Tag Archives: Passat

A new year

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I was privileged to photograph so many terrific weddings last year, it was a lovely time.

The Passat was back from the garage just before Christmas with a new timing belt, and a large number of new valves, the largest garage repair bill so far.

Christmas was over all too quickly, it was great to spend time relaxing with the family. I unfortunately had the delightful norovirus on Christmas Eve.  I cooked the family lunches on Christmas Day – traditional turkey with all the trimings and Boxing Day – leg of lamb and turkey.

Since Christmas I’ve been fairly busy with my accounts,VAT and tax returns, just a little more work to complete and then I can file my tax return on-line.

The RAC man rescues me!

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I parked the Volkswagen Passat for a short while but when I returned and pressed the unlock button on the remote control nothing happened. I wasn’t very far from LDS Motor Factors so I walked there and bought two new batteries for the remote and returned to the car, unfortunately still nothing happened when the remote was pressed. Rather than hang around outside and wait for the RAC to arrive I walked home and picked up the Nissan Patrol and drove back to the Passat and called the RAC. It took just over three hours for the RAC to arrive (in a Nissan Patrol!) but their control centre phoned frequently to apologise for the delay and to keep me updated on the likely arrival time. The usual method of passing a rod through the door frame unfortunately didn’t work as the central locking deadlocks when activated. The door locks had unfortunately never been used with the key so both the driver and passenger locks were seized, fortunately it was possible to free the boot lock and unlock the car. The RAC patrol man then followed me back home and dropped me back so I could pick up the Nissan Patrol. I suppose the lesson from this is that even though the car has remote central locking you need to use the key in each lock now and again just to stop the locks seizing, also if Volkswagen had designed the air con intake properly the electronic control units under the passenger seat wouldn’t have a tendency to get flooded and cause all sorts of intermittent problems. 🙁

A dry Monday

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I gave Paul a lift home from Pontyclun this morning, he’s waiting to find out what’s wrong with his car.

Did some work on the Passat, the heater blower motor packed in a while ago which makes it pretty much undriveable in cold and wet weather. The main dealer charges around £200 for a new blower motor and I believe something over £500 to supply and fit it. 🙁 Managed to source a new unit for under £100 with next day delivery. It’s a bit of a pain to remove and fit the blower motor, it involves removing the glove compartment but the passenger air bag is positioned in such a way as to make it almost impossible to remove the motor without removing the air bag. 🙁 I took the easy way out, disconnected the battery and removed the air bag. 🙂

A bright sunny Monday

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Installed some more software on the new laptop computer, should get everything I need on there soon!

David’s car finally passed the MOT. 🙂 Booked the Passat in for a service on Friday and I’m hoping that the red BMW will be in the garage next week.
A photographic trade show at the Miskin Manor hotel this afternoon, made a change being there and not photographing a wedding, met up with many familiar faces most of whom were other South Wales members of the Master Photographers Association. An interesting range of displays and demonstrations from a number of major suppliers.

A relaxing evening.

A bright sunny Thursday

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A beautiful morning, I thought that perhaps spring was at last arriving but it clouded over by mid-morning and was really cold. I spent most of the day helping David change the rear brake shoes on his car. I’m hoping that the hassle of doing all this work on his car will encourage him to refrain from the ‘boy racer’ driving technique that eats his tyres, brakes and clutch at an alarming rate, we’ve bought more tyres for David this last year than both our BMWs and Passat combined!

A cold Friday

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More Christmas shopping, this time at Makro, it was surprisingly quiet there with loads of space in the car park.

A flat front nearside tyre on the Passat, luckily we noticed it in Makro’s car park and it was relatively easy to change as there wasn’t anyone parked next to us. Unfortunately the local tyre dealer appears to be closed until after Christmas. 🙁

Called over to see my mum.

Chris and Laura arrived from Norwich to spend Christmas with us.

My first day as a blogger!

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Well I’ve read a few other blogs so I thought I’d create one myself, the aim is to give you an insight into my life and work – I hope I succeed with it and you find some things of interest here.

I had a phone call from a lovely couple, Andrew & Natalie, who came to see me on Sunday to discuss photography for their wedding next year, they rang to let me know they were booking me and would call around later with the contract and reservation fee. As I’m mentioning Sunday, we went to the Hollybush in Church Village for lunch, loads of meat complete with real gravy! the apple pie and custard was also yummy.

The engine on my BMW 520i recently stopped and refused to restart at a really convenient spot – in the outside lane of the traffic lights in Tonteg. Fortunately a couple of passers by helped me push it around the corner – BMWs aren’t supposed to break down! It took an hour or so with an oscilloscope to diagnose that one of the relays supplying power to the engine management unit had failed! A trip to the main dealer to lighten my wallet and obtain a new relay. I’ve just fitted the new relay and I’m really pleased that the car is now running again. The brake disks on the Volkswagen Passat are badly scored and the next little job will be to replace them a major service on the other BMW (525i) should get all the car maintenance up to date – the joys of motoring!

I spent the afternoon making up some Jorgensen wedding albums, they are really lovely albums but as the pages are pre-bound you have to be so careful when mounting the prints and mats – any mistake could mean a new album from Australia. They look really lovely I know my customers will be delighted when they collect them.

I did some more work on the album design for Andrew & Elaine who were married at the Heritage Park Hotel on the 6th of August, they’re delighted with it so far.

Andrew & Elaine

Andrew (Andrew & Natalie) called around with the paper work for their wedding photography, they’re really excited to be having a modern Jorgensen E album to showcase the story of their special day.

Visited the Rhondda Rebels web site they are playing Sheffield at home on Saturday, I haven’t been to a game in ages, it should be a great match.

“Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.” – Diane Arbus