Never-ending story

AA van, Bristol, England (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do you ever get the feeling that you are a walking bank? Hand always in your purse for someone else’s benefit? Well money is made round to go round they say and even the fifty-pence pieces will roll if there is enough impetus! Having children is an expensive affair and I have two of them, grown up but still reaching for assistance from time to time. It’s all a part of life and I have no reason to stash the cash other than to support whatever needs I may have in the future. That is the point though isn’t it? We never know what the future holds or even if we have a projected one. For me, money seems to come into one hand and straight out of the other in recent times and I struggle to save but I manage to anyway, little by little it all mounts up. My parents always told me to put a little something away for a rainy day and I have maintained that advice throughout my life, always putting something aside whenever I could. In the past few months I have forked-out cash to help our youngest son, not that I ever neglected our eldest son, he has benefitted from my support too. On Friday I spent all day installing new light fittings in a large house and didn’t return home until five o’clock. I was preparing something to eat when I received a call from E who asked me for assistance. Her car had stalled and would not restart. She drives a semi-automatic so couldn’t be towed in the normal way as the front wheels, the drive wheels, will not rotate if there is anything wrong with the clutch. The clutch is controlled automatically in her type of vehicle. The car can only be towed if the front wheels are lifted from the road, which requires a special vehicle fitted with the necessary lifting gear. that meant the car would have to be repaired where it stood else be carried on the rear of a wagon. I drove to where she was, about 3/4 of a mile away and asked if she’d tried starting the engine again but she hadn’t. She tried it whilst I was there and it started. I had called my emergency breakdown service, the AA, as she hadn’t one and they came to our assistance within a half-hour. The guy explained to E what the problem was and that she would have to have the car examined but that he would drive behind her as she drove back home in case the engine failed again. It didn’t. Evidently the fault was intermittent. On Saturday E had her monthly meeting date with her friends some twenty miles away in another town or to be more precise a pub/restaurant outside of that town, a place we have often gone for a meal together. She was planning to drive there but I offered to drive her there instead. She insisted to drive herself but I advised her to take up membership of a breakdown service, something she agreed she must do anyway and she arranged that on-line with Green Flag.

Green Flag logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Meanwhile I did my routine exercise on the treadmill. By eleven I was dressed and ready to take her should she change her mind. She normally leaves the house around one o’clock so she had plenty of time to change her mind but didn’t. Around twenty minutes later she called me to say that the car had broken down again a mere half mile or so away near my local pub. This time the engine refused to restart so she was stuck. Eventually she called for assistance and they came to her rescue, however they could not do a roadside repair and arranged for her car to be taken to a service station in town. She missed her meeting because it was after four o’clock before the vehicle was recovered and half-past four before it was taken to the service station where I had arranged to meet her. The car will be checked on Monday morning. We drove home in my van. I have no idea how much the repairs will be and she doesn’t know it yet but I shall be paying for it and for her fee to the recovery service for her. Well what else should I do? It’s the never-ending story called love.

Shirley Anne