Looking on the bright side. - Lagarde

After two days of mind numbing electrical trouble shooting, it turns out the battery problems that we’d been quietly experiencing during the year were exactly that: battery problems.  Not refrigerator problems, or inverter problems or some other major electrical fault created problems: just a pair of year old batteries that decided they didn’t want to play any more.

The good thing about that is that they are under some sort of warranty, so with just a little bit of luck will be replaced one day by a nice man who will just turn up in a truck and if he gives us a bill at all, we should have enough left over to buy airfares back next year.

Duncan will turn up one day in his truck with the replacement for the replacement parts in the injection system too, and just maybe we can get rid of the horrible old diesel smell that emanates from Mr P before we go home.  It's probably the engine equivalent of the olfactory welcome one receives when entering a cat refuge, but it's not good enough - we just won't let his incontinence get the better of us after all we've been through.

With just a little more luck than we seem to have had this year, we may (he stupidly says, committing it to writing) start the next with nothing to do of a mechanical repair nature.

Meanwhile in the village, the sun was shining and the sky clear blue, the autumn leaves were exactly a complimentary colour to their surrounds and all seemed particularly well with the world.