wheat field see below

I recently bought an old Volvo V70 for  £1250, spent about £400 on a couple of new tyres and a complete oil change and there was only one trouble with the car and that was that it had only one set of keys. Anyone who has had dealings with Volvo know how security conscious they are. I rang up a Volvo outlet to be told that the cost of getting a new key would be £250 which includes the key itself and the programming of the key. Unless the engine recognises the code, the car will not start.

I found a local locksmith who said that he did programming, so off we set to a place called Cranmore, a little village about 10 miles south of Midsomer Norton. The cutting of the physical key was easy enough but the problem came when we had to program it. Evidently the key has to be read and then returned to a unit three times with intervals of up to 15 min in between. This is a deterrent for those wishing to clone the key and steal the car. We were there for about one hour 30 min. While he was working, I went for a lovely walk on an archetypal spring – summer day with wheat blowing in the breeze. This made the visit alone worthwhile. Alas, he could not program the key so we returned empty-handed.

disused rail tracks make me very nostalgic and sentimental

I made one mistake with my  new car that I shall not make again. I had a set of new tyres fitted and one had a puncture which I did not realise and drove round on for a mile or so thus destroying the tyre. Fortunately I was able to replace it and will go along tomorrow Saturday to have it fitted. You may wonder why it is possible to miss a puncture but these tyres are of the sporty variety and are much thinner than the average model. Ah well, put it down to experience.