muttered quietly what his results were but pointed out that anyhow he didn't need them to get where he wanted to go. Neither did I when I did my A-levels - I already had my place at training college so I had no motivation to do really well at my A-levels so I think he's done fine. I was on the point of telling his mother this and congratulating her to have got him through his first 18 years and he could start his adult life, when she grumbled about all these people on Facebook announcing their offspring's wonderful results.  It's funny because she's being putting on Facebook what a wonderful holiday her family was having in several different countries - it sounds wonderful and I'd love to do that too.  Was she boasting about her holiday, but grumbling when others boast about their children's successes?  No.  She was just sharing her pleasure.

Two men and a car

Yesterday was an interesting day, not only because I spent most of it with two rather nice young men. What is a middle aged woman doing hanging out with two men in their twenties?

My son was searching for his first car and I was taken along as support and potential adviser - he flatters me because I've only once bought a car. Son's friend thought he knew something about cars, and indeed I was impressed that he turned up equipped for the adventure. His kit included:

• magna light
• plastic gloves
• i-phone

He used the light to peer at the car's dark places, under the bonnet, behind the boot, beneath the wheels. And his gloves kept his hands clean when he poked the wheels to find the brakes. This poking the brakes was helpful on the first car we looked at, a Ford Focus in Milton Keynes because he found a lip and suggested that the brakes might soon need to be replaced, and that comment initiated a conversation with the salesman who assured us that the cars his organisation sold did MOTs before they put them up for sale, so the brakes should be safe enough to pass the MOT - you assume. But the Ford Focus was a tad expensive, so we drove home to have some lunch and further perusal of car selling web sites before venturing out again to Luton, via Dunstable.

The Dunstable car site looked a bit dicey being a temporary office on an unmade up lot and the end of a very quiet road on a quiet industrial estate - we only found it because of the hand painted words on the gate-post "Car sales". We turned round and headed off for Luton.

Son's friend now used his smart phone to access Google map to get us to the Luton. Unfortunately, it wasn't a GPS that might have told us about the closed road and the detour and the detour took us down and up a local road with yellow lines each side and cars parked each side and on coming buses so driving life became a bit fraught. My car is on the small side, and if I see a space to pull in, I'll fit, but if on-coming bus decides to carry on on-coming then my car can't reach the space to pull in. I had to reverse down the main road until I reached a junction full of traffic and still no room for on-coming bully-bus. At this point, another driver suggested I reversed into a side-road on the right, which would have meant only two other cars would have to reverse. Fortunately, I realised that if I pulled onto the kerb on the right, then bus could squeeze between me and other parked cars - not sure why bus couldn't pull over more. Doing this meant that I couldn't get back out into the traffic stream until son's friend turned up sterling. He jumped out of the car, stopped the traffic to let me back into the flow and jumped back in. We decided that we weren't going to come home that route.

The delay meant it was nearly dusk by the time we arrived at the next car sales, a muddy lot tended by a bearded Muslim, with some others collecting and tipping barrels of sand into the muddy ruts. The car was a Nissan Almera and S'sF immediately noticed some damage to the rear bumper and a check revealed the car had been rear shunted. He peered at its engine - his torch now being essential as the light went, but every thing else seemed acceptable. Son, S'sF and Muslim salesman started negotiations over MOT, documents, price, means of payment, when to pay.

Suffice it to say, son has bought his first car and I expect to see more of him now he can drive over here without the hassle of a long slow bus journey at inconvenient hours. So maybe I won't have to drive him places again, but neither will I get the chance to drive his friends around too. End of another era, start of a new.

Liquid nitrogen demonstration

Husband and I took a couple of grandchildren to a demonstration of lovely liquid nitrogen at http://www.scienceoxfordlive.com/

The young demonstrator showed how some strange things happen to everyday objects when they get really cold. He experimented with shrinking balloons, shattering yellow chrysanthemeums and blu tac as hard as nails.

Liquid nitrogen is so exciting. but you can't put your hand in it, not even a finger because it's minus 200 degrees C and your finger will drop off, but you can pour it over your hand, because by the time it's reached your hand, it's boiling off into gas and there's only a tiny drop at a time, just don't wear rings where it might get trapped and damage you.

He used tongs to put a bit of blutac in the nitrogen, then it was as hard as a nail, so hard that he could hammer it into a piece of wood.

He demonstrated smashing rubber when it was normal temperature and then after he'd dunked it in the nitrogen, when it was all hard and brittle and flew into lots of pieces.

His last trick was to make icecream with nitrogen, and all the children lined up to taste it.

In the meantime, husband's trick was to leave the car lights on, so the battery was flat when we got back to the car, in the rain.

• First husband pushed.
• Then a friendly Iranian man helped us push.
• Then we gave up.

So they pushed the car (me reversing) into a spot then friendly Iranian man tried his jump leads but they didn't make good contact, so we left G'pa in the rain waiting for the rescue man.

We paddled thro the puddles to Cafe Toscano and had coke and hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream.

I've got leaky boots, so I got wet feet, and husband was a little stressed. The g'children were happy with the day, and thanked us unprompted. They're really nice children.

Tight squeeze

My new car is a tighter squeeze into my garage than my old Volvo estate. The door handles and the wing mirrors have a tendency to scrape along the breeze block.

When son visits for a weekend during term time, he borrows a self service pay-as-you-go Golf from Streetcar, and he reverses it into my garage. Goodness knows how he does that. I'm amazed and admire his skill.

Slow car

It took me ten minutes to reverse this new red car out of my garage today because I was worrying so much about its sticky-out handles. Then I drove very carefully to work, no revs above 4000 and tried to stay at around 50 mph even on the dual carriage way. It took nearly twice as long as usual to get to work.

And it hasn't got as much room in the boot for all my special junk.

New car day

My new red car is okay.

At the sales room I opened the driver's door, and the rain dripped off the roof onto me. My nice old Volvo never did that because it had a lip round the roof that drained off the rain. I don't like new designs.

And it's got sticky out handles. My old Volvo had handles that were flush with the car. I don't like sticky out handles.

Bye bye old car

Tomorrow I scrap my 19 year old trusty steed, the only car I've ever owned, a car I've had for 13 years. I'd meant to keep it another couple of years - we could have celebrated its 21st birthday! But the government scrappage scheme was too good to miss, so tomorrow I get a new car, and trusty old Volvo goes for scrap.

If you want to know what I'm getting to replace it, you'll have to ring me and ask. I'm looking forward to hearing from you, my friends.

Golf 1.4

I test drove a Golf 1.4, and like it, and its price.

Test drive Golf

I've tried a Volvo C30, a Skoda Fabia, a Toyota Yaris and this Golf TSE something, which is way beyond my price range, so in around 10 days I'm going to try a Golf 1.4 80bhp.

Test drive Toyota Yaris

Test drove one of these today. It's all right. The gears are a bit close together so I keep getting them mixed up, but the display is clear and readable, although not right in front of you like a dial is. I could get used it to it. You get used to any car if you drive it long enough, I guess.

The only thing I want extra is a place to plug in my mp3 player so I can listen to radio 4 podcasts. Now it's really easy: plug into cigarette lighter socket, my player is tuned to one of the radio frequencies, press the button and it goes. Apparently in the Yaris, and in the Skoda too, I have to have wire as well. That's an extra thing to plug in, not something you can do as you drive along, but fiddly, and there'd be a wire stretching several inches in the Yaris.

I don't think I really want a new car.

Test drive

I've driven a Volvo estate for decades, but I don't need an estate now. I used to have to trail a glider trailer, and then in the last few years for moving teenage children to university, and still have to do that another few years, but husband can do that. So I might take advantage of the government scrappage scheme and get a new car.

I test drove a Volvo C30 today. It feels comfortable, but then I suppose it would being as it's just another Volvo. I've booked a test drive in a Toyota.

Rainy days are here

So the car's broke.

And now we know why our toilets have been flushing with hot water for years - the shower pump's broke and lets hot water in to the cold tank through a varicose vein valve. Fortunately, the plumber investigated in time to realise the pipe had perished, and any day we'd have had a big flood, and now we won't have.

But we'll have another big bill.

That's what savings are for - a rainy day.

car broken in to

Took daughter out to do a jewellery stall last weekend, and let her unpack her stuff from the car after. When I came to fetch the car out of my garage on Tuesday, I found some swine had broken the driver's window, opened the doors and scrabbled around at the back to see what they could take. They probably thought that the empty camera-case box was valuable, but it had only a mug in it, packed to take to work. Underneath it I'd hidden my Walkman CD player, so they swiped that instead. B*. And they got the Michel Thomas Advanced Italian CD 1 out of the set of 4. Drat.

I've oiled the garage door but it still won't shut, and reminded daughter to cover up the boot when she's finished in there. She's making big hints about someone getting me a new Walkman CD player for Xmas.