Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

ladyholly

So glad Mr foxgloves is ok but I bet he is shaken. I must admit I once rear ended someone because they started to move onto a roundabout and then stopped while I was looking to see what was coming. I assumed they would keep going and didnt. I still dont klnow why they stopped.  Entirely my fault though so there was no point in denying it.

marionmgcars

Sorry to hear about the car being bumped.  It’s annoying when it is not your fault, but still have all the inconvenience of sorting the repair.  

Makingabobor2

Oh no. Pleased Mr F wasn't hurt though. Hope insurance are quick with sorting it

scandimore

Glad Mr F ok and hope the car gets sorted quickly. 

CRANKY40

I'm glad Mr F is ok but he may be sore tomorrow. Whiplash is real....a lot of people make fun of car crash insurance claims including "whiplash holidays" but I've had it and it wasn't fun. 

PennysIntoPounds

What an absolute pain but thank goodness your post was that the car is in a bad state rather than Mr F being in a bad state x

foxgloves

Thanks all. Our lovely little car was removed on a low-loader last night & taken to a garage on the other side of Lincoln. Mr F thinks we may not see it again.
Insurers were very helpful when the accident was reported so fingers crossed everything unfolds swiftly. Not the weekend we had planned. I am intending to throw myself into cleaning the house today. Already changed bedlinen & got the washing machine going.
F

Baileys_Babe

Sorry to hear about the car, glad Mr F is ok.
About 30 years ago I joined the back of a line of stationary traffic, next thing I knew somebody had driven into the back of me followed by somebody driving into the back of them. This happened during a day with good visibility, I had applied my brakes so my brake lights were on.

Tescodealqueen

So sorry to read about the accident, hope Mr F is ok. the hassle involved with insurers is a nightmare I hate it

foxgloves

Thanks, everyone for your good wishes. Yes, it could have been worse, nobody hurt at least. Things have moved on quite a lot since the accident. Car was perfectly driveable so Mr F decided to nip into Waitbl00m as planned to pick up the shopping. That was when he discovered he was unable to lock the car - the problem is that in addition to bashing in the back of the car, that whole section has been shunted forward (he was hit by a VW Tiguan (?) so a bigger vehicle than ours) & now so misaligned that the boot won't shut, so the locking won't work. Anyway, a potted version is that he phoned our insurer yesterday evening & I must say they were extremely good (let's hope it stays that way!). The claims advisor said that she could see Mr F had been blameless so that we wouldn't lose our NoClaims status. When she heard we were unable to lock the car (we have a driveway but no garage), she arranged for a low-loader to come & collect it & lock it away safely before delivering it to their approved garage today. We had assumed we wouldn't be able to access a free hire car as that is an 'optional extra' on our policy & something we have never paid for, but she said that wasn't a problem because they would claim it from the accident-causer's insurers. We at least felt that by bedtime we'd got the process set in motion.
At 8.10 this morning, the garage called - not all that local to us - the other side of Lincoln - & filled in all our details, asked for photos, etc, for a quick triage of the damage before the car itself arrived. Waiting to hear a full assessment.
Mid-morning, we heard from the local branch of a car hire company who had arranged a car for us to be picked up at 2pm today, so Mr F is on his way there.....a mixture of bus & on foot as it is on an industrial estate on the outskirts....& so we should soon at least have a substitute vehicle to drive. Most importantly, Mr F will be able to get to work. He has a daily 52 mile-round trip commute & the problem with that is that while the town in which he works is only 26 miles away from our village, there is no bus service to get him there & while it is possible by train, he would have to walk nearly 2 miles to the station, then go 17 miles out of his way south to the big city centre to pick up a train to come up all the way up to the very north of the county. It just doesn't work in terms of getting to work on time & is also costly. For our town, those people without cars are fine on public transport if they want to go to either of the equidistant city centres, but that's pretty much all.
Anyway, in the meantime, we had a call from the other chap's insurers who said he had reported the accident & had admitted full blame, so that was a relief, as we have been in a situation in the past - a long time ago- when somebody hit our car, admitted it was their fault (it was) then changed their story. There were no witnesses so we ended up having to split the cost 50:50 between insurances.
To add to all the faff, & because it never rains but it buckets down, Mr F managed to knock his phone off the top of the freezer onto the quarry tiles. It was on borrowed time, having already cracked from a previous similar incident, but it had been working perfectly well, & now it rings & makes encouraging noises, but the screen is dead except for an ominous little green square in the top corner. He is still in contract, so tomorrow is going to involve a trip to town in whatever hire car we get from the vehicle incident to try & sort out the phone incident. He will almost certainly require a replacement & we will need to price up paying off the handset contract on the dead one & starting a new contract OR buying a 2nd hand handset from C*X & just carrying on paying for airtime/sim. Either option is going to involve paying off what he owes on the kaput phone, so I suspect there mightn't be too much in it.
On top of all this, Ash decided he wasn't feeling great, spewed up, wouldn't even look at his breakfast & didn't want a stroke or any fuss. He seems a bit brighter now. He ate half a pouch at lunchtime & enjoyed a little stroke. Of course the first thing in my head was hoping we wouldn't need an emergency vet visit when we have no wheels, but hopefully, a set of wheels is going to be rocking up on our drive in the next hour, so at least that worry can be parked.
Other stuff....well, I like to keep busy during times of stressy faff, so have cleaned & tidied the kitchen, washed the bedlinen, towels, etc & pegged them all out in this lovely blowy sunshine, baked some biscuits & moved the last of the back bedroom windowsill tomato babies downstairs to the conservatory. Have also done a few surveys as & when they have coincided with me having my laptop on. 
Mr F's phone broke after we had ensured that the insurers, hire place, garage, transporters, Uncle Tom Cobbley & all had HIS mobile number as first point of contact rather than mine, as he was the person involved in the accident, who made the claim, who will need the hire car, etc, etc, so we have attempted to get around that by temporarily putting his SIM into my phone. I can see that my nice gentle morning ambling around town looking at Easter things & having a coffee & hot cross bun is now going to be dominated by number-crunching bloody mobile phone replacement options. Ah well, such is life. To quote the 'Young Ones', "no-one's on fire". 
I think I will go & prime the coffee machine so that we can have a coffee & biscuits when the hire-car-fetcher comes home.
F x