What’s more, it’s coped with over 3500 miles in the last four weeks alone. Unfortunately, the concept of ‘zero maintenance’ seems to have passed by the wayside.

As mentioned the other week, the radiator appears to have a little leak. However, I can report that chucking a small packet of Radweld into it appears to have plugged it up. How long it’ll last, however, is anyone’s guess.

There was heavy rain the other day driving down the M18, heavy enough to necessitate the use of the ‘fast’ wiper settings. However, this vigorous wiper use revealed a hidden horror of the vehicle – the rear and front passenger wipers were held on with (very well concealed) zip ties! After a few minutes, the wipers were scraping the window as opposed to removing rain. A new set of wipers ran to 20 quid from Halfrauds. Bugger.

The broken aerial was a little bit of fun too. I thought I’d just drill the broken screw out and pop a replacement aerial in, but, heh – that screw is made of sterner stuff than my cheap-ass hammer drill! So, I opted for getting a new mount and aerial from the Peugeot dealers just off the M62 at Goole. 8 quid later, I have the mount, and the installation is much less fannying than I suspected. Two screws in the interior light fixture, and one small bolt holding the aerial base itself on, and that was it. I can now enjoy Chris Evans in crystal clear FM on Radio 2! Huzzah!

The airbag light comes and goes. As I write, it’s been off for two days, but was on for the preceding two weeks, and then before that it was off for a few days. Very, very annoying. I wonder if it has any bearing on the now ‘stuck’ drivers front seat, which now steadfastly refuses to fold forward? Hmmmmm….

The radiator seems to have a leak. I’ve had to top the beast up with water a couple of times in the last three weeks. A red light flickers on the dashboard when the water level drops below a certain level in the system. Topping this up seems to cure the light for a week or so. I read on t’interweb that 306′s have a tendancy to eat radiators, and with age and mileage, they tend to leak at the bottom of the radiator. From a quick inspection this seems to be where my water is leaking from.

I can find a replacement radiator off eBay for about 40 quid, and I think i could make a reasonable crack at fitting it myself – the DTurbo is a purely mechanical beast, no crazy engine electrics or anything, but this car is supposed to be ‘zero maintenance’ for me, so I’m tempted to just chuck a can of Radweld in the rad and see how it goes…

The airbag light flickers on and off from the moment the engine is started. After a mile or two (or a few minutes – not worked out yet if it’s distance or time dependant) the light stops flashing, and stays solid. Again, Google-fu and the countless 306 enthusiast sites out there, all concur that this is a (very) common fault with these cars. There are some electrical connectors which run under the front seats which connect to the seat-belt pre-tensioners. These perish with age, and with regular use of the folding front seats on the 3 door model (which mine is). So, I’m not too concerned about this – after all, back in the day, no cars had airbags, did they?

Radio. The radio works, and it’s quite a nice aftermarket Sony unit with a CD player. However, the dolt that owned the car before me drove the car through a car wash…forgetting to take the removable roof-mounted aerial off. Cue; one broken aerial. The lack of said aerial makes for FM radio that sounds like Atlantic 252 Longwave radio. I need to source a replacement aerial, and drill out the remainder of the aerial ‘screw’ from the roof mount. This should be a doddle, whenever I get five minutes to do it, that is.

Rear wash-wipe. The rear wiper works. The washer jet, doesn’t. I can hear the pump whirring when I activate it, just no water comes out. It probably needs unblocking, or re-connecting.

That was my list, up until yesterday evening. Since then, the front seat appears to be stuck and will not fold forward to aid someone getting in the back. I reckon this’ll just be stiff and in need of a good hard thump.

Apart from these fairly small things, it seems to be going well. Engine runs well, stops, starts, steers. Everything else works. Even the electric windows and sunroof! Of course, it all might explode in a puff of acrid black diesel smoke tomorrow, but, for the time being, the 306 of Doom soldiers on.

Well, that’s well and truly broken the New Year’s resolution. Damnit.

As it happens, the last week has been very busy, and has had some ups as well as downs. There was a ‘shock’ announcement at work, David came to visit us, and Aimee learned how to point to the various parts of ones body in the “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” song! Such a busy life!

Anyhow, David came to visit and stay for the weekend, which was great. We’re doing some preliminary investigations into how feasible it might be for us to ‘tank’ out our cellar, and make it a livable room. Presently, the floor is laid with bricks – David dug some up and discovered that there’s just bare soil underneath – so it might be possible for us to rip the bricks out and get a proper floor laid.

In other news – last week, my employers decided to announce the closure of the office I work from, and relocate all staff to their head office some 45 miles away. This is somewhat surprising and certainly disappointing news, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t totally unexpected.

Many years ago, in my first job, I let work-related things affect me so much that it messed my head up totally. Bad management, stupid decisions and downright unfair working conditions affected me so much that my usual cheery disposition was slowly erased and replaced with a panic-stricken wreck. Things got so bad that I registered the domain you’re reading this on!

After all this passed, and I got my head right again, I became determined to never allow work to get in the way of my well-being. So, I took this bad news by the scruff of the neck and dealt with it positively – not just cattily whinging about the situation. Time to go back to freelancing.

I’ve no intentions of commuting to our head office everyday, certainly not long-term. So, ‘strike while the iron is hot’ is my mantra at the moment – and, thus far, things are going well.

One benefit of a more ‘flexible’ working arrangement will be that I can spend much more time at home with Aimee. Nothing disappoints me more than having a day when I get up and out of the house before she wakes (no, really, she’s a heavy sleeper!) and return just after she’s gone to bed. It only takes two or three days of this and it’s a significant time without ever seeing her.

A change is as good as a rest, as they say…

It’s dull work, but it’s stuff that needs doing and it’s the kind of thing that can only really be done when you haven’t got 300 users sitting on the network you’re in the midst of tearing apart.

Get things done and dusted for about 1pm, and head back home. Catriona is visiting for the day and when I arrive back Aimee is entertaining her new visitor.

After Aimee’s bedtime we crack out the Xbox and Wii. Not played on the Wii for ages, really. We have a bash at the Mario and Sonic at the Olympics game, and it’s great fun with the three of us playing – exhausting too! The gameplay harks back to the days of joystick waggling on Daley Thompson’s Decathlon and Summer Games on the Commodore 64!

British Summer Time steals an hour of my sleep tonight, and I won’t get it back til October. Bah.

The meeting goes well and fairly quickly, and I’m left with three hours to kill before my late train back. I’d much rather get open returns, but one must always count the pennies when dealing with expense claims!

I figure that it wouldn’t be too much of a wait if I made my way over to St Pancras, and sip a couple of quiet ones at the Baby Betjeman, where I could use the wireless and get on with some stuff. So, I make my way back across town and just miss the 5pm mad-dash – which was nice.

However, disaster strikes. The Baby Betjeman is no more. It has ceased to be. Bereft of life, it lies in peace. Well. It’s closed, anyhow. All that’s left is the giant parasol and a chalk noticeboard saying that they’ve closed up because the ‘proper’ Betjeman pub is nearing completion – at the end of April! Bollocks.

The only other option is the on-platform ‘Champagne Bar’, which is entirely as pretentious as it sounds. I find a seat by the bar and order a cup of tea, in true British stiff-upper-lip style. However, tea doesn’t last 2 hours and curiosity gets the better of me, and after supping my (rather bland) tea I take a look at the drinks menu.

This place sure does sell a lot of plonk. For obvious reasons, though, they only sell a few varieties by the glass – meaning that if you want to sample an 1990 Krug, you’ll be stumping up a few hundred quid for a bottle. There is nothing non-Champagne-related on the menu, apart from a couple of sparkling wines.

Madness and boredom takes me, and I order a ten-quid glass of Bollinger. The cheapest Champagne on the menu – something I’ve never heard of, and likely to taste of cat’s piss – is £7.50 a glass. I figure if I go with a ‘name’ I’ve heard of, it’ll at least taste good while I’m struggling to get over the cost. It is, actually, very nice – but worth £10 for a single glass? I think not.

It’s only after I order and drink my Bolly (darling!) that I notice that some other people at the bar appear to be drinking lager. At least, they’re drinking something that looks like lager out of large goblets. I double-check the menu, and no – there’s no lager or beer on there anywhere.

When the barman (or, more probably a ‘Champagne Waiter’) asks me if I would like another drink, I ask for a lager. He replies, somewhat nonchalantly that they do not have any lager. I gesture over to two guys clearly drinking lager and express my disbelief in his assertion. “Oh, zaht is zee beer, made from zee Champagne”.

WHAT THE FUCK?

Beer? From Champagne? You what? I tell him I’ll have one, even if just to see what the hell it really is. It turns out to be Kasteel Cru, a lager brewed with ‘Champagne Yeast’. “Made from Champagne” is stretching it quite a bit – but, it’s only £3.75 and for fizzy (naturally!) lager it’s not too bad.

Speaking of stretching the truth – I noticed that the Champagne bar at St. Pancras claims to be – with no hint of irony whatsoever – “the longest Champagne bar in Europe”. This is fine, except for one thing.

The bar, itself, is a small square – there are four seats at each side. It is, by no definition of the term – ‘long’. Evidently, I’m not the only person to notice this and a fellow Kasteel Cru drinker pipes up and asks a waiter. The response is that it’s the length of the seating area – which runs down a fair length of one of the platforms which makes it the longest. There’s tenuous links and there’s tenuous links… really!

On the train back I watch the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-laden new movie – “No Country For Old Men”. It is everything I hoped that “There Will Be Blood” would be – full of suspense, mystery and damned fine acting.

Tommy Lee Jones is excellent as the pathos-driven local Sheriff, and – who-da-thunk-it – Josh Brolin can act, playing the hunted ‘man in the wrong place at the wrong time’ – but the show is totally, and utterly stolen by Javier Bardem’s psychotic hitman, Anton Chigurh.

If there’s a list of top movie psychopaths, then Anton is right up there with Tommy Devito (Joe Pesci, Goodfellas), Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet) and Hannibal Lecter. Woody Harrelson and Trainspotting debutee Kelly MacDonald provide excellent supporting parts. The only let down is the ending, which is disappointingly inconclusive.