Bertie and Erica have a Lockdown Outing!

With Bertie's MoT being due in early February, we booked him in to be tested on 26 January and, with it not being appealing either to hang around in a waiting room or to go for a walk (the world was an ice rink again on this day), we decided to take our own waiting room, in the shape of Erica. 

Thus for the first time since the end of September last year, Bertie's tyres hit tarmac. He tootled into town and after being handed over Mick came and joined me for coffee and a crossword in Erica, where I had the heating running on high. We thus sat snug and warm whilst Bertie submitted to his examination. Even in the absence of overnight trips, she's a handy vehicle is Erica!

It was only later in the day that I realised that we had erred in our arrangements. Erica's MoT was due on 27 February, and if we'd waited one more day, we could have booked both in together and used each as a waiting room whilst the other was being done. With Bertie only being road legal due to being driven to and from a pre-booked MoT, taking him out again wasn't an option which meant that when Erica was done one of us was going to have to loiter outside.

Just over a week later we were driving up to Halifax and Mick asked me what date Erica's MoT was due. I answered with confidence: "27 February" before having a wobble and saying "or maybe 17th, but it's one or the other; why don't you look in the glovebox and see if the last certificate is in there?". Being a few weeks hence, Mick didn't feel the need to check.

The following afternoon, we were driving back from Halifax and this time Mick was at the wheel, so I thought I'd just double-check that MoT date. It turned out that Erica's was due on 6 February.

There was no time to kick myself about the fact that she could have been done at the same time as Bertie after all, as I had immediately flown into a panic. This was late afternoon of Friday 5 February. My grandmother's funeral was on the morning of Tuesday 9th and I had to be there (aside from anything else, I was delivering the Eulogy). That gave us just Monday to get an MoT carried out and Erica had no option but to pass. Panic! Panic! 

After a few phone calls I managed to find somewhere that had a spare test slot at 4pm on Monday afternoon, which gave no time to fix anything if she failed. Fingers were crossed, not just for Erica's state of health, but also that the forecast snow wouldn't amount to much.

The snow, which fell most of that day, didn't prove to be an impediment and Mick got her over to the garage in question. There the owner looked at Erica and said "Has your wife got a YouTube channel about doing this conversion?". It turned out he had been searching for some information about fitting rear seats, had stumbled across Erica and then recognised her in person. How funny! 

An hour later Erica had the required certificate and the following day she took us to my gran's funeral (it snowed the whole of that day too and never got above -1; I'm so glad I'd been able to borrow a black coat from Ma-in-Law, even if it was a few sizes too big. It was far too cold to go coatless and my only winter coat is bright red.).

I'm pretty sure the date of her MoT is now indelibly fixed in my mind.