EpiBlog

We left our intrepid duo racing home against the remorseless advance of cracks in the van windows, and the accompanying risk of them dropping out somewhere along the way. Not good.

Fortunately we made it back ok, but some of the fractures are now very extensive. I’m trying to order replacement units but as that could take months, I went up to the van site today to try some temporary bodging.

Got some transparent Gorilla tape ( yes, I always thought apes were opaque , too)  from Screwfix, and took my cordless drill.

Idea was to drill a small hole at the end of each major crack to try and stop it in its tracks, and then slap a load of tape across the weakened areas to hold them together.

It’s a delicate operation to drill through just one skin of the plastic wine without puncturing the other side. It went fairly well on the first side window I tried .

Flushed with success I then tried the smaller window above our sink . As I lifted it high up to get at the inside, the whole bloody thing suddenly crashed to the floor , breaking off my drill bit as it caught it in passing. I had made the unexpected discovered they are only held in place by gravity, rather than any kind of , Oooh I don’t know, maybe a  hinge or something ?!? …instead,  the top edge of the window rests casually in a kind of gutter on the side of the van, and lifting it beyond a certain angle ( 90 Deg or so) causes it to detach .  Brilliant !

Fortunately the soft flesh of my body broke its fall and it didn’t seem any more damaged than it already had been. (Unlike the flesh)

Not having brought any spare drill bits meant  I was only able to slather the remaining window with Gorilla binding, but let’s hope that holds for now. 

But as one door opens, another bit drops out.

I’m talking fridges, in fact.

The fridge has mysteriously started working on gas again since we returned to Blighty.

“But why would that be?” – as you are probably not interested enough to ask . 

A very good question !

Something about connecting to Dutch mains supply seems to freak out the fridge, ( reversed polarity ? Bad earthing ? Too orangey for vans ?) and just disconnecting it from filthy foreign 240v doesn’t seem to be enough. It wants to feel the reassuring throb of decent British AC volts again around its circuits to defrost its anti-gas stance. ( And no, I have no idea why an apparently electricity-related issue should only create an error that we can work around  when running the fridge on mains electricity, and yet also result in a total failure to ignite it on gas – which ignition should after all be powered by the 12v DC supply, not mains.  Bizarre.)

Ideas from the technoscenti out there ??