Whose breakdown is it anyway?

St Maurice
Yesterday's weather: Perfect for sitting in a friend's garden, eating their food and drinking their wine. Very nice indeed.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBBIE! xxx

We did indeed have lunch out with friends yesterday. Their garden is right in the middle of vineyards full of ripe grapes ready for making the rich dark wine of the local area. Cahors wine is also known as the black wine because of it's very dark colour. It is probably still a little known wine much outside of the region and although some UK supermarkets do sell it in its general form, there are very few Chateau labelled Cahors wines for sale in the UK.

Wildlife is very different around the vineyards of the Lot Valley. They have a completely different range of birds to our collection here on the borders of the Causse and Bouraine where the landscape is to one side forest and to the other, limestone escarpments, so it makes a nice change of scenery too.

As we went to take our leave there was the usual flurry of questions concerning Millie Méhari, looking her over, asking about the odd gear change and 'umbrella' hand brake. They are collectors vehicles and so we are used to people wanting to look her over and sit in to try her out. People even give us a wave as we drive past in her!

Unfortunately Millie was unimpressed with the attention, had a sulk and refused point blank to start. The battery was working but she would not turn her engine over. We tried push starting. No luck.

She has done this before, the little minx. So we weren't too concerned at first. Often she just needs to stop and think about her sulkiness for a while and then decides that she really would like to go for a run and will start without any fuss.

It appeared not this time. She was out for the full blown, teddy in the corner sulk.

Jon asked me to phone the breakdown service. They couldn't find any record of his policy which was rather worrying but luckily they did find mine. The very nice young man left me hanging on while he located and called a local garage.

'They'll be there in 35 minutes' he said.

We wandered back to Millie who had been sitting in a bus stop around the corner, clambered in and Jon tried just one more turn of the key. I hate Millie. She started first time.

Back to the friends, phone the breakdown service again, apologise profusely and come back home.

She is definitely going back to the garage next week for a bit of anger management therapy.