Grey Day

Yesterday it chucked it down with rain here most the day. The sky was dark and grey, the rain heavy and unrelenting. Today however, sunny, warm(ish) and very Spring like.
Well everywhere except in my world!

Nine o'clock i started work this morning, and at one minute past, things started to go horribly wrong.
A customer came in to collect his Kawasaki 550 Zephyr yesterday. An old bike which needed a fair bit of TLC and a few hours of my expertise. I rode it midweek and it went really well so rang the customer to tell him that it was ready. I informed him of his very large bill (about £800) which he was expecting as i'd done a lot of work, all of which he had asked me to do. It then sat in the shop yard for a couple of days, before starting first push of the button yesterday morning. The customer rode it home in the pouring rain, then put the bike away in his garage. So far so good.
Now at this point i will mention that i am a professional motorcycle mechanic. I take great pride in the standard of my work and would never charge for something i haven't done. If you take your machine to a shop you expect that kind of honesty and workmanship. And this customer has dealt with us for many years so knows both the shop and myself.
One minute past nine this morning and the phone rings. Guess who. During the night the bike has dumped most of its petrol over the floor of the garage and stunk the house out.
Our procedure is to get the bike back as soon as possible and look into it. If its our fault we would obviously put it right at no charge to the customer, after of course apologizing profusely. This chap however wasn't having any of it. My work was shabby and i almost burnt his house down. Or words to that effect. Just with much more colourful adjectives.

I stressed that it didnt leak a drop whilst it was here and that i would never let it go out if i thought there was any chance this kind of thing could happen, but my words fell on deaf ears.
So Monday morning i shall be investigating this hoping it will start leaking again, because of course it hasn't leaked anything today in the shop.

Work over and i'm feeling rough. I have tight pains across my chest which i'm putting down to sress from the morning. Maybe a soak in the bath will help. I set up the radio to catch the football scores but the only 'local' station i can find is LBC. This London station is discussing Gerard Houllier at Aston Villa. Is this manager any good?, look what he did at Liverpool. Fans of these clubs please ring in, they appeal. And while you're at it any Man Utd fans with anything to say? This is a London radio station, any chance we could talk about London teams. Needless to say i turned that off. I'll follow what's happening at Dagenham on twitter.

Today i thought Charlton would surprise us all and put in a fantastic display which would shut up the critics and boo-boys. A performance of note to prove to one and all that Chris Powell, the man who is without doubt Charlton through and through and one of our finest sons, is the right man for the job.
After all, Charlton will never cease to amaze me, and pulling something out of the bag today would be typical. Why couldn't we have put that performance in a few weeks back would have been the cry!
Dagenham & Redbridge, that former recent non-league side, had different ideas. So we lost again. If i'm correct, that's one point from the last possible twenty four.
It really is possible that i could be having an away day at The Broadfield Stadium Crawley next season.

A real grey day all round, so at 5 o'clock Heidi and I set off to Tesco's to go shopping......in for a penny..............