50+ and proud of it.

So the "new" replacement Garmin i3 SatNav let me down for the umpteenth time again on Wednesday. Having variously decided to " Lost Satellite Reception " and move me 25 miles north into the Thames Estuary, I finally lost my rag with it and took the batteries out. "That'll teach it" I thought. I rang Garmin yesterday who were surprisingly helpful, "I'll get you an RMA immediately", she said. Nothing to do with me threatening to buy a Tom-Tom? 1 Anyway the reason I was using it was to find my way down to Alders Automatics - the gearbox specialists in East Sussex. He took the Mustang a mile down the road. "Your overdrive clutch has burnt out, it's knackered." "Hmm, how much is the car worth with a good gearbox?" "About £2,500" "And how much without?" "Fourpence". "Better give me a lift to the station then." 1 No, probably not.

So the 25-year "do" on Saturday went swimmingly well. In fact, almost like clockwork. We did have a panic the day before though. "Hello, it's the chairman of the Village Hall here, why haven't you got the local pub to do the bar?" "Um, because I fell out with him 15 years ago and haven't been in his pub since?" 1 "Oh, you're taking one of our 12 licenses... blah blah blah" "So what? He'd be using one anyway what's the difference?" (time passes and eyes glaze over) "Hello secretary of the Village Hall here, when do you want the keys?" "What's this about licenses?" "Oh, he doesn't understand anything. I run it all. Have a nice night" A few things did go slightly awry: The queue for the bar was too long, and somehow it was my fault that I didn't know the drinking habits of people I'd not seen for 10 or more years. The last dance CD skipped. My feet hurt through dancing.

This is going to be a long blog. I can tell. It all started last Wednesday night when daughter comes home to tell me that "my car sounds very loud". Ok , changing a Peugeot 106 exhaust is easy, but when it's about to fall off and requires changing *now* then it all gets a bit of a rush. Thu. am: Order exhaust. Drive to work and the Mustang does an odd gear shift. Check tranny oil. A bit low. Thu. lunchtime: Get a litre of ATF and top up correctly to the mark (engine hot & running). Thu. pm: Pick up 106 exhaust and change it. Thu. evening: Wife pokes herself in the eye with a hairbrush whilst packing to go away to Prague on Friday. Spend the evening in casualty. Doctor implies the eye will explode at 30,000 feet due to the scratch. We decide to ignore that piece of advice and go anyway. Fri am: Go to Prague with our friends and have a nice time. Sun lunchtime: Learn about the interesting storm coming in from the Atlantic. Decide to ignore that too and go to a local b

...a long while ago it seemed like a good idea to marry someone special. Well, I did just that and now it's our silver wedding anniversary. 25 years ago someone else did all the hard work now it's our turn! A simple and seemingly innocuous phrase like "let's hire the village hall and have a disco and some food" might seem like a good idea, but it's never that simple is it? Hire Village Hall -easy. Hire a disco - easyish. Get the local pub to do the bar - right arm & leg removed, but easy. Getting a caterer - ah, not so easy, only if we wanted to re-mortgage. Doing it yourself? "over my dead body" was the reply. "that can be arranged". We eventually went for Sainsbury's buffet service. I'll let you know how it goes... Invitations. Now, this is where it all goes wrong. How many people to invite? People who were at the wedding? New friends? Old friends? What's the fire limit on the hall? Let's start again - How many people