Half-term and Halloween

I ventured forth to Cambridge, commandeering the house of my dear friend Roger, once again, for a week’s signing tour in the flatlands.

In an up and down week, such one expects in East Anglia, I sold a total of 253 books, with Curd the Lion racing ahead at 160 to 91 of The Flight of Birds, a reverse of the summer where the Birds took Flight and easily outpaced the groundly Lion.

True to form, in Cambridge again my, now nearly five year old, Peugeot 207GT turbo’s exhaust nearly fell off, all brackets broken but one, discovered on Saturday evening as I was about to set off home from St Albans  and I had to rig a ‘non-corroding’ (unlike the exhaust main bracket – designed to rust through)
loop to hold it up as I nursed the car home. On the previous occasion my rear offside computer tyre-valve blew, costing me £240 at the nice Peugeot dealership there.
This metal strap holding the rear exhaust box up was cunning welded at one point and pointlessly to the box itself, necessitating the replacement of the perfectly fine entire exhaust system from front to rear at a (non-dealership) cost of £190 (from Peugeot just the replacement rear box is well over £200 not including fitting let alone the obligatory ‘diagnostics’ that must be performed and charged for before any work is carried out).

I returned to the grisly task of taxes and an automatic rifle cutaway for Osprey to be done by Tuesday, missing Halloween and only just remembering our wedding anniversary before the day’s end (Halloween chosen for that express purpose).


We had a muted celebration on the 31st and another on the 1st to make up where I cooked – sort of – I was still trussed up in taxes so I, on and with the one hand, only managed the fillet steak while Pauline on the other managed the rest while I had one.