Is that light up ahead the end of the tunnel - or an oncoming train...

You might think that a simple dent in the glass fibre skin (see piccie) wouldn't be that difficult to fix, might you not? I mean, we used to buy an Isopon kit from Halfords and fix worse things on our cars (back in the days when you actually could work on cars without violating Health & Safety regs and when you could fix anything mechanical with a set of socket spanners and a couple of screwdrivers - but I digress). So I was fairly optimistic that the Insurers nominated Coachworkers would be able to sort it quickly.

When I got there after a 150 mile drive in a howling gale it was clear they weren't very......, well, competent is the word which comes to mind. They were clearly put off by the size of the thing and, actually, they didn't seem to have anywhere big enough to put it. The "engineer" didn't even come outside to look at it, he stayed in the warm Reception area and shook his head mournfully. He did that drawing-in-breath-over-the-teeth thing that so-called craftsmen always seem to do. "That looks like a specialist job - you need a specialist coachworkers for that." I said I thought that's what they were (after all they were called Parkford Coachworks) but apparently there are specialists and specialists and they were only specialists.

So I took it back to Webb's where I bought it, who promised me on the phone that they could fix anything. Their bodywork "expert" did the same breath thing and said much the same as the other guy. However, they did know someone who almost certainly would be able to do it and he was coming in the very next day to fix something else. So I left it there and went home.

Jeff, who is a bloke of about 6' 4" (that's about 1.90 m for Metric enthusiasts) looked at it the following day and I went over to talk to him there. "No problem" was his diagnosis - and he would travel down to Brock to fix it on a day when we had a reasonable weather forcast, then come back on a subsequent day to paint it (hopefully the following day but it will be out in the open so the weather has to play ball here). He emailed me his very reasonable quotation today and I passed it on to the Insurance people. They will have to send someone to look at it and authorise the repair but it is now looking hopeful. Only trouble is we are booked on the ferry on 9 December, in three weeks time! It might not get painted before we go if the weather doesn't improve a bit - in fact it might leave the country still bandaged up!

Anyway, it's back in Brock and we are leaving it to the Insurers and to Jeff. I will phone everybody at regular intervals, though, so they get fe up with me and get it done.