Clunk clunk clunk

Well, it started well. We took the snuggle-car out for a spin. We decided to drive down to Ikea in Goteborg. That's right, a real Swedish Ikea! Goteborg is about 180k south of here, so it's about the same distance as Oslo but a much nicer drive. The plan was to get a futon and some bits and bobs to finish off the spare room. Which we did, plus some other bits and bobs, and some more, and ended up getting far more than we came for... All sorts of fun. Easy to get carried away when you have a huge van to stow it all in. We even drove down to the other Ikea in the south of Goteborg cos we'd got our hearts set on this beautiful mirror...

We were just over half way back, and I was thinking what a luxury it is to have a car. You can go where you want when you want, you can put things in it, you can zoom around like the kings of the road. And when it's your car you can feel at home in it, it's like a little house on wheels. I was making a shopping list so we could stop by for groceries at the big cheap Swedish supermarket on the way back. Suddenly there was a bang and a crunch and a shuddering. Great, we thought, pulling over, sure that we'd blown a tyre. All the tyres were fine. The car definitely wasn't, however, so after a few minutes of stunned disbelief, we drove it (limped it, rather) up a side road to put ourselves at the mercy of the locals. It went clunk, clunk, clunk.

Luckily there was a man in his garden playing with his grandchildren, and he spoke English, and he called a mechanic for us. The mechanic happened to live quite close by, so he turned up quickly, though he was rather smelly. After a brief diagnosis, he decided to drive us, and the car, back to Halden (he had one of these big trucks you can put cars on). The problem was something inside the wheel - a ball-bearing, maybe? Anyway it was broken and grease was leaking out the middle of the wheel. I wish I had got a photo of our little red van being pulled up onto his big red truck. Though probably the funnier photo would have been the expressions on our faces.

And that wasn't the end of it. The hour long ride back to Halden was an adventure in itself - the cabin of the truck was even smellier than its owner, and it only had two seats, so I had to perch cross-legged on a glorified armrest. The hairier moments included when swedish-mechanic decided to shuffle through some papers, look up a number on a business card, talk on his mobile and note something down all at once while he continued to steer with his elbows. As I crouched beside him with no seatbelt, no shoes, and nowhere to put my feet, I tried not to think about what would happen to me, and the little van, and its ikea loot (especially our lovely mirror), if he had an accident. Instead I considered how I would write this blog. A nice thought, because by the time I was telling the story, it would all be over, and I would be snuggling at home with a cup of tea and my laptop...

500 Nowegian kroners later, he dropped us off at the Ford dealer. It was 6:30 by then, so no one was there. The car dealers are a little way out of town, so it was an hour and a half walk back to our house. Of course the futon and the mirror couldn't come with us. But we saw a couple of deer scampering into the pine forest. And the sun always looks incredible on the fortress in the late evening. And we even made it to the supermarket ten minutes before it closed, so we have bread and milk for tomorrow. We have to be lucky sometimes.