We planned to look at some trees

A few Sundays ago, my friend Hanna and I set off for a local(ish) arboretum, the one at Westonbirt, just over an hour away. The plan was to look at the pretty foliage and take nice pictures of it. For the occasion, dad lent me his Nikon DSLR, telling me not to lose or break it (because people do that on purpose).
We began the journey, heading southwest. It started raining, hard, which gave Hanna the opportunity to discover just how quickly her windscreen wipers could go. When the rain stopped, we were coming into Tetbury, a typical Cotswold town, all local stone and antique shops. We drove through, me taking photos out of the car window, and as we got to the edge of town, the rain began again. Wipers go back on, but... nothing. No movement from them at all. Try again, still nothing. We pulled over and phoned Hanna's mum, whose car it was we'd taken. We let her know what had happened, then phoned the RAC. I ended up talking to them, told them what they needed to know and finally got the message that the man with the van would be there in about an hour and 15 minutes.
So, since we had a while, we set off into Tetbury in search of some coffee and somewhere to sit down. The first place we tried wasn't letting anyone in despite having spare tables, so we found another, where the spare tales were there to be used, not just looked at.
We had our coffee, and a toasted teacake and headed back to the car where we took some photos of the dashboard (we might as well). Our saviour arrived, looked at the wipers, got out an electronic thing, put it back, then he fixed the wiper. By hitting it. With a hammer.
I'm told that's called 'percussive maintenance'. It definitely worked. Unfortunately, the advice was to head back home, so no trees for us. The mechanic followed us back to Cheltenham just in case the wiper motor needed hitting again and so we could fill out a couple of forms.
So, our trip to see the trees was called off, but, instead, we sat in Hanna's living room, had another coffee, and Hanna gave me my belated birthday gift, a photo album put together of all the things that have gone on in the last couple of years - the picnics, birthdays, the snow days.
It wasn't what we planned, but it was a lovely day, and there are worse places to be stranded than Tetbury.