I'd had minor issues with selecting gears ever since I first bought the car but none so bad as to actually stop me driving. That was until today. I had the morning off work to enable me to take the car to the MOT garage for the second time this month. This time I was confident it would pass after sorting the windscreen last week.

The last two days I had been driving back from work and I hadn’t been able to select any gears when sat at a round-about. Within a minute or two and after waving a few cars past me, it seemed to sort itself out and I got home safely.

It did worry me that the same thing with the gears had happened two days running but I wasn’t expecting it to happen as I set off from home today. As I went to leave, I couldn’t select first gear. Neither could I select reverse. It felt very much like I had no gears anymore and that neutral was my only option.

After a bit of a panic, I got hold of an old friend of mine who used to own a 'four like mine. He seemed to think that it could be the selector bushes in the gearbox or possibly something clutch related.

Due to the fact that I could "select" gears fine when the engine was off, his advice was to try and start the car in gear. This worked luckily and despite one needed stop on the way there (I suddenly had no gears again!), I managed to get to the garage.

So now, the garage has my car and are attempting to find and solve the problems with the gears as well as pass it through an MoT. I don't like looking out my bedroom window and not seeing my car there on the drive!

I will know more soon.

It was Ben's 4th Birthday today and despite a few tantrums on his "big" school visit, everything went really well.

It was also the day that "Autoglass" were coming round to fit my new windscreen. Despite the guy being very sullen & moody, he did do a pretty good job and got it done quicker than I thought.



Now I just have to find another Tax disc holder instead of the horrible "Autoglass" one that the guy replaced my old one with.

Today was the day of my car's MOT. I took Ben along with me today seeing as his interest in cars seems to be growing all the time. I'll get straight to the point and tell you that it failed.

Luckily though, it only failed on the tiny crack in the windscreen so I should be able to get it through another MOT in a week or so. It does unfortunately mean that I will have to pay out the £60 excess on my insurance but I suppose that’s a rather small price to pay for a whole new windscreen.

Despite the fail, Ben and myself still had a fun time waiting for the test to finish. The MOT was taking place at a garage situated in a disused aircraft hanger on an old airfield.

There were plenty of tractors, quad bikes, scrap cars and other such things for us to look around at and for Ben to secretly sit & play on!