Sunday 5 September 2010

A First Birthday

Célestine's official Birthday is 1 June 1953 as that is when she rolled off the line at the Quai de Javel in Paris - which means that in under three years time we will be having an official 60th birthday party for her.

Yesterday was her unofficial first birthday, it being a year since she first claimed ownership of us. Since then we have travelled just under 5,500km (about 3,300 miles), and for probably 90% of that distance we have been wearing broad grins.

I am sure you can understand why this makes us smile
The times we haven't been smiling are usually weather or traffic based: driving a car with a 15 metre turning circle and inefficient windscreen wipers in heavy traffic on a wet December's evening isn't much fun, but at least we were suffering in style.

Because she is an old car, you can do stuff yourself
Yesterday as a treat I sat in the car for a couple of hours and finally got to grips with the headlight switch. As far as I can tell they are now working in the right order*, and I have a lit dashboard when the high beams are on. This counts as A Good Thing.

Yesterday was Célestine Day, today is Father's Day (at least, it is in Australia). My dad is doing really well after his op, and he and mum are off for a week's holiday, hopefully as a trial run to visit here next year. Happy Father's Day (and all that).

Simon

*that assumes I have understood correctly what the right order is!

6 comments:

Abbeysmum said...

Happy Birthday Celestine, owning such a beautiful girl is well worth celebrating !

Abbeysmum said...

Sorry about "that" wet December evening,but the touring,sights, food and company were all first class that day.
Thank you both from the 2 "Queens for a day"

Simon said...

Thanks:) we enjoyed it too. The problem was mainly (I think) navigational - I ended up on a road I didn't know existed (and haven't found since)in traffic with fading headlights and no opportunity to run the engine hard enough to reload the battery. It's a learning process, even now!

*makes note to self - avoid traffic.

Tim said...

Simon.... Surely the dashboard should be lit when the lights are switched on... not just when the main beam is on!
Back to the circuit diagram, matey!

Human identity word is....wacter... sounds a bit Antipo..dyane!

Simon said...

Tim

I didn't explain mtself properly. After my last attempt at the swith all worked OK, except the dashboard, which was lit on low beam, but disappeared when I set the headlights to stun. Now the dashboard is inadequately lit no matter what lights I have on

Tim said...

Ahaha... that's about right then!
Even on the 1989 2CV your description of the superb lighting of the dashboard is extremely accurate... the glow-worms in the garden here shine brighter!

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