"Party on Dudes..."

Well that was fun.

The long-anticipated party was successfully thrown last Friday and Blight-of-my-life's birthday has been well and truly celebrated.

Family and friends made their way to Happy Valley from all over the place. There were friends from hundreds of miles away and from just across the street. There were faces that we hadn't seen for thirty years and others that we see nearly every day. Altogether it was a splendid mix of folk who all seemed utterly committed to having a good time and, as far as I could tell, they achieved that admirably.

We are extremely fortunate to have so many good friends who not only came along, but also put in a loads of effort before, during and after the event to make the whole thing work. In fact, we had more offers of assistance than we could sensibly accept, so for everyone who helped or offered to help ...."Thank you all"

There were a couple of hiccups, however.

The delivery of the new greenhouse which we had expected in about five weeks time, was rescheduled at 24 hours notice, so it was delivered during the morning of the party (in between collecting the glasses we had on loan from Sainsburys and collecting the keys for the hall where the party was to be held) This was a hell of a lot less problematic than the second snag though.

A couple of hours after the party had finished, at about two o'clock in the morning, everyone had gone home and we'd swept the floors and mopped the toilets. Blight and I had loaded all the dirty glasses, empty bottles, cans and other debris into the back of The Tractor and we were ready to head home to bed. We clambered in, I turned the key, the starter motor whirred....
and whirred...
and whirred...

It wouldn't start
"Oh great," I said, trying the starter again.
Same lack of success.
We tried some low-level swearing, but that didn't work either.
After several more abortive attempts, we were just about resigned to abandoning the traitorous vehicle in the car park, walking home and dealing with the problem after a few hours sleep.
"Let's give it one more try"
"OK"

Whirrrrr----whirrrrrrrrrrr--------whirrr-KOFF!---Vroom!

"Hoo-bleedin'-ray!"
"Let's just get home then, it sounds alright now"
"Right."

So it got us home OK, but it has stubbornly refused to start since then.
After several hours of speculative prodding, I've still got no idea what's wrong, so I'll have to speak to our local Land Rover wizards after the Bank Holiday.

Marvellous.