Monday 28th July 2008 Valence d'Agen

Still very hot, wind picked up late afternoon and it clouded over making it much cooler. Mike 'phoned Peter (on my suggestion that he knows lots about mending old motors and might come up with something Mike had missed) His American bulldog, Mini, had had her pups! Thirteen were born in total (the world record is twenty), five last Thursday and they thought she’d finished giving birth until one was born dead on Saturday, followed by six more live ones! One was sickly and died soon after, but the remaining eleven were doing well. Peter said that Mini looked like a ghost of her former self though, all skin and bones and was very clumsy getting into the box he’d made to contain the pups, she treads on them and lies on them making them squawk! He said he was having to bottle feed some of them, the biggest, so Mini could feed the smaller ones herself, but the baby bottle teats were too big for the bulldog short snouts, so he was going to try getting teats for premature baby bottles. His answer to the knocking noise on the ZX was immediately shock absorbers. He suggested taking them off and having a ride round to see if that stopped the noise, Mike said he would try it. He took the wheel off again and jacked up the hub to take the weight, then made the noise reoccur by inserting a long screwdriver between the metal body of the silent block and the sub-frame (effectively levering the silent block the wrong way) and recreating the noise by loading the wheel and taking the load off again with the lever. A new silent block, front one driver’s side, was required. Roy’s camper van was missing - Shebah-Mike said he’d gone to Narbonne. I made some lunch while Mike put the car back together again. We went into Agen Sud (even the air was hot with the wind through the open windows) via the scenic route. There were two types of silent block, did we know which one? Mike said their mechanics would know which one, so they said they would put the ZX on their “pont” (lift) and have a look. In the meantime one of the mechanics said the two types were just different manufacturers, either would be OK. They had none in stock so they would arrive overnight, collect them next morning. Back home via the scenic route. “My” house near St Nicholas-de-la-Balerme had been sold; the for sale notice had disappeared ages ago. The boat cabin felt humid and sticky after being closed up for a couple of hours even through the temperature was still 38°C, the same as before we went out. Stripped off and sprawled in front of a fan. Bill sent two texts to ask if we had Garry the lorry’s phone number. Nope, never dealt with him, we went with someone else’s transport. Mike tried ringing Bill, but got his answering machine – Bill was trying to ring us. He said forget the texts, the numbers he had were working OK. He had arrived at Agde and was moored by the place with free electric (which was still full of boats). He’d seen Paul at Bézièrs, who had been expecting his next load of visiting friends until he had a last minute 'phone call to say they were at the UK airport about to board the plane and someone in the group had an expired passport, so they weren’t coming. Luckily he hadn’t been out to do a big shop in preparation for their arrival.