DM is in a flurry of activity to “rescue” our car from terminal decay. It’s pretty old now and has done more than 150,000 miles since I bought it new. I do make sure it’s properly maintained but let’s face it, it’s getting worn out.

The reason for this sudden surge in interest in the car’s well-being is that we’ve been and gone and booked a holiday a long way from home. In order to enjoy our holiday, we’ve got to drive 1500-2000 miles and that means we need to feel that we can rely on our car.

The trouble is, since we booked the holiday, the car has been running really badly.

However, DM has risen to the challenge and he’s been googling the problems we’ve got, all of which seem to be common faults on Vectra-mobiles (or at least Vauxhalls with our engine) and he’s been able to find guidance on what needs to be done to fix the fault.

He’s bought a Haynes manual and has decided that all-but-one of the faults can be fixed by his own fair hands. Hurrah for that as I was getting concerned about my bank-balance at that point.

Mind you, I was more than a bit worried when I came outside to find him attacking the engine with this saw……do you think he’s going to fix the problems or make them worse?

You’ll note that he’s wearing the lucky hat and underneath the jumper, he’s got on the lucky shirt. I too am wearing a team shirt, a Spurs sweatshirt and a Spurs fleece. We had our tea this morning from our lucky mugs and shortly after popping out to tell him the game had kicked off and taking this photo, I was leaning out of the window and singing Dim-i-tar Ber-ba-tov at him when the boy wonder popped in his first of the afternoon in a ten goal thriller at WHL today. He scored four of the six by Spurs and was able to take the ball home for that feat. Yee haaa – see at least some of DMs preparations have borne fruit. Let’s hope the car ones do too.

Last year, hibernation.