Glass IV - This Time It's Personal

Hurrah! I have a new windscreen! With no cracks in it, or anything. It's so CLEAN! Not like my old one.

Other news: None. The new windscreen dominates my thoughts every waking moment. Heh.

Glass III - The Return

Well, was at home all day today, waiting for the glass repair men to turn up and do my windscreen. Clear skies, light breezes, perfect glass repairing weather.

Kevin the painter and I were getting quite excited by the time the glass repair van arrived, bang on time. The helpful chap I met on Saturday was there, along with another young man who was the "fitter".

The office chap had to come out because it's a two man job and there were no other fitters available. Not from their team, or from any other teams in the whole West Country, apparently.

Anyway, putting that aside, I stood there smiling broadly as they looked at my car. The office chap started poking about with the rubber trim around the windscreen.

"Oh." Pause. "Oh dear." Pause. "I didn't order any new trim. Um." He had the grace to shuffle his feet a bit and look awkward.

I looked at him, then at the trim, then at the fitter, then back at the trim, then at him again, then back at the trim. It was a bit like a Clara Bow film.

"So, let me guess" I said. "You can't fit it today without the new trim?" He shook his head sadly.

"So when can you do it? Tomorrow? Friday? I could arrange to be here on Friday." He shook his head again, even more sadly.

There followed a lengthy and complicated discussion involving my whereabouts over the next fortnight ("No, I'm in Bath that day, no, London that day, no, sorry, Bath again that day, no have to be in the office all those days etc). To be fair, they were trying to fit around my timetable, but it all got very exhausting.

The long and the short of it is that I am now booked in for Saturday 23rd June. I assume June, anyway. I'd better check that.

They are coming HERE.

With the right windscreen.

With the new trim.

With two fitters.

Maybe I should write them a list.

I'm getting quite attached to the broken windscreen now. I shall have to take it out somewhere for our anniversary.

Other news. Fuck all really.

A bit of crap relationship stuff on Second Life. I shall have to stop playing, it is supposed to be fun but I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time patching things up at the moment. Still, it's just a game, eh?

Kevin the painter is making splendid progress on the house. He has finished the bathroom, which looks fab, and has made a cracking start on the spare room. The ceiling has a coat of white paint, he's fixed the light fitting, the walls are all sanded and the holes filled, and all the woodwork's been prepped.

By Swansea the boy moves fast.

And no, I am not sharing his details. He has more than enough work in our village without us sharing him with Outsiders. A local tradesman for local people.

Mr WithaY rang and left a message to say he was now in Elgin, as part of his work-related Grand Tour of Scotland. I hope he brings me back a stick of rock.

Better go and eat I suppose. I am in no danger of fading away but I don't want to wake up at 4am ravenous.

Glass II - The Revenge

I got up really early today, in a state of mild anticipation.

Not because I was pleased to be home (although I am), not because I was looking forward to a day of leisure in gorgeous sunny Wiltshire (although I was). No, I was heading off to the glamorous metropolis that is Frome (look on a map, American readers) to get a new windscreen for my car.

They had told me that I needed to be there for 8.30, so I was up and out of the house by 8am. Which after my mammoth 3 hour flog down the motorway systems of Southern and Western England on Friday afternoon, I did not feel like doing. There was a degree of grumbling.

Anyhoo, I got to the glass place at about 8.45 after a diverting jaunt around Frome town centre. I swear, that place is like a maze. You have to visit every corner of the bloody town before you can leave.

Try it one day. Go to Frome and try and drive from one side to the other, say from the College to the big Asda (or as it is hilariously known in the WithaY household, Chavda) and see what happens. You'll be doing laps before you know it.

But I digress.

I parked up, went into reception, smiling hopefully and was greeted by a lovely affable young man. He knew all about my appointment, and things seemed to be going remarkably well. Until...

"Is that your car there?" he said, pointing at the only car parked outside the entire place.

"The one with the huge crack in the windscreen? Yes, that's mine."

"Oh." Pause. "Oh dear." Pause. "Is that the new type of windscreen for that model?"

I refrained from replying "I don't fucking know! I'm not a fucking windscreen specialist, like I assumed you were!" No, instead I was very calm and polite.

"Why yes, I believe it is. The insurance company confirmed that when I booked my car in (eleven days ago you slow slow SLOW glass replacement firm)." I didn't say the bit in brackets. That was in my head.

So, the long and the short of it was that they had managed to get the wrong windscreen in, despite me having confirmed with the insurance company AND the glass place over the phone that my car is the model with the NEW windscreen.

I am now having them come to my house on Tuesday to fit the new windscreen. Unless it's raining, in which case they won't.

This could go on indefinitely.

Oh yeah, the chap also went to some lengths to assure me how completely safe the windscreen in, but ruined it a bit by commenting "Of course, the crack will continue to creep down the screen." Fucking great.

As my morning was shot to bits, I went to the supermarket, got a huge pile of glorious summer fruit, some fresh croissants and the Saturday Telegraph and came home again.

The course was good. I was tired by Friday, well, we all were, but it was really worth while.

We had an evening session with a drumming group on Thursday night which I had been very wary of. In the end it was hilarious. The cooler full of beer and wine we were all scarfing back might have helped. Boy, do some of our group not have rhythm. It was an experience.

Jim called round this afternoon to pick up a few bits and bobs, it was nice to see him. And Mr WithaY is back from his diving trip later tonight after a week away. So hurrah!

Glass.

Back in the office today, still with a feckin' huge crack in my car windscreen.

First thing yesterday I called the "24 hour" number on my car insurance, and they were lovely. Helpful. Courteous. Concerned. Intelligent. Everything you don't expect a helpdesk to be, in fact.

I was comforted by this, and when they said "We use this particular glass repair place, they open at 8.30 so will be in touch with you after that" I didn't fret. And even when they gave me the glass repair place telephone number "just in case" I still thought they were being helpful and positive.

However. By the time it had reached 1030 and no word from the glass place, I thought I'd better ring them. Just in case.

No answer.

Rang again at 11.00.

No answer again.

Hmm. Feeling less encouraged now.

Time was a-ticking on and I had been warned by the freakishly helpful helpdesk that replacing the windscreen would take "2 to 3 hours". If the emergency glass place were going to get it fixed that day, skates needed to be donned.

A third call at 12.00 and joy! A bored-sounding bloke answered. I told him I was calling to find out when my car would be fixed, a conversation which ground to a halt as it became clear he had no idea what I was on about. So, the information from the suspiciously helpful helpdesk had not yet permeated through to the shop floor then?

No, it had not.

I gave the bored bloke the reference number from the helpdesk, he went away, came back, said "Ah yes. Well, I have to wait for it to get printed before I can allocate a time for the repair."

I refrained from asking "By whom, pray? William Caxton?" in a biting tone, and said instead "Oh right. Ok then" in a sad voice, as if it was all fine.

He said "I will call you back once it's printed and tell you when we can do the job." I sighed deeply, realising that I had been wildly over-optimistic in expecting the job to get done that day, as my insurance company had implied, and said "Ok then. Thanks." before going off to eat chocolate biscuits in a depressed and mechanistic manner, waiting for The Call.

It did cheer me up imagining a team of glass repair novices carefully lettering a huge illuminated manuscript for each job though.

So. A week on Friday. New windscreen. And on the plus side I get to hang around on an industrial estate in Frome for 3 hours while they do it.

Other news. Back at work.

Drove in trying not to glare hatefully at the broken windscreen (is it even legal to drive it like this? I would appreciate anyone who knows dropping me an answer on that). The glass repair guy went to great lengths to reassure me that it was all perfectly safe, laminated glass, only one layer is busted blah blah blah, but I am not happy about it.

Why? Well, I'll tell you.

I was involved in a bizarre accident a few years ago. I was driving home from work on a very windy day. It was early in the year, February or something, and the weather had been complete shite for days: power lines coming down, roofs blowing away, cows stuck up trees, the works, so I was being extra careful.

Anyhoo, a big old truck with a skip on the back was driving along in the opposite direction, and as it was a long straight road, I could see quite clearly that a big lump of (I thought) cardboard was moving about on the top of this skip, being blown by the wind.

No net or anything over the top for safety, see. And sure enough, this big bit of (I still thought) cardboard suddenly lifted off the truck like a kite, and flew vertically up many, many feet. It was quite an interesting lesson in aerodynamics, really.

I watched it, thinking "Oh, that cardboard might land on the road in front of me...oh yes, here it comes...might even hit my car...yes....heading my way...OH FUCK!!! It's a WINDOW!"

And it was. A four foot square, metal framed, fully-glazed window. Single, not double glazed. Probably why it was on its way to the tip, now that I think about it. Landed edgeways on my bonnet (the car's, not a gaily-decorated hat), then pinwheeled over the roof and smashed into tiny bits on the road behind me.

I stopped pretty sharpish. Well, I had to, as I couldn't see anything due to my windscreen being completely opaque now, and sat there, shaking, covered in tiny shards of glass and bits of my car's trim (mirrors, lights, bits of the sunroof) that had all been knocked onto my lap.

As I sat there, stupidly wondering where my wing mirror had gone (answer: in the middle of the road, under a broken metal-framed window), a panicky bloke opened my passenger door, looked in at me and said "I thought you'd be dead!"

He'd been in the car behind me and had seen the whole thing. When the huge fountain of glass shot up from my car, he assumed it was my windscreen shattering, and that I would have been mashed under whatever he'd seen land on my car.

Not having my victim's-eye view of the whole thing he hadn't realised it was a window, and that the glass was from it, rather than my windscreen. No, that was still in place, although I now had hundreds of tiny glass splinters stuck all over my face and hands.

So, I rang the police who said "Oh dear" which was comforting. Not helpful, but comforting.

The truck was nowhere to be seen, the driver probably to this day being blissfully oblivious to the carnage he was leaving in his wake, the incompetent fuckwit. The nice man who had thought I'd be dead drove me home, the car got towed to the repairers and my insurance company had to foot a £2500 bill to fix it.

The thing that really REALLY annoyed me was the trail of bits of rubbish all the way home along the road, obviously having been shed by this lorry on every roundabout and junction - railway sleepers, bricks, breeze blocks...we're not talking crisp packets and cigarette ends here.

He could have killed me. If I'd been on the bike, it would have taken my head off.

Anyway, that's why I am more than a little twitchy about my windscreen having a crack in it.