I woke this morning with my earbuds still attached to my ear. That isn’t especially unusual. I often fall asleep while doomscrolling and can’t be bothered to put them away. The inflatable bed creaks a little when I’m reaching for the nightstand, which typically jolts Sandy awake. As she was still sleeping, I didn’t want to disturb her, so I shifted off the bed as quietly as I could and put my earbuds in my two pyjama pockets before going to the bathroom. At some point during breakfast, I reached into my pockets but found only one earbud. Despite searching high and low, it never did resurface during the day. The prevailing theory is that one of the dogs found it on the floor…and ate it.
While I stayed at home, JL and Sandy took Joey and some of the kids out to Smyths Toys again. Doubtless, Joey hoped to find newly stocked Beyblades, which he did. Not long thereafter, Jay got a call from JL. Evidently, Sandy had decided to treat all the kids so they could all pick out some toys. Jay turned to me, phone to his ear, a grin on his face, and said, “Oh, it looks like you’ve treated the kids?” “Oh,” I said, raising an eyebrow, “that was…nice of me.” We both burst into laughter.
An hour or so later, the house erupted into life again when everyone piled through the front door, showing off the purchases they’d made with their newly acquired pocket money. Some kids had painting toys, some had slime, and so on. Everyone was busily playing. It was once again a lovely burst of bedlam in the bustling house, with playful laughter echoing from all corners.
The plan for today was to visit Lakeside—a sprawling shopping complex and retail park that represents my personal version of hell—and then Dad. We had enough charge in the car, but we planned to recharge in Lakeside, as we wouldn’t have enough charge for the one-hour return journey. ZapMap showed a CHAdeMO charger at the Tescos superstore in Lakeside. That was convenient since we planned to stop there anyway, so it would be a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. It must have been newly installed, as we’d never seen it there in the numerous times we’ve been. Alas, things didn’t pan out as planned. Once again, the logistics of driving an electric car bit us today…repeatedly.
When we arrived at Tescos, we did indeed find some recently installed charging points. The one with the CHAdeMO fast charger didn’t appear to be operating. Sandy took Joey inside the supermarket while I stayed to call the number printed on the panel to see whether they could get it working. As soon as I confirmed with the operator which charging point it was, I got what sounded very much like a well-rehearsed spiel of, “Yes, this has already been reported, and our technicians are looking into it. We apologise for any inconvenience. Is there anything else I can help you with?” I spent a couple of minutes pushing back, asking her whether I should avoid their charging points in the future, given ZapMap isn’t reflecting the correct information about their chargers. The brick wall of canned responses gets tedious after a while, so I gave up. Fortunately, there was at least one other destination charger with the first 15 minutes free, so I plugged in there. A few km would be better than none. It would at least give me enough charge to find another solution.
I found Sandy and Joey inside Tescos toting an armful of T-shirts and a few other bits and pieces. Joey was also halfway through another tub of cocktail sausages. He took a liking to those the last time he was here in the UK, and I’ve had to bring several packets of them home for him each visit since.
While Sandy was tucking into some toasted garlic bread at the Tescos café, I scanned the vicinity on the ZapMap app again for charging options. Coincidentally, a motorway services location sits adjacent to Lakeside, and ZapMap showed a dozen or more fast-charging locations, each with both CCS and CHAdeMO connections. Even better was the price, which the app indicated as 55p. Most other locations are in the 90-95p range, with the exception of MFG, which has a discount currently running.
We decided I would drop Sandy and Joey off at Lakeside, while I spent half an hour or so plugged in to the fast charger. I duly dropped them off at M&S at the far end of the complex and drove the five minutes over to the services. I did find a row of empty charging panels, each with both a CCS and a CHAdeMO connector.
When I went to connect, the panel indicated the charge rate was 92p. That was about two-thirds more than the app showed, so I figured it was worth calling the company (Gridserve) to ask about it. The support agent was helpful. We had a genuinely free-flowing conversation, instead of me getting scripted responses. She confirmed 92p was the correct rate and seemed surprised by what she called inaccurate information in ZapMap. To be fair, she pointed out that Gridserve doesn’t control what ZapMap shows, but it’s still grating as a customer to be confronted with this sort of bait-and-switch scenario. I posted a remark about this in the ZapMap app’s online forum. Later in the day, someone commented that the app is technically correct. Although the map view does state 55p, when you click the flag to open the details, it says in the corner, in fine print, “from 55p”. Evidently, there’s a lower-wattage charger somewhere at the service location that charges 55p. All the fast chargers, however, charge 92p. I replied that I still found it misleading and something of a con. Oh well. Some you win, and some you lose. I eventually managed to get the car charged—albeit at a higher cost than I would have liked. I think it cost me around £20 to add around 130 km of range.
Sandy and Joey weren’t having much more success at Lakeside. They walked the entire length of the shopping centre and back again, but came out empty-handed. As if to rub salt in their wounds, I hit heavy congestion around the shopping centre (it’s Saturday, so it was always going to be busy today) about four minutes into the five-minute drive to where they were waiting outside Primark. That last minute took ten to complete.
With Sandy and Joey safely loaded into the car, we set off to South Ockendon. We found Dad, Paul and a couple of carers there. Despite being infirm for years, and having come through several bouts of serious illness, Dad looks as good as when I was last here—he has at the very least not deteriorated, which is about the best we can hope for given his ninety years. He loved seeing and speaking with Sandy and Joey, and was genuinely surprised to see them with me this time around. As a happy bonus, Lurissa, my brother Richard’s ex-wife, was there visiting as well.
Sandy, Joey and I spent an hour or two visiting Dad, each spending a few minutes at a time sitting at his bedside allowing him to reminisce about this and that. I popped out to pick up some chip shop food for an early dinner.
It was busier than usual at Dad’s. While we were there, a previous carer also stopped by, bringing some tinned food Dad likes. That was a really nice gesture on her part. Dad’s situation may be unfortunate, given his ailing health, but Paul and his carers look after him well. Given we live so far away, just knowing this gives us at least some peace of mind.
Because Sandy and Joey had been waiting on me to pick them up earlier at Lakeside, I didn’t manage to get the car to more than about 80% charge. That was enough to get us back to Clacton, but we tend to burn more energy at motorway speeds, so I wanted a bit of a buffer. After bidding Dad and Paul farewell, I stopped to charge in Grays, near the Blackshots swimming pool. Sandy and I used to swim at Blackshots as teenagers, when she would visit me from the Netherlands. We were both surprised, and a little nostalgic, to find it still there.
We left the charging location in Grays with 85% charge, which was enough to get us safely back to Clacton with a little spare. The car often misleads us about how many km of range it has. At motorway speeds, the predicted range drops faster than the distance we actually cover, so we can’t go as far as the car says we can. This is because the car calculates remaining range based on the previous 24 hours of driving style. If we’ve done city driving the day before, with lots of stop-and-go, then it calculates a higher remaining range. In the event, we burned through about 50 km more than predicted, given the distance actually covered. That vindicated the decision to stop and top up.
We arrived at JL’s just in time to spend a bit of quality time with the kids before their bedtime routines kicked into gear, which I was grateful for. Since they are planning a holiday to Orlando next year, I spent some time telling the kids about our time there, our favourite attractions, and so on. I loved seeing their excited expressions as they lapped it up.
The adults spent some time chatting around the kitchen table to round out the evening. As is typically the case, everyone was exhausted by then and running on fumes. It was time for bed.