Lotty's gone Dotty

And we're back to driving Grotty.

A nice day today. The kind of day where you wake up ten minutes before the alarm, so steal a march on the day. When the carer sneaks into the kitchen and does the washing up. When finally, plans and ideas start coming together to create things which actually work and are fit for purpose.

A morning pottering and receiving phone calls.

An afternoon springing Mog from school and driving her to the dentist, at the other end of the county. A beautiful drive, apart from an annoying blip from the radio.

Arriving at the dentist, we are a few minutes early. I take my time unclamping Mog, enjoying the funkiness of automatic rear doors and lift. We trundle over to the Dental Access Clinic and wait for the doors to open. As we wait, we are joined by another nine people, and I wonder how many of these people also have appointments at 1pm.

The door opens, and a man in blue scrubs smiles, and says "we're doing toes today." Is it tiredness which flips me into insane fury at a wasted journey rather than realising he is joking?

We meet the dentist, a very fast talking woman who cannot slow down, even when repeatedly requested to do so. I absorb maybe every other word, Mog perhaps one word in ten. No matter; she gives Mog's mouth a brisk going over, and has an excellent plan of action. One which may actually bring her teeth back to shining whiteness. One which involves taking the time over repeated appointments to get rid of the calculus, potentially also removing some baby teeth under a local anaesthetic, and one which assumes Mog's mouth is a mouth worth treating. We like.

And then we load ourselves back into the bus, and drive home. And Lotty decides to enliven the journey. It's the radio at first; on and off and on again. Next the windscreen wipers decide to go into blizzard mode, and then the indicator insists I am turning left.

I do; there's a left hand turn and it seems as though it might be sensible. As I pull into the car park, Lotty informs me there's an issue with the airbags.

We sit for a minute, and I debate tge options. Home is not too far away, and she's driving OK even if the signals are all a little weird. So we head off. The speedometer decides to alternate randomly between miles and kilometres. The heater comes on, and off, and on again. Lotty informs me that the handbrake is on and that I am in Park. Disconcerting on the dual carriageway. And then, as I ignore her, she ups the game. Now we have a big red flashing light telling me the battery is dead. Then the lights dim, and suddenly I have achieved 99miles to the gallon. Hurrah. Wish I could believe it.

Finally we are home, and there's a message from motability, wanting to know how we like the new bus. I call them back and explain the problems. We discuss a way forwards, and I call the RAC.

RAC do a spot of troubleshooting and come to the same conclusion I have reached, namely that it is incredibly unlikely everything has failed all at once, and far more likely that it is the electricals.

And now we get to play the blame game. It's a new car - so is it a Mercedes problem? Or is it that O and H did something to it when installing the lift and restraints? O and H insist DSP must have done something, DSP say they installed nothing, just delivered it. Let's try S and B - nope, they just ordered it.

Leaving the RAC-man to sort things out, I zip to school (on foot, how tedious) to collect tLP from her choir practice. She and her Well-she-does-actually-go-to-my-school-but-I-play-with-her-at-church-and-Brownies-and-not-school friend bickered gently over who would push Mog down the school drive; a task eventually delegated to friend's Dad, apparently as a special birthday treat. And then we ran for home.

And now Lotty is sitting all forlorn on the drive, and is off to Mudie-Bond in the morning. tLP is all upset because apparently Lotty will miss us and what if the car hospital can't make her better? And Mog is asleep, smiling as she thinks of all the many ways in which the added length of her new chair will make getting anywhere in our old bus somewhat tricky.

And me? I'd like to think that I could look after a brand new vehicle for more than six days without inflicting mortal wounds, but since that doesn't appear to be the case, I'll settle for being extremely thankful we were here and not up in Yorkshire, and that it's someone else's responsibility to sort out, not mine. Oh, and also thankful for the fact I haven't yet sold the red bus. Procrastination has its uses. Which reminds me, anyone want a nice red WAV? Rather beaten up, a bit creaky, but lots of space and two children in wheelchairs can ride side by side and hold hands.

Tia