Gracie’s Life Experiment

I had to do some interviews up in Lancashire so had to drive a hire car.  It took 4 hrs of driving to get to the meeting (it’s usually only a 2.5hr trip) and it took 1hr to get through Stoke at 8am.  Then 15mph across Thelwall with only about 35 mins to get to where I needed to be.  I get really fed up of having to drive up and down the country for these case studies.  My feet hurt, my back hurts and I have to leave the house at silly o’clock and get home at even more silly o’clock.   

Interestingly the hire car was a 57 Fiat Brave (it’s usually always a Ford) – which was OK to drive but the controls were mind boggling.  I spent the first 30 mins driving along in 26 degree heat as I couldn’t work out how to reduce the temperature (the button is actually a dial!!).  The windscreen blower however remained at superhot temp so cleared the windscreen but then ended up boiling in the car again.  Ended up intermittently switching the auto temp, the blower and opening the window to try and sort it out.  So much for the auto environmental controls – I had to bloody manually control it.  Also the radio kept randomly, suddenly getting extremely loud – annoying, but actually helped to keep me awake.

Summary of the day: Woke up, drove, had meeting, drove, coughed a lot.  Chest infection really painful and I had to have a Vicks vapour inhalation (aka head over a bowl of steaming water and towel over the head).