I should have been in court on Friday, I can't say I was looking forward to it but I would have got a lot of satisfaction from seeing that man squirm. The man in question is the idiot who pulled out from being parked at the side of a main road without looking in his rear view mirror, he drove into the side of my car as I was driving along. Accidents happen sometimes, we all make mistakes, but this chap was an accident waiting to happen, he was on his phone and not paying attention to what he was doing.
When he hit me we both pulled in and he couldn't stop apologising, he seemed really angry with himself and generally lacking in composure. I was quite shaken up but it was me who had to stay calm and reassure him. I gave him my details and got him to write his information down in his own handwriting, in fact he wrote it on the back of a piece of paper listing the calls he had made that day. My car came off worse because his car was bigger and higher than my Galaxy I had a dent and a deep scrape along the side of the car from the back panel stretching all along the rear door. He told me that he would ring me the following day to confirm that he had reported it to his insurance company.
The following day I rang my insurance company and made arrangements for my car to be inspected and collected for repair, and also for a hire car to be delivered. I was entitled to a similar car to my Galaxy but as I didn't need a large car in the next few weeks I asked for a Micra or something similar (I got a Nissan Note and instantly fell in love with it). The man did not ring me the next day, but he did ring the following afternoon, there was something odd about his tone and he seemed surprised that I had already reported it to my insurance company.
My car was inspected, photographed and collected, it was away for repair for well over a week because they had to order parts and then it had to be resprayed. The car came back and I heard nothing more until mid January when my insurance company notified me that his insurance company had not received any notification or claim from the other driver. I tried to call him but he didn't answer my calls or respond to messages. It became clear that he had got the damage to his vehicle repaired without informing his insurance company, maybe it only needed a new bumper.
At first he tried to deny the accident completely, but thankfully I still had the details in his handwriting written on his call sheet. Then he tried to claim that it was my fault but I could disprove that because there was no reason to pull across him and I could prove my arrival at work by CCTV image and fingerprint entry. To get to that destination I needed to be in the outer lane. He clung to it being my fault until we issued court papers, then he drew it out as long as possible before admitting liability but disputing costs. There was nothing to dispute, I asked for a smaller hire car and I used the repair company recommended by my insurance company, my only other claim was for my excess and a nominal sum for phone calls. He managed to delay and procrastinate but finally a date was set for the court hearing, as everyone predicted he waited until less than a week before the hearing and then decided to settle.
There really should be a penalty for people who do that this sort of thing, it wastes court time as well as messing people around. It has taken fifteen months to bring this to a satisfactory conclusion, he thought that he could make it go away if he ignored it but he didn't bargain for me having the tenacity of a Jack Russell Terrier, I never give up!
A couple of weeks ago the bin men had a bit of a mishap with our wheelie bin, one of the pins that hold the lid in place was missing and it looked as if the bin had been caught on the emptying mechanism at the back of the bin lorry. I thought it would just be a case of Robbie ringing them up and someone sending me a new pin so that I could mend it, after all it wouldn't be difficult, even Robbie could do it! Apparently it is not that simple, believe it or not we have to have a Wheelie Bin Repair Team and they have to come out and assess the problem and decide if it can be repaired. I will probably cost more to assess the damage than it would to send out a new bin!
Yesterday proved disappointing for Robbie. He took the 'sick' laptop to PC World in Coventry as arranged, but yet again they proved that they were a complete waste of space. We would have got more sense if we had asked our cat to diagnose the fault! So now it is 'plan B' we will speak to an independent repair company to see if they can help.
Despite his frustration Robbie was surprisingly chatty in the evening. He had bumped into an old colleague today and he always enjoys meeting old friends - even the annoying ones. When the CrossCountry franchise transferred from Virgin to Ariva a number of colleagues moved on to new ventures or transferred to 'the Dark Side'. Robbie has bumped into a several of them during his travels recently. Last week he was most impressed that one loud and irritating excolleague appears to have been 'tamed' in his new post. He has been instructed to mute the volume and now he has to make do with sign language and notices, I bet keeping his lip buttoned is killing him. They even have him wearing a shirt and tie - but he still wears an anorak! The old colleague that Robbie met yesterday now works for Network Rail (well, somebody has to!) and it seems that he feels the need for a disguise because he is growing a beard, but true to form for Network Rail it is still a work in progress!
Robbie was working on some important notes last night, I stayed up until midnight but he was still busy so I left him to it. I was woken shortly after 2am by Robbie, he was in agony and seemed rather disorientated. Apparently he had fallen asleep over the computer and had been woken abruptly by the cat, this had made him jump and he'd had a few seconds of panic while he tried to work out why he was at work in his PJ's! He eventually realised where he was, and staggered up to bed, but he was in pain because he had been hunched in an awkward position. I couldn't help laughing about the cat having to wake him up, I expect he was keeping the animals awake with his snoring!
Robbie was like a bear with a sore head yesterday. His laptop died on Saturday evening and he is so upset about it. There was no warning, nothing to suggest anything was wrong, it just turned up it's toes and died mid email. Robbie thinks it could be the mother board, but if you ask me there are two possibilities, boredom or exhaustion. His misery was compounded when he found that the only people who support Philips laptops in UK are PC World. I really mustn't share my opinion of PC World because it isn't printable, let's just say that I am deeply unimpressed. Robbie spent ages ringing round to various branches to find out which store had custody of the single brain cell this week, amazingly it was Coventry (I guess Coventry has to have something going for it). So Robbie will be delivering his laptop for a diagnosis (or possibly a post mortem) this morning. I have been very generous in sharing my computer, but he is absolutely lost without his laptop.
He had his first rant before 6am yesterday morning, and his first 'I'm sorry' text arrived before 7am! When he got home he managed to provoke a furious row by asking me not to cremate the peas! When I met him he hated peas, now suddenly he's an expert. Believe it or not we disagree about 30 seconds cooking time. He says that my extra 30 seconds makes the colour fade. I am adamant that I am not a rabbit and I like my vegetables cooked, I gave up playing marbles when I was about 9 and I don't intend to start now! He kept on about the peas until I got cross and decided that if he wanted to be the next Jamie Oliver he could do it by himself, and I left him to serve the meal alone.
I forgave him later, but I don't suppose it will be long before he is in trouble again. I suppose I had provoked him a bit this evening because I had mentioned a name that always brings the worst out of Robbie - Barry Doe. I love reading the Barry Doe page in Rail magazine, but I should know better than to mention it to Robbie because it always makes him swear. I am not sure if his page is meant to be humorous, but it always makes me smile.
At last our phone has been repaired! It took seven days, five different repair men, countless phone calls totalling more than 4 hours, endless frustration, raised blood pressure and massive inconvenience just to get the fault dealt with. This turned out to be a very simple fault (according to the BT man). Imagine how difficult it would be to get them to do something difficult! Most frustrating of all, we couldn't get a repair man when we needed one, but this morning when the phone was working perfectly a BT man turned up and refused to believe that the repair had been done!! I think you could sum it up in two words - Total Incompetence
