I had to ensure that I awoke in plenty of time for the very last day of the year. Most importantly, the car needed to be taken into the garage at a scheduled time of 8.30 as a consequence of a message appearing on the console saying ‘Engine malfunction – get technical support’ (but this message has now, even more mysteriously disappeared) So once the car has been taken to the garage, I know that there is a fairly adjacent large store where I can go and treat myself to a breakfast which I will if only to occupy a little of the morning until the car is fixed (or not)The evening before, I had entertained my Irish friends from down the road with a little Christmas get together – we had both eaten our meal earlier in the day so I just rustled together a few ‘light bites’ to accompany our drinks. But I did introduce our friends to a little delicacy which I only tend to enjoy at Christmas time. In Yorkshire, there is a tradition of serving a slice of Christmas cake with a slab of Wensleydale cheese on top of it and the local publicans will tend to dish this titbit out to their regular customers (or they did in the past) Now it just so happens that Aldi sell a simple unvarnished slab of fruitcake not adorned with marzipan or icing but just sold as a slab of cake. This is absolutely delicious so last night I introduced our friends to a little bite of this Yorkshire delight that they had not tried before. My neighbours used to have an extremely likeable neighbour who was a French lady who in her professional career had been a teacher of both French and Spanish. She was always game to celebrate anything that needed celebration and was great fun at any of the little parties that we used to hold. But, with advancing years and a large house to maintain, she has now moved off to Sandbach in Cheshire to live in an annexe to her daughter’s house which is completely understandable but we all feel her loss quite keenly as the people to whom she has sold her house do not seem to have the same community spirit of ‘joie de vivre’ exhibited by our French friend. My Irish friends were looking forward to a two week cruise of the Canary islands upon which they were due to depart in a week’s time and, no doubt, this will help to pull the teeth of some of the worst of the January weather. We are having a cold and icy start to the New Year with an initial temperature of -2° predicted to rise to a dizzying 5° later on in the day. I have not studied the offering to be had on the TV for this last day of the year but I know there is a good film to be viewed as a catchup from yesterday during the afternoon and then we shall see how the rest of the day unfolds. I am looking forward to catching up with an old (musician) friend whom I have arranged to meet on New Year’s Day and I am sure that we have got quite a lot to catch up on between us. Having listened to ClassicFM for several hours each day since its inception nearly thirty years ago now, it does not surprise me that I recognise most of the tracks that are played. I used to think that listening to my favourite composer (Mozart) would be incredibly difficult once Meg had died as we shared the same musical tastes but, fortunately, that is not the case. As I type, I am listening to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 which, written in a minor key, expresses a degree of melancholy but there are always rays of hope bursting through. When I reflect upon it, I think I was incredibly fortunate to have attended a grammar school (Thornleigh College in Bolton) with a good, but by no means outstanding, musical tradition which taught me so much at an impressionable age that has stayed with me throughout life. I do wonder whether this type of musical education which I was fortunate to experience has been entirely squeezed out of the modern curriculum. I remember being played the overture to the ‘Marriage of Figaro’ at the end of my third year in the school with the message that this was going to be the piece to be analysed in real depth for our ‘O levels ‘which were still two years off but we might as well make a start now so that we could get off to a flying start when our fourth year in school commenced. I then moved schools as my mother had completed her teacher training course and I then attended a school in Leeds with no musical traditions whatsoever (apart from a few singing lessons taught only to the 11 year olds) and this was a massive culture shock for me at the time.

Well, I had a feeling that the day was not going to run smoothly and so it proved. I got to the garage at 8.15 and, fortunately compared with the last time I took this road to Redditch it was just that little bit lighter making for easier navigation. Bur then the receptionist dropped a bit of a bombshell telling me that the message ‘engine malfunction’ meant that they could not release the car until about 5.00pm in the afternoon. I walked to the nearby Morrisons and treated myself to a large English cooked breakfast, not least to while away the time. I had availed myself of a copy of ‘The Times‘ and as the restaurant was uncrowded occupied myself with doing a ‘Seriously Fiendish Sudoko’ for half an hour before doing a wander of the store. I made for the stationary section but everything in which I was interested was either sold out or not stocked but I waited until three hours had elapsed and then walked back to the garage. Here I was informed that the battery was faulty and leaking even though I knew it was a fairly new one. A quick call to my son revealed that it was a ‘MazdaCare’ replacement but they had subcontracted to another firm who had supplied and fitted a battery that they claimed was superior to that supplied in the original Mazda (which it plainly was not, having failed after thirteen months and just, of course, out of the warranty period) So the Mazda garage explained that thy were just a franchise and had no record of what MazdaCare had done who, in turn, had subcontracted out a part pf the repair business. So we seem to have a business model here in which organisations take whatever profit they can and then subcontract out parts of the business so they do not have take any losses. Even the battery could not be replaced in the main Mazda dealership because they were ‘out of stock’ having had a run on them recently but I am booked in for next Monday when they should have replenished their stocks. So I have a diagnosed but not repaired car but was still glad to get home. Then I had an extremely frustrating afternoon trying to get the credit transferred from one Tesco Mobile phone (an ancient Nokia, where they are discontinuing 2G as from tomorrow!) to a more modern iPhone with a TescoMobile Sim card inside but the number of hoops through which I had to jump were incredible. They say it has been done but I shall have to wait 48 hours to see if the credit has transferred over (and I suppose that will exclude New Year’s Day and the weekend)