Dead

"Just look at this brilliant thing!" I gushed.

The key in the lock went "click click click" and then nothing.

This was to have been my third outing in the Golden Monster.  The children and I were on our way to Cornwall for the evening, to meet Judith and her new Times Encounters boyfriend for a swim at their hotel, on the very beautiful and usually overlooked Rame Peninsula, just across the river from Plymouth.

Tomorrow was Pony Club Camp Day, and Bank Holiday Monday.  A two hour drive away and the reason why I bought the Golden Monster in the first place.

We all quickly decamped into Marvin the Focus and off we set.

The next morning my two lovely guests, together with George who does all my mending, pored over the Golden Monster in the pouring rain, attempting to jump-start it from their brand new hire-car-Discovery, but to no avail.

So it was that the AA visited me for the tenth time in two years.  I think I have reached my limit.  The nice man started the truck OK from his powerful batteries, and then we had to leave it running with a brick holding down its accelerator while I finished serving breakfast, found someone prepared to replace a 3 litre diesel battery on a Bank Holiday, and a farrier, as one of the horses had chosen this day of all days to lose a shoe.

Halfords! I love them!  £126 and three hours later I returned to pack up the car; a farrier had been found all the way from Torquay - what a jolly Bank Holiday he had had! - and I set off with the two horses and Beloved Daughter to join fifty other children aged 10 - 18 for a week's camp in the Somerset rain.

I'm sure this was just a blip of the part of Golden Monster.