More Tales Of Troubles And Woe!

if you thought Saturday was bad today was no better! having said that the day started out fine, I decided to make a start on unpacking the stamps I had purchased in the UK, after a couple of hours Phil called round on one of his Harley's, for a cup of tea and a chat, then back to the stamps, it was just like Christmas all over again as many times I had forgotten what I had bid for as some of them were from over 6 months ago,

next a slight problem with Phil's little run about bike so with Phil on my bike and me on the runabout we pushed it to the motorbike shop, next to the Punch and Judy, as Phil had not yet eaten breakfast, so I joined him for a coffee, then dropped him off home,

great news! Nissan telephoned to say the spare part had arrived early so my truck was ready, I did not have a really good look when I picked it up from the paint shop, but they did make a great job of the respray, also the headlamps were more than a bit opaque, due to age I guess and being in full sun for several years, the cost of new lights was 4,500 baht each (£90.85) and I needed both, but Mr Tony who has the same problem on his car mentioned they could be polished to remove the fogging for about 1,000 baht so I asked the paint shop to do that, the truck and lights came back perfect, I did not want to say it before but the owner said it would come back as good as new as I handed him the keys for work to begin and it did! so now the throttle was repaired there I was at Nissan driving away it what looked like a brand new truck, a couple of miles away the traffic stopped at the lights at Soi Siam, I stopped, handbrake on, I heard the squeal of tyres, in less time it takes to tell this I looked in the rear view mirror thinking 'great not me the car behind has stopped,'

the problem was the one behind that one did not! with a mighty crash I got rear ended, the car behind in the middle,

how to cause a total snarl up of Sumkivitt in one easy lesson!

in the words of Victor Meldrew, 'I can not believe it!'

from having what appeared to be a nearly new truck to a stoved in rear end in under 3 kilometers!

just as I thought things could not get any worse rain clouds appeared and yes it was a thunderstorm and it did rain, lots of it! the real good news is that after a phone call to Jack Levy who I get all of my insurance from I had a call from the assessor who said he would be here in 20 minutes, as it happened he arrived in less than 10, the first of the three insurance assessors to arrive, he explained that the other assessors would arrive and take pictures, the police accident truck would also have to be here and another police man would have to have a look, the good news was that my truck was drivable unlike the other two cars, the assessor sat down with the other insurance guys and gave me a piece of paper telling me to take the truck to the Pattaya Garage and have the remedial work carried out, after all of that had happened I was on my way home, as an aside I was, to say the least, well impressed with Jack's insurance guy - I just hope I never have to use him again- the insurance assessor not Jack!

now this is the 9,600 baht (£193.70) throttle/accelerator that failed,

it looks a remarkably complicate bit of kit which I thought should have lasted more than 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles), but who knows?

home at last and feet up after playing with stamps till about 12.30, it was on with New Tricks, the UCOS team investigate a deadly assault on Shivani Das who was attacked 8 years before on a towpath while walking home, a private detective disappeared in the same area just before the attack, is there a connection? then for us off to bed.