When it rains it pours here in Swavesey, at least at our house. :) Last night on our way home the car started making funny noises, and stalling whenever we got close to slowing down. We managed to make it down the freeway, and off at the exit ramp, then it stalled and we thought it wasn't going to start again! We tried and tried, and eventually we sat there for like 15 minutes and were able to get it started. Fortunately we had been able to get the car off the road and onto the roadside (over a little curb) because it was a downhill slope. We made it to our house but that was it.
On Thursday mornings I have my women's home group, and I was leading the study this morning. So since the car was gone I took the bus in to town with G. Boy was that an interesting experience....have you ever ridden an elephant? Well that's what it feels like to sit on the upper deck of a double decker bus, if you don't sit right in the front. It feels like the bus is going to fall over any second, or that you'll be thrown from it, even though it is enclosed. I'm not easily made motion sick, but after 45 minutes of that I felt like I might possibly throw up. :)
This is the A14 as we got on it.
A roundabout from the top deck of the bus. Many of the large roundabouts (they call them traffic circles) have white and black bricks to help you remember which direction to go. :)
Well, that bus dropped us off at G's office, right near the door. I couldn't remember where to catch the Citi bus that would take me out to the study, so I had to go in and look on the map again. There's no use printing the maps because they are in color online, and only make sense in color. :) I figured out that I needed the Route 1 bus, and hiked it to the closest stop for that bus. Of course when I got close the #1 bus went past me, beat me to the stop, then went on. So I waited 10 minutes for the next one, no problem.
I rode that bus around until I had lost my sense of direction and couldn't remember where to get off. I knew the bus made a big loop, and that I needed to get off at some part of the loop. I called G to ask him to check the map, and I had missed my stop, so I had to wait for the bus to go all the way around and back again. Finally I got off the bus and walked to the study. We were looking at the story of Martha and Mary, which was great, and pring for our outreach event tonight where we were bringing friends and making chocolate truffle thingies.
So I went back into town on the bus, walked around a bit and took photos, then took the bus going back out to Swavesey. If it isn't apparent by now, there are 2 bus types- the Citi buses (#'s 1-8) which go only in the city and just outside it, and the Stagecoach buses which go out to the villages around Cambridge. Anyway the 15 and 15A take you out to Swavesey. :)
Waiting for the bus back to Swavesey I saw these ads- here in the UK it's the norm, and absolutely expected that you will say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Christmas." There's no such thing as "Happy Holidays" or anything else because holidays here means vacation for one, and because they don't see any point in pretending that Christmas doesn't have a rlgs meaning and root. Most people don't celebrate it for it's original purpose, but they don't mind that.
Tesco is on the bus route to Swavesey. Funny how different things look from up high.
I thought I'd have a nice quite ride home- the sun sets here at like 3:45pm now, and it was just about that time. The countryside was looking gorgeous and Englishy, with the latest wheat crop growing bright green like a beautiful carpet on all the fields. The view from the front of the bus was fantastic- I could see overtop of the hedges which line the roads, and it was great. All was well until we got into what is sort of downtown Swavesey....3 issues caused a horrible convergence of traffic at one point in our small village. The elementary (they call it Primary) school was letting out and cross walkers were stopping traffic to help the children cross. Parents were coming to pick up children, so the streets were lined with cars parked in the street and on the sidewalks (this is the usual method of parking) AND a tow truck was coming out of the repair place (they call it a Garage) JUST as our bus was trying to get through.
As you can imagine, this lead to an absolute standstill. The bus was blocking 3/4 of the street as it was, because there was a long line of cars parked in our lane. The truck driver thought the bus should have waited for him to come out, so he came out anyway and couldn't get past our bus. I had come downstairs as the bus stop was just a little way past all this so I had a bird's eye view (and a good earful) as this truck first rolled down his window to complain at the bus driver who complained to him that he shouldn't have pulled out. I will leave it to you to imagine their interchange. :) The bus driver got fed up and put the window up, and the truck got fed up and decided to go anyway whether he had to ram the bus or not. He managed quite well seeing as his truck was less than an inch from the bus, but at some point it started scraping, and there was nothing either side could do but keep going. After the truck went by we could all move again, and there was much discussion on what had minutes before been a silent bus. :)
G had come home so the garage people could come get the car, and they gave us a loaner. Unfortunately when it came time for me to go the the chocolate event, the car wouldn't start. :) The immobiliser wouldn't allow us to start the car! Too funny. Fortunately someone drove out to pick me up. But it was rather ridiculous that we had 2 cars die.:)
The mechanic insists that it isn't worth fixing our car- of course he hasn't looked at the used car market and seen that even putting money into ours, even considering what we've already put into it, it's still a deal to have them fix it. :) We're looking cautiously around at other cars, but we may end up just paying them to do it.
I made it to the event, where I was giving a short talk about the real meaning of Cmas. We had lots of great conversations, and had 3 ladies from China and 2 from Europe. The 3 from China listened to the Cmas story with wrapt attention, because they'd never heard it before, or heard about Gd or JC. I was glad for the chance to share JC with them.
It is incredibly late here (it's probably 12:24am) but I accidentally had tea at the party so I still don't feel sleepy. :) I'd better try to go to sleep though. I've been having real problems sleeping at night- I don't feel sleepy, and for like the first 4 hours I basically just nap, and toss and turn. I don't really fall asleep until like 6 or 6:30am, and I'm really exhausted most of the day, until like 8pm when I suddenly start feeling more awake, and then I can't sleep. So pr for me- I'm truly a morning person so this has really thrown my routine for a loop.
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