Took my car, a VW Passat, for its 80,000 mile service and cambelt change this morning at the local VW garage. All seemed to be routine as I handed over the keys to the service desk and got a lift into work with Dave. After a couple of hours, I received a call from the garage saying my car was ready and could be picked up. Great I thought, but then I thought – two hours is a little quick to complete the service, especially as it included a cambelt change. At this I phoned the garage back and asked if the cambelt had been changed – good job I did. It would appear that, even though VW say the cambelt should be changed every 40,000 miles, when you take it in for an 80,000 mile service, you have to specify you want the cambelt changed – it’s not part of the service in any way. Whilst this seemed odd to me, I then asked if the cambelt could be changed as well. After a short check by the mechanic to see if the parts were in stock, he agreed to carry it out. Just out of curiosity I thought I’d see how much it would cost – I almost fell out of my chair when he told me! However, I wasn’t willing to take the risk of a cambelt snapping in the near future and destroying the engine, so I told him to carry on. The story continued to twist, as just before I left work, I received a phone call from the garage saying they’d carried out the cambelt change, but in the process of putting it all back together, the drive belt had snapped, they didn’t have a replacement in stock and that the car was not in any way fit for use(!) All in all, I’m feeling a little non-plussed about the whole thing, and depending on whether I receive the car in a working state tomorrow, I might reveal the cause of the chair instability.

Anyway, had another interesting game of four-a-side football this evening, although I think the sides weren’t quite even as the side I was on won by quite a considerable margin. I’m now without a car until tomorrow, so Eamonn kindly gave me a lift home.