Choc a l’Orange on GMTV (by sarah)

This week (19th-22nd of July 2010) my friend is appearing on GMTV's Chiefs at Sea competition making her stunning desert! I've written a post on it on Salaric Cooking.

You can vote for the dish you like best!

Omnomnomnom!!!!

Adrian Brown and The Cheap Car Trade Centre (by alaric)

Earlier this year, Sarah and I spent my bonus pay on a second-hand car from The Cheap Car Trade Centre in Gloucester.

Sadly, they neglected to buy it a tax disc before I picked it up, so I couldn't drive it (other than the quick trip) home for a couple of weeks while the papers went through to make me the registered keeper. However, even on the trip home, the engine started to overheat, and the engine started to run badly; as the car had been stationary for a while, and had been almost entirely out of fuel, I was suspicious but it might have just been sludge from the fuel tank washing into the engine; I looked into the cooling system and found a syphon tube had become disconnected, so the engine could blow out excess coolant into the reservoir when the pressure was high, but could not suck coolant back in. Sure enough, although the reservoir was full, the cooling system was very low, so I flushed it out and filled it up after replacing the syphon hose.

All was well for a few days, but then it started overheating again. I was dropping Sarah off in Cheltenham at the time, so I stayed in the car park to let it cool down before heading home; however, it quickly overheated again, and again, and started to emit white smoke from the exhaust, and steam from under the bonnet. I pulled in another car park, and rang the RAC, who came and told me the head gasket was leaking badly.

So I rang the warranty company, who said that head gasket failure wasn't covered. So I rang The Cheap Car Trade Centre and explained the problem, but they disavowed any responsibility, so I informed them that the Sale of Goods Act made them responsible for the goods they sell being fit for the advertised purpose, which includes a reasonable life expectancy, even if they are second-hand; and this car was sold to me as "ready to drive". They told me I'd have to take them to court in that case.

So I sent them the required two warning letters, then tried to take them to court. This was hampered somewhat by them refusing to say who owned the business, which is an obligation under the Business Names Act, so I rang Gloucester Trading Standards, who pointed me at:

Office of Fair Trading Investigation into The Cheap Car Trade Centre

Which led to:

Formal Undertaking against Adrian Brown, Sole Director, Adrian Brown Limited

So Adrian Brown was the man behind the business, using his limited company, Adrian Brown Ltd, company number 04831719, which is registered as being at The Cheap Car Trade Centre's premises.

A look on the Companies House web site reveals:

REGISTERED OFFICE CHANGED ON 16/09/09 FROM: SUNNYLEA ASH LANE DOWN HATHERLEY GLOUCESTER GL2 9PS

...that's five days after his "formal undertaking" with the OFT. I suspect he changed it from his home address to his premises to divert unwanted attention at home. However, Companies House remembers all. I wonder if he still lives there. I would discourage my loyal readers from jumping to the conclusion that he does and inundating the address with junk mail or any other forms of harassment, in case he doesn't.

Anyway, knowing who to sue, I proceeded to activate the county court system.

They answered my claim with a defence (stating that it must have been me driving the car while overheating that broke the head gasket), so I was waiting for a date for the hearing when I received my last letter to them returned unopened, with "THE LTD CO THAT TRADED AS 'THE CHEAP CAR TRADE CTR' HAS CEASED TRADING AND IS INSOLVENT WITH NO ASSETS, AND HAS VACATED 333 BRISTOL RD GLOUCESTER".

I got back in touch with the Trading Standards folks, who said that they knew the company was closing, but that this action was suspended as there were county court cases in progress, so my case would probably still proceed, even though I might never be able to extract any money if the company was truly insolvent.

However, I'm still going to try. Limited companies protect their shareholders and directors by limiting their liability; the company is sued, not the people. But there's a limit to the limit. If a director can be shown to have acted fraudulently or incompetently, then they can be personally liable.

It looks like I won't get my money back, which will leave us carless until I get another bonus or something - but I'm hoping that, perhaps, the courts might find Adrian Brown personally liable. Given the involvement of the Office of Fair Trading and Trading Standards, it would appear that I'm not alone in having suffered from his business practices (the OFT judgement explicitly mentions him attempting to avoid the Sale of Goods and Business Names acts).

After all, I have little choice but to pursue this - I am scraping by with buses (which run once an hour, and don't run at all after about 5pm), being bankrupted by taxis, and begging lifts from people. This is seriously hampering my ability to live my life.

A large rabbit run (by alaric)

Today, I made a run for Jean's rabbit, Blacky. He has a hutch, but rabbit hutches are far too small for rabbits to spend all day in; we'd been letting him run around the house (which requires constant watching, so can only happen for an hour or so), or letting him enjoy the slightly larger possibilities of a large cage with the bottom removed pegged down on the lawn, but we knew it wasn't nearly enough for him; he was always wanting to get out, and when he's in the house, he enthusiastically runs the entire length of downstairs.

So, I built him a run, with some help from Jean (he's her rabbit, after all, but there's only so much use a four-year-old is in this kind of project). Two metres and ten centimetres long, a metre and five centimetres wide, and fifty centimetres high; made out of a wooden frame with rabbit mesh, and a liftable solid door at one end, which also provides some fixed shade.

I relish the chance to do something with my hands, as I usually don't get time to, and end up spending all of my time at a computer. And Blacky certainly seemed happy; he was running around it at high speed, occasionally bounding into the air and spinning round, which is what rabbits do when they're happy. Note the motion blur:

That's not all, though; we've also bought him a lead, so we'll be able to safely take him for walks along the drive.

Surviving the Curse (by sarah)

Recently we have been living in Interesting Times more than usual - first off we still don't have a working vechile as the car we bought died on the first long outing we did in it. This has resulted in us going to the small claims court etc...

Of course Alaric spent all he could spare of his bonus on the car - using the rest to pay things off. So until he either gets another bonus or we get our money back we can't get another car.

Then due to this we hired a car for a weekend trip I had booked ages ago - everything seemed fine when we returned it and about two weeks later the office in London was broken into steeling Alaric's laptop for the second time in a few months. Alaric walked in on the pale, pimply behooded youths who made a quick get away.

Fortunatly Al is quiet good at backing up.

On the way home from this debacle after having had to cancel cheque books and the like that where in the laptop case, he discovered that our account was empty.

However this turned out to be due to the car rental company and not the brake in - who had on the Tuesday removed some £800 odd quid from our account leaving nothing there. I recieved a letter on the day of the break in saying there were dents on the car but no mention of money.

Letter is dated after they took the money from the account, it was a further week before we recieved the invoice saying they were going to take the money. We tried to sort it out with them but they said it would take weeks/months to sort out - mean while we had no money for food, rent etc...

So we re-contact the bank and have to fax them stuff though they are helpful and know of the company as a royal pain. But then we find our fax doesn't work, nor do any of the others we have tried so we re-contact bank and get an address.

And mean while everyone is now contacting us to say they haven't been able to take payments etc... Ulrike has been very kind and is getting me a Tescos order which I hope to be able to give her the money for next month but at this rate we are going to be short next month too now as it doesn't look like that money will reappear in our account any time soon :/

The old Chinese curse strikes again me thinks!

(Other friends have been helpful too such as Stephen who brought us round some food plants - I am so glad we grow so much of our food and get stuff delivered from the diary at the moment.)

A stroll in the countryside (by alaric)

On Sunday, I was looking after Jean as Sarah was in Cheltenham to run a writing workshop thing.

So I suggested that we might go for a walk, and Jean liked the idea - however, she decided she wanted a LONG walk! So after some discussion, we set off for the furthest of the three pubs in the Parish, which is about three miles away, with a packed lunch and lots of water, and Jean's teddy bear, who she decided should come with us.

To my delight, Jean didn't tire and demand to come home; we made frequent stops to drink water, and sat down in some shade in the woods to eat our cheese and biscuits, but we pressed on cheerily, past some lambs:

Eventually we reached the Fostons Ash for some lemonade and crisps.

Then Sarah rang as she was on the bus home, which stopped off by the Royal William, the pub nearest our home - so we decided to walk straight there to meet Sarah, taking a different route, where we got a little closer to some of the lambs:

At the Royal William we ate a filling dinner of chips (not so unhealthy if you've been walking all day!), and came home.

Jean was still enthusiastic at the end, despite having now walked about six miles from 2pm to 8pm!

The best thing was, I recorded about two hours of it on my concealed camera. It's mainly shaky footage of bushes and sky, but it offers the context for the audio track, which records all the awesome conversations Jean and I had.