schools out for summer
So that is it for another academic year with the boys all finishing on Thursday! Angus is up to P3 in August, Hamish to S2 and Lachlan to S3… and my much missed daughter will be starting S4, which I think will see her sitting her first Nationals? I haven’t quite got my head around the new exam system to be honest, but I think there are Nationals in S4 and S5 then Highers and Advanced in S6….
Anyway, I spent the week running up to them finishing trying to cram in as much of the work that was coming up as possible as the elder boys are both off on camp next week and there is no childcare provision either, so it will be a case of taking Angus with me on jobs when Jen is working. Just to complicate matters my car really needed the brakes changing all around (they needed doing about 3 months ago… but I managed to squeeze a few more thousand miles out of them since the discs were done for anyway, and the tires were more pressing last month since I noticed a small white fleck of belt showing through (tiny - it was about 1mm square on the shoulder but as soon as I saw it the car was booked in!). I just got it back this morning from the brakes so that should hopefully be me through to at least 90,000 miles now before it needs any more! Hopefully by then Dacia will have the electric Duster on the market and Renault will have the 4x4 version of the Renault 4 out too, so it may be about the point I think about changing - particularly if the battery technology has made the leap forward that is imminent! I love electric cars - they have been an absolute game changer - but I want a little more range and more even range availability through the seasons. The Toyota has proven the point that this is the future, and the 4x4 system in it is absolutely astonishingly good… but Toyota as a company are very regressive in terms of getting behind the change to EV (Japanese manufacturers in general are very resistant to the change it seems) in terms of investing in new models, but also in their demands for servicing every 10,000 miles and charging it at the same rate as a fossil fuel car of similar size (so for me they are charging on the same scale as a Hilux or RAV 4. Which is expensive. Especially when they have very little to actually do).
So my next car will not be a Toyota unless things change dramatically with them as a company in the next few years. The European manufacturers, meanwhile, are starting to really push for a cleaner future and there are some interesting cars emerging from this. Obviously the Korean’s and, even more so, Chinese manufacturers are really pushing the technology forward too, and they are also going to very much be on my radar… but I quite like some of the more stripped down utilitarian offerings from Europe. My criteria will be 4x4 drive (because it does snow quite a lot here and I like to get home…) and at least a 350 mile range, 300 minimum in winter.
Enough of my ranting though. This week I have had 6 jobs on, which is on the lower side… but the first week of a month is usually down a bit. They were generally quite well paying jobs though, and enough to keep me busy along with everything else going on! I was out to Nairn, Kingussie, Alness and Dingwall alongside a couple in Inverness so there has been a nice bit of variety too.
Here are some photographs from this weeks work.
