I’m on strike. I’ll walk. Forget it!

You know, if you weren’t living it, you couldn’t make it up.

And if you did make it up, no one would believe you.

I mean, seriously.

You may by now be au fait with the dramas retrograde Mercury has been injecting into our lives this past week. Both rather aged vehicles in our possession have at various times given up the ghost, one apparently for good. Let’s take the slightly less sickly-looking one – that is, the one that at least attempted to start upon turning the key in the ignition – having spent a small fortune on a new battery (it’s a Japanese import so nothing so easy as off-the-shelf for us), only to discover it was the starter motor, then having the starter motor reconditioned, we wended our merry way to school, aiming to arrive a little early so as to have a word with one of the teachers. Mercury waved his wand in our general direction and… shazam! Puncture.

Sigh.

ALL of yesterday (and I mean ALL) was taken up with hunting down and having fitted a new tyre (it’s an import, remember?) and we were finally set.

So.

To this morning.

Off we tootled, on our jolly old way. Arrived at school in the nick of time (nothing new there, then), deposited small-fry in their respective classrooms, kissed and told they were loved, and paid for their bangers and mash for lunch, piled back into the car our numbers much depleted and off we scooted home.

Only…

We had got as far as the next village when the car began wobbling rather sickeningly, appearing to lose power and, frankly, hobbling up the hill.

Uh-huh. You got it.

Another flat tyre.

So today will be pretty much taken up with the same shenanigans as yesterday.

Mercury goes direct at 2 p.m. next Tuesday and…

I. CAN’T. WAIT!

Oh God… Please… Mercury! Give us a break!

The saga of Mercury retrograde continues. In a week where replacing a car battery appeared to have done the trick, only not to,  its hiccupping, belching, exhausted wheezing was finally fixed by a reconditioned starter motor and life could move back into normality. I could at last drive my children to school without relying on friends, for example.

You think?

Loaded up and setting off nice and early this very morning, in order to speak to my outrageously Gemini son’s teacher about his inability to concentrate or focus (if only I could explain about my five year-old having Sun, Mercury and Venus all in Gemini: how will he ever concentrate?!  But… astrology? There’s nothing in it, remember?) because he’s not sleeping properly and reverting to trouser-wetting again in his distress, I praised be that the car was fixed.  I even uttered the following words:

“I’ve fallen in love with our bus again.”

And then, on the last stretch before school, I heard a bizarre kind of flapping noise. You know when you notice something and your heart suspects the worst, only for your head to say “Don’t be silly. It’s all fine. You’re paranoid”?

Hmmm.

I wasn’t.

Shortly after that noise, the steering became nauseatingly erratic and I had to pull over sharply in order to avoid an accident.

Flat tyre.

Sigh.

Setting off so early meant that my best friend set off later and passed us on her way to school (I silently praising the heavens that my lovely astrologer had accompanied us and was dutifully changing the wheel). Being the wonderful person she is, she delivered the occupants of her car safely in the playground and came back for mine (having, yesterday, driven us to collect the car from the garage post-starter-motor-fixing – she goes above and beyond, eh?) so the smallest was deposited at playgroup a mere five minutes late.

But of course the spare tyre is just that: a stop-gap, spare tyre, too small to do the job for more than an emergency. So this morning was taken up with hunting for a replacement. And of course they didn’t have one. So they’ve ordered it for later. So of course we’re unlikely to keep our after-school appointment. And of course we’re having to part with the equivalent of at least two limbs financially on this vehicle in one blooming week.  Ay, Chihuahua!

The sooner Mercury turns around and heads off again, the happier this driver will be.

Harumph.

More Mercury Retrograde… Harumph!

The printer wasn’t working. “Offline” it kept flashing, in spite of the fact that moments before it had produced a lovely copy of the map we needed to reach our destination.

A closer inspection revealed that the cable had come loose.

How?

Noone had touched the blooming thing.

And let’s not even get started on the email dramas that have unfolded in my personal life… One email containing information that is then twisted, distorted and fired back… oh, again and again… like a game of hand-grenade ping-pong.

Turn around, Hermes… Come back!

Mercury Retrograde… Go Figure!

Keep your claws off our batteries!

So, my lovely astrologer and I piled the four small-fry into the car in good time to make it to school for “lining-up time” at 9 a.m. Admittedly, we usually make it by the skin of our teeth, if not slightly into the enamel. I handed the keys to the largest of my offspring and asked him to unlock the car and get in, his little brothers following like a line of noisy ducklings.

All in, all strapped down safely, bookbags in attendance and (tragically) small screens beeping, I put the key in the ignition and turned it. A most peculiar noise emanated from beneath the bonnet. First, a dim and distant clicking where the roar of the engine should be, followed by a totally exhausted-sounding attempt at an alarm.

Erm.

We’ve had this car for almost a year now. Admittedly, it is ancient. An old boat of a Mercedes (which sounds far more impressive than it is), it is one of the few vehicles to fit this large family and cost a whopping £650 on eBay. As I say, we’ve had it for a good 10 months and, apart from the way it groans around corners and seems to like to dump all its coolant at surprise moments, it hasn’t given us too much cause for alarm. Ah. I said alarm. Until this morning, we didn’t even known it had one. The key fob that is supposed to lock and unlock it, and set the alarm, has never worked. That was until number one son dropped the keys this morning. Now, suddenly, in a fit of efficiency, it has decided to function. Badly. Possibly because the battery is old and failing and doesn’t have enough power to do its job properly (and boy! do I know that feeling…)

Oh, and it has an immobiliser.

And a very efficient one at that.

The children had to be taken to school by a friend while we stayed to attempt to figure out this irksome malfunction.

We do have another car (also an eBay bargain – a Nissan Largo – and bought as a replacement) but it, too, decided to give up the ghost last week. Apparently its battery is at only just a little over 50% power. So that’ll be £100 for a new one, then. Eek. Collecting this afternoon – keep your fingers crossed it does the trick.

In the meantime, having Googled the Mercedes problem, we have now tried about four different “tips” for solving  it, none of which worked, and are waiting for a friend to deliver a little battery (yes… battery !) for the key fob, in the hope that this small and seemingly insignificant part will fix our headache.

Mercury Gremlins… Dontcha just love ‘em?

Mercury Retrograde: Are we lost?

I asked my lovely astrologer, as we neared our home after a rather unexpectedly long walk, what he thought astrologically was the significator of a sense of direction. It wasn’t a pointed question. I was merely interested. I have always been rather proud of my sense of direction; I seldom get lost and usually need to travel somewhere just once in order to be able to repeat the journey without a hiccup.

He replied that he thought Mercury – ruler of roads and short journeys – was probably the answer. Well now, that would make sense to me. I have Mercury in Leo. See? Proud of my sense of direction.

My astrologer himself has Neptune in the 3rd. Not a hope of his finding his way out of a room with one door, you might say. Nonetheless, I find myself humouring him on a regular basis when he proffers his opinions about the route we should take. I don’t believe in ritual humiliation.

So yesterday, living as we do in a bit of a rural idyll, surrounded by kingfishers, badgers and more tiny birds than you can possibly imagine, we set off for a stroll in the weakening evening sun. After two months in our current home, we finally bought a map of the local footpaths that cut their swathes through our countryside. We didn’t, however, feel it necessary to bring it with us. My astrologer was feeling a little peaky, the tagine for our supper was in the oven, bread in the machine due to finishing its cycle within the hour – it was just going to be an easy stroll.

We headed down a well-marked track and congratulated ourselves on our decision. It was a beautiful evening, the fresh air was making my astrologer feel markedly better and the views were beautiful. At a bridge, we paused and pondered the best route to take, when a gentleman walking his dogs informed us of the way. It brought us out, past lots of gambolling lambs, by the church in our village. This little walk had taken all of fifteen minutes. We stopped on a bench for a breather, spotted a signpost pointing straight ahead in the general direction of home, and decided to follow it. My beloved astrologer, humble in the acknowledgement of his 3rd House Neptune, handed over navigational duties to me. This, dear reader, was our error. We should simply have spun on our heels and taken the known and trodden path back to safety.

Our half-hour stroll took us on a circuitous and entirely erroneous adventure through a never-ending patchwork quilt of adjoining (albeit stunningly beautiful) fields and down dales that washed us back up on our front step, exhausted and beaten, some two and a half hours later. It was, in fact, only the haphazard bumping into a small group of rather amusingly power-walking ladies in high-visibility jackets that stopped us going even further off the beaten track.

Today we are resting up.

Mercury is retrograde. Please don’t forget to take your map.

Protected: 21st July 2010: What’s up with that??

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