The worst day ever as a car owner!

Thanks everyone, even the slightly cynical posts are good at keeping things in perspective!

You're right - not the absolute worst thing in the world to happen - but bloomin' inconvenient!

DH's car - first MOT - failed on a teensy part, something about a faulty bulb on the dashboard, but has to be ordered. None of the garages up here had it, the garage eventually bought the small (but costly!) part from ebay of all places as Peugeot don't do it, but they can't release the car until the MOT is done. Hopefully should get it back tomorrow.

My car - was a split in the pipe between the water pump and something else ... RAC recovered the car the following morning, and even came and picked me up to get back out to it. So, although it was a sleepless night, the car is currently sitting immobile on the driveway. The garage was shut Saturday morning, so I'm hoping so much it's able to do it tomorrow. Very helpful RAC man has made a temporary patch up job, but only enough to drive it the mile to the garage, no further. He suspects they'll insist on changing the whole pump though as Vauxhall (we spoke to them afterwards) don't do just the pipe bit.

'Spare Car' - this one isn't resolved. BiL is unemployed and doesn't have any money to get petrol out or pick up tyre. Once we've got wheels again, we're going to go and sort it out, and just bring it home. We can park it on the street outside the house until trade in time.

Amazing how you struggle though when you've always had a car. For example, none of us know how / where to get a bus to get to the supermarket (if there even is one) ... so we ate freezer stuff today (frozen pizza and some left over beef stew ...! Good combination).

Has really made us appreciate how lucky we are!