The wait

I settle down for the long wait. As I said yesterday, today is MOT day. I’m never quite sure when they will collect the car. Sometimes it’s 8am, others 11am.

Needless to say I’m up early this morning. It’s one of those rare days when I set the alarm just to make sure I’m up & dressed before anyone arrives. Equally needless to say I end up getting up at 7am in anticipation of the alarm going off.

After my wash & brush, & breakfast, I hastily go off & get the potatoes peeled for dinner today. We’re having a pizza of some sort today. I’m using up a pizza base from the freezer. On it will go the last of some mushrooms & some sort of meat. I’ve yet to rummage in the freezer to decide on the precise variety of meat. I’m hoping to use the sliced ham but I don’t think there is enough so it may turn into chicken. We’ll see.

I boot up the laptop. I’m just having a warm-up game of spider solitaire when a white van hurtles around the corner. It is the mechanic come for the car. Not such a long wait at all. It was only just after 9am. Now I wait to find out whether the car will pass the test. Without a car we won’t be going anywhere.

Yesterday also brought the gladsome news we’re booked on a holiday in Croatia, near Split.

I’ve never been to Croatia; long ago before we were married the Fox did visit this part of what was Yugoslavia.

We both think it should be quite a change for us, somewhere new to explore. It looks beautiful, steeped in history.

I have to confess I still find it hard to remember the names of the various Balkan states. To me they all remain Yugoslavia as they were when I was at school. Yet I remember my mother having a similar difficulty with the idea of Jugoslavia, as it was at first spelt. She learnt her countries at school before the First World War. How times change.

It just goes to show how artificial some of these countries & their boundaries are, how new these nations. It’s easier for us in Britain, an island state, where the boundaries are clearly defined by the sea. And yet even we seem to be on the path to be breaking up into Scotland, Wales, Ireland & England. We’ve never entirely lost our individual characteristics even though our countries have been united for so many years.