Boarding

One of my new work colleagues, on hearing that I didn’t have a permanent place to live suggested putting out a request via email at work. I did this and very quickly got in touch with someone. So, I took a drive out to the northern Canberra suburb of Dunlop to see what might be my new home. The young woman seemed pleasant, and seemed happy to have me. It was all very casual and informal; which kind of surprised me. Well, I was a stranger, after all. Of course, she pointed out the obvious, “Well, I know where you work.” So we agreed that I was to move in on the weekend. I was good for both of us. She had her house on the market and I moved in on the understanding that I might have to move out at short notice. It was a dicey arrangement, but there wasn’t much else for me to do. She had a very nice house, and that made the decision to stay so easy.

I took the car to a local repairer, and got it fixed. A new tyre did the trick. The suspension wasn’t about to fall off the car, after all. The problem turned out to be a tyre fault. Part of the steel belting that runs through the tyre’s construction had popped through the tread, or a fault in the tread had exposed it; one or the other or both. It’s a wonder the tyre remained inflated. Presumably, as the damage got worse it reduced the speed that I could drive. I can only guess that each time I stopped that car on the trip that I had stopped with the dodgy part of the tyre on the road surface, and out of view.

I was generally impressed that this repairer didn’t see me as some out of towner and soaked me for work not done. He also seemed to think the turbo might need some work, and a turbo repair job might be in the order of $1200. That would be a bill that I don’t need at the moment. The turbo had been noisy for some time, but I always drove carefully.