Help, my life is flashing away before my eyes.

So, this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun

Yoko Ono; John Lennon.

Yes. That's just how I feel! 

On the plus side, I bought a new car, like, brand new and I've never, ever, done that before. It's a Dacia Duster Laureate 4x4. I picked it up Christmas Eve, just after "the storm" the night before. The interesting part was getting out of the village that morning to pick it up - a tree has fallen across our street which I had to cut out of the way with a hand-saw, then the main road blocked with a *huge* fallen tree, the back road blocked with a fallen power line and the only other road out was flooded to about 7"; which caused some concern when the vehicle we were using was a smart roadster which holds you bum about 2" off the tarmac.

We got back from the dealer¹ ("don't worry sir, you don't need to run it in") and I settled down to read the owner's manual. Five minutes later the power went out for 15 hours, coming on again at about 8:00am Christmas Morning - just in time for folks to save their freezers and start their turkeys off. We weren't worried as, in a change from tradition, dinner was "on the in-laws". I wasn't bothered about the £50 worth of meat, just about the £0.50 worth of tomatoes that I'd grown over the summer.

We set off for dinner and I figured that it might be a good idea to take it easy for a bit and drive steadily irrespective of what the dealer man had said. Eventually after a week running around the country and visiting folk, we returned home having covered about 800 miles.

I settled down to read the manual. "If you have a diesel engine, then run it in for 900 miles at no more than 2,500 rpm".

I think I will ring up the dealer tomorrow and have a word...

¹The story about my wife not having a license on her can wait.