Rick's b.log - entry 2026/02/16

Car woes

This didn't work.

So when I got home I jacked up the front wheel that had been recently taken off for the axle being changed... and it wobbled. Mmm? How much play is acceptable?
I went and jacked up the other side. It didn't wobble, not even a little bit.

I phoned the garage, spoke to the mechanic, who was like "well I don't understand why". Just a coincidence that the wheel that was taken off just a few weeks ago is not tight? Come, now, I wasn't born yesterday.
He said it was safe to drive as I told him I had to go to work and of course the 40-odd km to his workshop; he said I should pop by on Thursday afternoon and he'll take a look at it.

I've also put in for the day off work and sent my boss an email explaining why I've only given two days notice.

Of course, that's not the only thing I'm going to hit him with.

Last week, there was this.

The dangling cable loops around into the plug on the right.

That's the connection for the left foglight. I turned on the fog lights because, well, it was foggy, and I noticed that it only seemed to be glowing on the right.
Taking a look at the left, what do I see? The cable into the light had become completely detached and was just dangling. It's the same issue, a bloody great plug and socket (that you can see) flopping around with nothing holding it secure. As the cable has broken at the point of the light - a weak point, rather like where headphones cables always break - this light is unrecoverable.
Once, okay, once is just bad luck. But twice so close together? That's a manufacturing fault - so I'm going to ask about having it replaced under guarantee. I don't imagine he'll appreciate that as it means complications and paperwork and using the computer but - hey - remind me why I'm going to be paying €€ for them not having attached this thing properly in the first place. The LED isn't blown, there's nothing wrong with the light, the vibration has made the cable break.

What you can see in the picture is that I've unplugged the loose cable and put some duct tape around the socket to keep it clean inside. I'm none too keen on having 12V randomly flopping around right beside 0V if I should need the fog lights again.

But that's not all, there's this.

This morning it told me it was 28°C, before settling down to 23.5°C.

A quick search online suggests that the temperature probe is a cheap part that often goes duff. For a while my dashboard had given a single "ice warning" beep before displaying the correct temperature. Now it is trying to tell me that it's in the twenties in northern France in mid February. As weird as the weather has been lately, that's simply not believable (and if it were, it would probably be the mother of all hurricanes).
I'll also ask about that under guarantee.

Whatever, if he doesn't have the parts in stock (he's unlikely to have the fog light), it can wait until the end of March when I have some days off. I have to do this around my job so, yeah, the last time (when I went to have the axle sorted) cost me not only the €400ish for the repairs, but a further €80ish for taking the day off. Thursday, I have applied as "recuperation" because I have hours ahead of planned, so I will be paid, but still...

Remember, I've only just passed 11111km and have not yet made it to the magic 12345km, so this car is really too young for needing big repairs. I could understand with Felicity because she was a fun little pile of poop and I think I spent more on getting stuff fixed than the car cost me. But she was ancient, like 1997 or somesuch and I got her in 2019. So, yeah, that's a car that'll need lots of TLC. One that's only just made it to five digits on the counter......really isn't.

More expense to come

There wasn't a flood here like last year and the year before (multiple times!), because it just sort of did a forty days and forty nights thing rather than dumping it all at once.

That's not to say there hasn't been any effect, however.

The water coming out of the tap looked kind of ugly for a while. Now it's a sort of pale brown that you don't really notice until you put it into something white. This does tend to happen after heavy rain.
What's new this time is that the water pressure in the house has dropped noticeably. It was never strong, the pump used to do 2-3 bar but since it's getting old a plumber knocked it back to 1-2 bar ages ago (it was either that or a new pump). Now the pressure in the house is low enough that showering is pointless (I can pee harder) and the washing machine sulks not once but twice when starting a load.
There is pressure in the tank, the hosepipe attached directly to it has a decent amount of pressure.
So I'm guessing that there is sediment or something in the underground pipe between the pump and the building. Or maybe there's a gummed up mesh filter? I doubt that as I think this setup way predates things like filters.

So I'm going to have to get somebody to come out and take a look and, well...

• Get the well cleaned
• Get the other well cleaned
• Empty and clean out the tank
• Do something with the underground pipe to clean up the cruft
• Probably a new pump as the current one is something like 30 years old

Maybe, if it isn't a really scary price, I'll ask how much it would cost to swap the 200 litre water heater for something more useful for me, like a 50l one.
The lack of water pressure hasn't really affected my bathing as I do the old fashioned method of filling up a bucket, heating some in a kettle a few times until it's nice and warm, and then using a plastic measuring jug to hoike the warm water from the bucket. I know it sounds positively prehistoric, but I can get that all sorted in about ten minutes. Heating water in the water heater takes 5-6 hours to make far more water than I'd actually need.

French people are SO literal!

Well, it was Friday the Thirteenth. So I told people at work that I had a plan for Friday 13.

I was going to win the lottery, hand in my resignation, and build myself a big wooden boat, into which I would place two of every sort of animal: lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!

Snarky British humour is so lost on French people. With the exception of one person at the end of the day, everybody took it completely literally.

Selected responses:

• Most people think they're going to win the lottery. Most people don't.
• Why build a boat? If you win the lottery you can just buy one.
• What do you want all of those animals for?

And, my personal favourite:

• Do you have the slightest idea of how to handle a bear?

This is, I'm afraid, one of the frustrating things about living in France. Humour simply doesn't translate. It was a very British form of irony that was a deadpan serial escalation into the absurd (win money, quit, build an ark), which relied on a cultural reference (loads of rain, animals in pairs, clearly Noah (and shouldn't good little Catholic girls know this?)), and providing no explanation in the narrative as that would ruin the joke.

I can't help but think that for a British person to not get the joke would be deliberately missing the point.
But for French people, it seems that deadpan absurdism isn't a joke, it's just stating a plan. And that's why the joke was so completely missed we're talking missing on a galactic scale.

In the version that I gave, the listener is expected to spot the impossibility (and irony) after sorting out the cultural reference by the boat and two of each animal and tying that into the current weather. The humour lies in the realisation of what I was saying, so the punchline doesn't even need to be said.

Side note: This is possibly why some (but certainly not all) neurodivergent people have difficulty with things like sarcasm, there are many dots that need joined and it relies upon shared cultural experience to know what those dots even are, never mind joining them.

Where it falls apart is that in France these things need to be signalled. There was no clear indication of "I'm exaggerating", no explicit biblical reference to highlight what I was alluding to, and because it was a deadpan delivery there was no tonal cue to say "no, I'm not seeking practical advice".
So for the poor Frenchies, it would have been understood as "lottery, boat, something to do with animals; this is odd (even for him), has he thought this through?" thus leading to the "helpful" responses.

I asked ChatGPT (that got the joke immediately, by the way) how I should have said it in a way that would work with French people and, well...

• At this point, with all this rain, I'm starting to feel like Noah - I just need to build an ark and collect the animals.

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C Ferris, 16th February 2026, 22:26

Hmm presumably not the wheel loose - loose or worn hub bearings - maybe steering joint loose / worn.    Isn't there a local car garage you could go to?

David Pilling, 17th February 2026, 18:46

I never got over Acorn disapproving of my original file type icon for &DDC, arc, spk etc. which was a little Noah's ark.

jgh, 19th February 2026, 01:27

We've had the Biblical 40 days and 40 nights of rain up here. I'm having to get used to additional checks of the brakes when setting off to squeeze them dry and the ABS light flashing at me.    Rain and rain and rain and rain and rain.  Rain and rain and rain and rain and rain again.  For forty days and forty nights  Soon there won't be another living soul in sight!  Rain and rain and rain and rain and rain.

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