Shopping needed to be acquired, so I jumped into the Omega this morning, and discovered that the battery had not yet recovered from its previous death. This time, I decided to jump it with the Nippa. It did quite well given that the engine almost stalled when I connected the jump leads…

I wisely put the jump leads into the Omega and headed to the shops. While there, I paid the Sunday tax by grabbing a pair of wiper blades from Halfords, discovering that their easy flip-chart to find the correct blades had been replaced by computer touch screens. That don’t work…

Once a man finally managed to coax his own computer into giving up the useful info (I was by this stage wishing I’d just brought the old blades in with me, or looked up the info on my phone), I found that a pair of Bosch blades cost the same as Halfords own. Job done. £19.99 not too bad. Also grabbed some glass wipes, because I was seriously struggling with vision on the way in.

On returning to the car, I found this happy scene.

Kia Pride, H-reg Land Rover and my mighty Omega.

I went to do a bit more shopping, came back and discovered that the Omega still didn’t have enough juice to get it going again. Huge, heavy automatics do have their disadvantages.

Oh gawd. Dead again! Panda proved helpful.

Thankfully, the owner of that Panda was kind enough to give me a jump – I was glad I’d packed those leads. I decided to head off for an extended drive home, to hopefully get some charge into that poor battery. Not easy with headlamps, wipers and blowers all working hard, but it seemed to do the trick. It was as I was many miles from civilisation that I remembered I’d forgotten to buy lunch. Bother. That Kia Pride had obviously distracted me more than I’d thought.

About two minutes after I had that thought, the Omega started making an alarming noise under throttle. I was starting to wish I’d stayed in bed. I turned around, and decided the best idea was to drive home as quickly as possible before it broke down. It was pouring with rain, and I had no appetite to investigate.

It was quite an enjoyable hoon, and when I got home, the rain had eased enough for me to investigate. Forgetting about the tired bonnet struts of course. Ouch! It didn’t take long to spot the issue. The EGR valve clamp had come adrift. I clearly hadn’t tightened the 13mm-headed bolts sufficiently. Idiot.

I abandoned the Omega and jumped into the Honda to get lunch. I’m hoping this afternoon will be less problematic.