Journal: What happened this Week
Our heat pump packed a sad about 5/6 weeks ago in the unit outside. The unit had moving parts with electrical wires fed to it into the interior. One of the voltage carrying wires had movement and in time wore the insulation through and caused the wire to move against earth and intermittently blow our fuse link. After a few blows something else blew and no more heat. The heat pump was about 10 years old. The original blown unit was no longer available but a similar unit could be modified, this unit had to be procured from overseas, estimated time in about 2 weeks.

But the weeks went by and no unit. We phoned after 3 weeks, then phoned again in 4 weeks, 5 weeks came and happy news; the unit was in the country. It should arrive in 2 days. It did arrive in 2 days but the weekend started tomorrow, ah well another 3 days, we could wait I suppose. But it was Thursday before they could return and fit it, the unit was fitted but over the long waiting period the gas had leaked. So a gassing unit was connected up to our power and left over-night. Next morning the technician arrived back and 30 minutes later we were back in business.

Apparently the technician said quite a few units had blown up over time, the fault was well known. The cost to the owner of our rental unit would be about $800-900, or a little more. The unit owner chose to have it fixed.

Bruce, the technician's surname was Cheyne. He told us he had been puzzling where he had seen me before. Eventually, he said the penny dropped with him. When I had our business I used to repair his parent's electronic equipment; he was a small boy and he remembered me visiting his father's farm up Matahuru Valley. The Cheyne 's were a large extended family all locally living in the area. We talked for quite a while, I knew most of them, if not all of them. Pat knew most of them too. They used to come into our workshop to pay their accounts and Pat would regularly talk to them. We all had quite an interesting talk.

I remember Bruce's grandfather Arthur, quite well. On the wall of their house was a very large picture of a large man in full Scottish regalia. Talking one day I enquired of the picture. Arthur told me it was his great-grandfather who came out to NZ from Scotland in the 1800s and bought a large block of land covered in bush and broke the land in.

Arthur, like all the Cheyne's was large, they were very large men, both height and width. During our conversation, Bruce remarked, except him, he was about 5'9 inches in height.

The Car: We got the car back today from the panel-beaters. During our last visit to the hospital we were parked next to a large black 4x4 in the parking building who made a mess of the back end of our car when pulling out. We think he may have left a note. Driving out of the parking building I noticed a piece of paper lodged, not under the car wipers but in the corner of the windscreen and the bonnet. It seemed to be a supermarket checkout list.

Leaving the building it was very windy and the wind whipped the "note" away after a while. At this stage we weren't aware of the car damage and not suspicious that the checkout list might have been a note from the black 4x4 driver. There was much black paint on our rear end side.

Fortunately when the panel-beater cleaned up the scars on the car, the damage was not as bad as first thought. The torn bumper had taken most damage and the large black lines made it look like the paintwork  was damaged too. It could have been much worse. Still it cost us almost $400 dollars and not worth claiming on our insurance.