I Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year, It’s been a while since I last updated my blog properly, Partly because not alot has been happening, Partly because I’ve been quite ill and I suppose there’s been a bit of laziness in there too!

GoodBye Barclaycard…. Hello Electron!

People that know me will know that I am in a IVA. One of the restrcitions is that you cannot have any “new” credit while your are under the scheme (which is common sense really). Quite a few posts ago I blogged that I was having trouble getting a proper Debit card, ie. Delta/Maestro. I do have one now, But the nearest branch of this bank is Oxford Street, London… Not very handy! Anyway the past few months I’ve been having problems with it in shops where it keeps getting declined for no reason. Rang bank and found out that if the transaction cannot be authorised there and then for whatever reason they decline it. So basically this is a Visa Electron card with a Delta badge, completely pointless, Infact I’ve found more places I can use my Electron card than I can this supposedly “better” Delta Card, Namely Pay@Pump petrol stations.

Well anyway, I was in ASDA the other week and it was declined, So I was very naughty and used the Barclaycard. This was the beginning of the end and the statement arrived today with a balance of £190! This goes to show that I cannot be trusted with Credit Cards and have decided that I never want another one again (Although the IVA company say you should get one once my IVA runs out to get my credit file back on track again). So today I have paid the full balance, Cancelled the account and cut up the card, which felt rather good 🙂

I’ve decided to dump this Visa Delta card and it’s quite useless and go back to my Electron for the time being, and now that I have this Tesco Clubcard Plus thing to pay with (Did I mention that I’m a Tesco addict and by everything I can from there?!) I don’t really need that fancy a Debit card anyway. For emergencies I now have a shiny new Virgin PrePaid Credit Card. 😀

The week before christmas was an interesting one in that I broke down 3 times in 4 days.

First off was the Monday, about 1630, 40 minutes into my shift my Double Decker ran out of fuel near Princes Risborough on the way to High Wycombe. It seems that it was used on a Rail Replacement the night before in London and hadn’t got back to the depot til 0230, Long after the Fuellers had gone home. Anyway, enginner arrives around an hour later, By which time I’m freezing, and its another 40 minutes before he finally gets it started again. So by the time I set off again I’ve lost 4 journeys and just take the bus back to the depot for my break, What a nice easy first half 😉

On Wednesday I was asked to go cover a duty at our Leighton Buzzard outstation, which turned out to be the Late shift… Well it’s called a late shift as it’s the last one to finish but its only 2125 and you can normally be out the door by 2100. Just dropping the last person off at around 2035, and on the bus stop was a car, So I had to drop them off out in the road, about 5 feet from the kerb. Thats when the engine shuddered to a halt. There I am in the middle of this road with a bus that won’t start, I get out and try to start it from the back, under the engine hood but still nothing, By now I’ve got a queue of cars behind me. Time to call the old bill, who came out within half hour which I thought was pretty fast who then closed the road at both ends while I rolled the bus down the hill to get it at least partly off the road out of the way. Just before they arrived I rang the engineers who said that they couldn’t come out to me as they were already going to another bus or something, and that it sounded like I had run out of diesel (again) as “that bus did that the other day”. Great! “Don’t worry I’ll get Bedfordshire Recovery out to tow you”, Hmmm I thought, could be here a while then.

After an hour of not hearing anything I rang back, “Oh yeah, Bed’s Recovery can’t come out to you and neither can Soveriegn, You’ll have to wait for me to get back and then out to you”. Wonderful! Well at 23:45 he arrived, Put some diesel in got me back to the yard and then we filled it up, Got to finish work at 0030, so was just the 3 hours and 5 minutes late! and it was bloody freezing that night!

Then on Friday I broke down at Milton Keynes Train Station as my byus was complaining that it had no water, Offloaded the passengers onto a MK Metro bus to take them to the shops and then spent 15 minutes wandering round the Train Station asking if they had a watering can! lol In the end the coffee shop filled up a couple of milk containers for me which did the trick and I was away only 30 minutes late.

All in all it wasn’t a good week for me

This is my friend ‘Mrs C’. The name will become clear in a later posting when I have time.

Both of us are going to be taking a bus out one sunday to get some snaps to enter the ARRIVA Employee Photo Competition, So if you see a mad woman driver driving a bus round and round while theres another standing at the side of the road taking pictures of it, with a Oxford branded bus with bizarre destinations on the front You’ll know who we are and what were upto. If we win the top prize (£300) then were off out for the day as a treat.