In The Beginning

Sun 22 Oct 1030
Saw the ad http://www.gumtree.com/london/00/14497400.html ,
rang the number, Lyndon answered from Paris, but sent us the number of a friend who might show it to us.
I duly text David who we arranged to pick up in Clapham and drove him to London Bridge where the Red Baron was located. We checked him out, and it looked pretty good compared to the previous 5 vans we had looked at. He wasn’t perfect but it had enough going for it that I felt I could really make this van ‘my home’

So we discussed it on the way to my brother’s house where we were going to be taking my nephew to the fun fair for his birthday.

Boom!
We get rear ended by some idiot in a company car. That, on top of our near death experience on the M1 just two day’s before really freaked us out and we were in a serious state of shock.
Try writing insurance details down when you can’t stop shaking.
The crash we’d had the motorway at 70mph had been shocking, a big F*&ko%f truck from Germany tried to change lanes from our left into us. Daniel did marvellously well keeping our little Fiat Punto under control and not getting it stuck under the front wheels of that truck. That charming thought actually hadn’t crossed my mind I’d been more concerned about being shunted into traffic in the inside right lane.

We got drunk! Friday that was, not Sunday.
Sunday, we limped our near dead green racing macine, to my brother’s house in South London and had a stiff cup of tea....with sugar.

In an attempt at normalacy and after a stiff lecture from his dad about being a good boy when Aunty Marea and Uncle Dan, ran out of money, we headed of to the fun fair with ‘four tomorrow’ Matthew
Some-times I wish I was a kid, these fun parks are wonderfully colourful and if you only have one kid, pretty cheap too though I guess spending £20 does feel a little cheaper than NZ$50.

For the very last ride of the day, I convinced him, who “might be scared” to go on the ghost train as long as Uncle Dan held his hand. This ghost train was subsequently deemed to be the best ride, for which I was very relieved. I’d had visions of a bawling Matthew never being allowed to go anywhere with his Aunt again.