In which the boys are very independent, Katy is stuck at the shop and Bob learns about oil and engines

On Thursday morning we went to Tots, sans K (who was busy watching a film with his homonym) and did usual Tots things (piano, French, playing a lot) but not recorders as Gina needing to do some child-dropping and -swapping and the necessity of an early finish for Multisport meant that time was very short. When we got to Multisport we found that Susan had brought the Ks there so that made reclaiming our own easy 🙂 J and M did sport, K, K, E and L watched and had fun with face paints we had brought to get L ready for her Hallowe’en Gym session (deferred from Monday). BB, A and S played and also face painted a bit, and the adults had a frustrating time trying to work through some of the politics of the local HE list and how to make it work better 😕
Home again and got L ready for gym, which Chris very kindly took her to as he was almost passing with SB… Sorted Suma stuff for him to collect, quick cup of tea and he was off to collect the girls again. Lots of violin practice, in anticipation of a weekend without, piano practice ditto then tea and an early night.

Friday was a day at home with lots of maths and music, playing outside while weather still good and a tutoring session mid-afternoon. We made chocolate truffles to give Nic and Ady as a thank you for ferrying the boys to the Rainedrops for us (all sorts of shapes and sizes, as all children joined in, including A – hope they were okay!) and made a quick cake while we were at it, then tea and all children into pyjamas, L ready for bed as soon as boys had left and boys ready for bed as soon as they had arrived! It was very odd to be in a house with only 2 children! Even once they would all have been asleep and quiet anyway the silence had a different quality to it somehow.

Saturday was my shop morning, which should have ended at 1:30 ready for a quick dash across to Derby to collect some more Trofast and then up to Sheffield, aiming to arrive by 4:30 or 5 (3 hours from Cambridge according to googlemaps). While I was working Bob took the girls to one of the Festival of Ideas events, where they had a great time making sculptures of big and small things and then came back to the shop at 1:15 ready for a quick getaway as soon as the afternoon shift person arrived. At 1:45 I tried ringing the shop owner to see what was happening, but got no answer to her mobile. Eventually I managed to get hold of her home number and phoned there at 2 to say that we really had to go. She sent her husband to take over but said I could leave the Back in 5 minutes sign up and just go as soon as we were ready. Bob put children in car, I locked things which needed locking, found the sign etc and we finally left rather nearer to 2:30 than 1:30 🙁
Bob had checked the oil whilst waiting and found it was low, so decided it would be a good idea to pop home and put more in, since it’s only a 2 or 3 minute detour and meant we could pick up more food and bits for journey too. Unfortunately he was rather generous with the oil and as we set off from home clouds of billowing white smoke followed us 🙁 After a couple of minutes they still weren’t clearing so I stopped the car and Bob phoned my dad for advice, the gist of which was that the oil had been enormously overfilled and we needed to get some out either using the sump plug or a pipette. I ran home for the baster the children play with in the bath, only to find that the engine layout is such that you can’t get at the oil once it’s in. The sump plug was still too scary a proposition, especially as it’s so far under the car and the front is so low that we would have had to reach for it blindly, so we decided to call out our breakdown cover (handily provided by our bank account) – only to find that Bob had moved the info card to his new car. So we then had to phone the bank to get the details so that we could phone the breakdown people *sigh*
When he finally arrived (it took over an hour) the breakdown man was very nice and said that although he would normally have then towed us to his workshop he would try to do the job on the road for us so we could get on. Since he couldn’t reach the sump plug either (which made us feel slightly better!) we had to drive the car up onto the kerb one side and a wedge of wood the other so that both front wheels were lifted enough for him to get underneath and drain the oil. What he removed was still quiet clean so he poured it into a spare empty oil container and gave it to us to use next time (and the time after that, and probably the next couple of times too – yes Bob did overdo it a bit!) then checked the level and told us to rev the engine for a bit to clear the system and we were good to go 🙂 Only 4 hours late!
Fortunately the shelves people were happy for us to go late, but it meant we didn’t get to the Rainedrops until evening and so missed seeing Nic and Ady and co 🙁 The boys didn’t seem to have noticed us not being there as they were far too busy having fun together with lego and DSs (and had had a whale of a time in the morning at LaserQuest) and we did get some leftover party food, including yummy cheese and courgette scones 😉