Saturday, May 23, 2015

A bad day for Kev

Yesterday was a bad day.    It started when I drove the 15 kilometres to Orelia where our son lives in a unit I own.    The unit is one of 18 in a ‘secure’ block which has for several years been the target of a gang of young indigenes.  They regularly kick in panels of the steel rear fence and break into cars.  I have repaired it twice but this time the Strata company had a handyman repair it.   Our son, Martin, told me that it was a poor repair job and we decided to see if we could repair the repair.

I loaded up the car boot (trunk) with all the tools necessary and drove down to the units.  The car boot was a handy work bench for all my tools laid out in easy reach.    We looked at the job and realised that there was not much we could do to make it more secure and so I decided to go home and closed the car boot with my car keys and house keys well and truly secured inside the boot.  What to do?     Martin said he would drive me home and I could try and break in to the house doing as little damage as possible.   Unfortunately Martin didn’t have enough fuel to get me home and didn’t have a single dollar and my wallet was sitting on the passenger’s seat.   OK, lets ring roadside assistance.  Somehow the number given to me by the car dealer connected me to Roadside Assistance in Sydney town some 3,954 kilometres away.  Damn!  I could not think of anyone else who could come to my rescue so we decided to break the rear quarter window and get entry to the car and boot.  Tough piece of glass that was; but it eventually broke and we opened the doors to the tune of a loud alarm.  Once the alarm stopped, I pressed the boot opener, but it didn’t open.   OK, fold down the back seats and crawl into the boot and get my keys.   No go.  The seats are folded down by opening the boot and pulling on knobs inside the boot.


We now had money to buy fuel, but I was hesitant to break house glass, so rang our daughter at work and asked if I could drive to her workplace and borrow her house keys and find the spare set of keys for my place in their key receptacle.   Helen is a teacher in the nearby town of Rockingham and it was fortunate that she was not teaching at the time and could answer her phone.  So, we drove to Rockingham, got Helens house keys, drove to her place, got my house keys, got into my house and grabbed the spare car keys and drove back to the units.  Easy eh?   Nah!

I have sourced a new quarter window glass and will try and get instructions on fitting it.  It costs $88. and a quote for installation was around $300.


That evening Helen came to my place with my grandkids (two staffies) and she cooked a wonderful meal and we had a few soothing drinks.  Helen’s husband James is week on at a gold mine.

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