My week so far.

Monday:

Found out my husband has to book an expensive international flight on short notice, leave the country and won't be getting paid for the time he'll be working in England. Hope he will be let back into the country on his return. Stressed a little bit about unexpected expenses.

Tuesday:

Said goodbye to Steve, hosted my bible study group in the evening. Made lemon meringue. No catastrophe, probably to lure me into a false sense of security.

Wednesday:

Got told my car's engine is completely buggered and will need replacing completely at a cost tens of thousands of Rands. Stressed a lot about unexpected expenses.

Thursday:

Buggered up my garage door. On the up side, took a friend to the airport with the understanding I am to look after her car while she's away, so at least I have transport.

Friday:

Need to find some documents of Steve's so his work can apply for some sort of interim arrangement that will allow them to pay him as a legal employee until his new visa comes through. HEY GUESS WHAT can't find the document anywhere.

Saturday:

Pretty good day. Didn't even shout at God. He even arranged for my lovely friend to be here on Saturday morning through some fluke car trouble she had so she could help me with an important errand I couldn't have done on my own. Had a lovely evening out with friends, too. The pool's filter system did pack up though and it's now a lovely mossy shade of green.

Sunday:

My friend's car? Won't start. AT ALL. Thank God (ha) I at least got to the front gate of the house safely since it was 3am but, not being used to driving clutch anymore, I stalled it on the steep incline of the driveway. Had to let it free back down and onto the sidewalk where it is now sitting like a magnificent, immovable installation sculpture. Also I woke up at 8am from construction vehicles reversing behind our house. I have no idea how I'm supposed to go fetch her from the airport tomorrow night, now.

Yes, this post is exclusively for the purposes of making you feel sorry for me. I sure do. I know things can always be worse but at the moment it feels like they are getting worse at a more or less constant rate; so at some point that is going to stop being true.

The tragic tale of Roy and the Pavement

So, I promised a long time ago in this post that I would tell you about poor ickle car Roy, the pavement, and Auto and General (a South African insurance giant).

Last year, I was driving somewhere near the Johannesburg CBD. I was a bit flustered from having to search around for the theatre we were headed to, and street lighting in the city centre is a distant dream. Long story short, taking a right turn at an intersection, I didn't see the small piece of pavement between the two directions of traffic in the street I was turning into, cut the corner and mounted it split seconds after Steve's shout of "Look out!".

Have you stopped laughing yet?

How about now?


Then I'll continue. Luckily we're members of the AA (on the off chance that any 'mericans ever read this, that's the Automobile Association; not Alcoholics Anonymous). We got towed home and ended the evening on a rather flat note. The next morning I used the web based system to put the claim on the Auto & General website and got a message promising to phone me back within four hours.

I did not get called back until the next day (Saturday). I was not able to actually speak to someone until the Monday. The car did not get towed to a panel beater's until late Tuesday afternoon. And that's sort of the highlights of my interactions with A&G. I had to constantly call them to try and get an update; my calls were almost never returned; I got conflicting information on the damage and ETA from the A&G agents, their assessor and the panel beaters. I had to pay for my own rental car for almost three weeks - A&G claim I declined the option to have a hire car, which I contest, but I've asked five times for the recording of the sales call to be pulled and transcribed to settle the matter but to no avail.

After two weeks I went to pick up the car. I didn't even make it home before every warning light and alarm started freaking out; I pulled into the nearest petrol station. When the guys there who were helping me pulled out the oil dipstick, the oil was smoking it was so hot. They poured a bunch of coolant into the radiator, only to have it streaming out underneath. NO-ONE THOUGHT TO CHECK UNDERNEATH A CAR THAT LANDED WITH ITS UNDERCARRIAGE ON TOP OF A PAVEMENT. They fixed the frigging wheel alignment and no-one noticed the entire radiator system was totally buggered!!!!

At least (after a very, very large piece of my mind in no uncertain terms to the complaints department) A&G paid for my hire car this time. Another two weeks later Steve and I went to pick up the car again, and it started flashing lights and beeping again! At least the radiator was fixed, but no-one bothered to put any water in it (or oil, it seemed).

I'm still trying to get A&G to take my complaint seriously. Their approach seems to be to give you the run around in the hope that you'll eventually give up or die. Luckily for me they've published a service charter that promises a R250 penalty any time they don't live up to it; I ought to be able to make most of my excess payment back by now.

Stupid pothole

Last weekend, Steve had a work team building weekend in the Cape. With some convincing from my dad (but not much!) I decided to use the excuse to go down there too and spend the weekend with my parents, especially since Sunday was Mother's Day.

I arranged for Steve's flight back to be changed to the same, much later, one as mine so at around midnight last Sunday we were driving home from Lanseria airport. On Malibongwe Drive, a fairly major road, we hit the mother of all potholes.

I don't think we were the only ones, either; there was a recovery vehicle seeing to another car close by. If it wasn't for Steve slowing down when he saw flasing lights we would have hit it even harder and who knows how much damage that would have caused.

It was an almighty slam, enough to literally make your teeth rattle and your heart to end up in your mouth. Since it was dark and the middle of the night in a city known for its crime rates we didn't stop - nothing felt too badly wrong so we continued home. When we got home it was obvious the front right rim was bent but on Monday we saw that the back rim was damaged even worse and the tyre was losing pressure. In the meantime we had to get to and from work so I would stop at a garage to have the tyre inflated whenever I set off and that's how we got around on Monday. Tuesday I phoned the insurance company; yes they can tow the car and have it fixed but no they don't offer a courtesy car (I could have sworn I opted into that; I'm still pursuing that with them) and it would take at LEAST a week to go through all their procedures and stuff; in the meantime we'd have to hire a car out of pocket. But the real kicker was that they wanted R3500 in excess. I couldn't believe my ears.

I told them to go shove it up their mule* and phoned a well known wheel and tyre place. They gave me the number of a place that fixes mags but they didn't have anywhere to keep the car - now I ask you how I'm supposed to take the car back home when they have removed two of its wheels. At this point I was really starting to freak out, I just didn't now how we were going to go forward.

At lunch I inflated the tyre again and drove to the wheel and tyre place. The guy took one look at the odd three-nut wheels on the Smart and said there's nothing he can do for me. I was feeling totally hopeless. Then he went inside and made a call - he knew another mag place and they had somewhere to keep the car; I could bring it in right then.

I tried to phone the office and say I'd be out longer than anticipated but of course no-one was answering. I took the car to the mag place and they assured me they could fix it, and for a lot less and much quicker than through the insurance company. The guy was also nice enough to give me a lift to the nearest car hire place.

Who had no cars available. At least the girl there was also quite kind and lent me her phonebook and a phone. I called a colleague to pick me up (another kind heart) and then started phoning around for a hire car. Found one but it was so expensive, and the only cheaper place I could think of then wanted proof of residence which of course I didn't carry on me. I had planned on asking the colleague to drop me at the car hire place but at R900 for three days' hire I asked him to just take me to the office, I'd worry about it there.

I googled around a lot and finally found an incredible deal with First car hire, a little more than R400 for the three days.

And then of course the next day my stomach was so upset I couldn't keep anything in and had to go home before lunch where I threw up and slept the rest of the time. My body does that when I'm very stressed, my stomach produces too much acid and it tries to digest itself.

So it wasn't a very fun week but I am very pleased to say we've got Roy back now and the wheels look good as new. It wasn't cheap but it was cheaper than the insurance excess would have been and I'm going to try and claim in back from the city council. And on top of it all it looks like we won't have to replace any of the tyres! Thank God for small mercies - no really, although I moaned about all of this the entire time it could have been much worse so I still have more to be grateful for than to complain about.




*I phrased it more nicely, but only slightly.