S18's brakes failed in his car tonight (he had the car booked into the garage on the morning to get them fixed). He's ok, but narrowly avoided a crash by managing to rub the tyres against the kerb to slow the car down - he wasn't going high speed. W sent me a long text saying about it, but I wanted to talk to her about it to make sure he was ok obviously.
We talked about the incident and I offered to let him have my car (small car and he's a young driver - the UK insurance costs are crazy for teen drivers on anything bigger than mine). I was getting a new one soon anyway just for a change but he needs one now and his has had enough money spent on it. Besides that, I will now cycle (as I used to) to work which is about 50 miles per week...all helps in my training for the big ride sometime in the future .
We were both pleasant enough during the call, but as it's been a while, I just said towards the end that it was nice to hear her voice. She said thanks, and I asked her if she thought it was a good idea if we started to talk more instead of just texting. I said I would prefer that, especially if it's important things like the above (I don't want to be toldy S18 has crashed his car by text) I didn't say that.
She said she knows that we need to start to communicate. I left it there, told her to get S18 to look at car insurance tomorrow, said goodnight and ended the call.
It was good to speak to her. I have no expectations in any way but it's a step, however small. I was more pleased with how I conducted the call to be honest. I was confident, concise, suggestive on how to resolve the problem with a minimum of fuss, asked the right (open) questions to get her to speak. I was conscious not to make her feel like I was stalling on the last part to keep her there, and I ended the call well.
I reall felt like a DB'r for the first time tonight.
Barry.
Me 40 W 38 T 23 M 21 S21 S19 D16 S14 BD 19/12/2014 D mentioned 27/2/2015. I filed 08/04/2015, D Absolute 04/11/2015
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