It’s been a while since I last whined wrote about my old nemesis, the OMGSNOW, and that’s because, as luck would have it, we’ve been experiencing non-stop rain for the past week or so, which has washed all of the white stuff away – yay!
The snow has, however, left its calling card behind, in the shape of the kazillionty-one pot holes that have opened up all over the roads. Now, the roads here aren’t great at the best of times. They’re not like the roads you find in America, say, which are built to withstand years of use by actual cars, and trucks, and other vehicles. No, over here they basically just put down whatever crappy surface they can find, then shrug their shoulders and go, “Meh. We’ll have to repair it again in two week’s time, and it’ll have more holes than the surface of the moon after the first bad frost, but who cares? By then everyone will be so busy Twittering about the pritty, pritty snow that they won’t even notice…”
Terry and I came face to face with one of these potholes on Saturday night. There we were, driving along without a care in the world. Terry’s car is a rear-wheel drive, and it’s absolutely rubbish in the snow, so this was actually the first day he’d been able to drive it for weeks: we’ve been having to use mine all the time, and I think he was enjoying having his prechus car back again. Not for long, though. We reached the slip road onto the motorway, which was, as usual, shrouded in a cloak of darkness, (because seriously, there’s no point lighting those roads, is there?) when suddenly…
SMACK!
The car hit a pothole so large, and so deep, that it actually felt more like the road rose up to meet us, than the other way around. Rubin let out a high, girlish shriek (or actually, that might have been me?) and Terry and I turned to look at each other with despair in our eyes.
“Again…” muttered Terry. “It’s happened again…”
And indeed it had: the pothole had buckled not ne but TWO of the wheels so badly that even I, in the passenger seat of the car, could feel them rumbling awkwardly along the road, our once proud and mighty car reduced to a mere shadow of itself.
(Because our cars are like people, with actual personalities and stuff, I can’t help but take this a bit personally. I feel like the pothole had taken agin the car for some reason, and was lying there in wait for it, so that it could exact its revenge upon it. I really, really hate that pothole right now. I wish I could drop-kick it, or something, only I can’t imagine how that would work with a hole?)
Anyway. Terry got off the motorway at the next exit to inspect the damage, but there was nothing he could do, and luckily the car was still driveable (albeit slowly), so we limped sadly home, mentally counting up how much money is in our bank account right now and wondering how much of it will be left after this little incident. Verdict: probably not much. The problem, you see, is that you’re not entitled to compensation for this kind of thing, and we know this because the exact same thing happened to Terry’s last car, a few years ago. Basically, as long as the council, or whoever is in charge of the road maintenance (in this case its an agency called Bear Scotland, who “look after” the motorways) repair the pothole within 48 hours of you reporting it, they don’t have to take any responsibility for the damage which is awesome for them, but not so good for you, or the God-knows-how-many other vehicles that get damaged by the same hole (and bear in mind that this one is on a motorway, and is invisible in the dark… and that it’s dark here pretty much ALL THE TIME in winter). Terry called them as soon as we got home on Saturday night, and they confirmed this, so although they’re sending us out a claim form, we’re led to believe that the chances of them coughing up are slim to zero, so we’re left trying to get our insurance to cover it, which isn’t looking hopeful either.
Here is our newest nemesis, photographed by Terry the next morning:
(Coke can to aid perspective. To aid MY perspective, Terry explained to me that, “You could’ve put a stiletto shoe inside it!” Because, of course, I only understand things when they’re phrases in shoe-language*.)
There was a car pulled over next to it when he got there, changing its wheel, and when he called Bear Scotland back to get some more information from them, the guy he spoke to said he’d already had one call that morning about a car damaged by the same pothole, and bear in mind that he was in a call centre, so there would probably have been loads of them.
So, that’s the latest reason for me to continue hating the snow, even after it’s gone. It’s also the reason why the very next person to say, “But it’s SO PRITTY!” or “I wish there could be MOAR SNOW! Because I’m SO JELUS of the people with the MOAR SNOW!” will be responsible for my head exploding…
*That was sarcasm, by the way. You CAN talk to me about other things, too…
Tagged car wars, i hate snow
So, it turns out that the Box O’Doom isn’t the only thing Terry has been hoarding lately.
You see, a couple of weeks ago, we bought a new TV cabinet. I know, it’s a rock n’ roll lifestyle we lead, to be sure. Anyway, Terry put the new cabinet together, and when I came downstairs a little while later, I was impressed to find that he’d cleared up behind him, and the OLD cabinet was nowhere to be seen. Impressed and, let’s face it, suspicious. I mean, our house is approximately the size of a shoebox. There’s just not that many places to store an old TV cabinet, and I knew it wouldn’t fit into the bin, so I had a feeling that I’d be seeing it again, sometime, some place.
That time and place turned out to be two days later, in the back seat of my car. The cabinet was there, and hey! So was that box! You know, the one that was inside the one that’s inside my living room?
“We meet again, my old nemesis!” I said with an evil chuckle, before heading back inside and asking Terry what the hell was going on: were these items expecting me to drop them off somewhere? Where do boxes and TV cabinets hang out, anyway?
“Oh,” said Terry, “I just put them there so we can take them to the tip. We’ll go tomorrow.”
Well, “tomorrow” came and went. The box and cabinet didn’t. Fast-forward to yesterday morning. I was getting ready to go to the gym, when I suddenly remembered that I wouldn’t be going alone: in fact, I would be going as Amber’s Amazing Travelling Rubbish Skip. “That’s it,” I told Terry. “When I get home, I’m taking them out of the car, and I’m going to chop them to pieces on the back lawn. Or I will take them to Fakehenge and sacrifice them to the Gods of Rubbish.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Terry. “Why don’t you just take my car to the gym?”
So I did.
Now, I don’t drive Terry’s car every day, or even every week, but I do drive it every now and again, which is why what transpired when I left the gym is still something of a mystery to me. Or it would be if I wasn’t already quite used to my random acts of stupidity, that is.
I got to the gym without incident, and completed my run. Then I left, got back into the car and put it into reverse, to get out of my parking space.
The car rolled gently forwards.
I braked, checked it was definitely in reverse, then tried again.
It rolled even further forward.
You know that saying, “Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results?” Yeah.
The third time I tried, the car once again rolled forward.
Well, I got out and had a look around to see if there were, I don’t know, magical forces at work, propelling me forwards when I had specifically asked the car to go backwards. There weren’t. So I got back in and employed the old “switch it off, then switch it back on,” trick. This time, when I tried to reverse, the car simply roared at me.
At this point, I broke out in a cold sweat. You see, Terry LOVES that car. He loves it so much that I’m pretty sure if I called him and said “there’s been an accident,” he’d ask about the car first, and me second. So I sat and I pondered and I worried. And then I worried some more. But the car wouldn’t budge, so finally I plucked up all my courage and called Terry.
And, of course, I HAD NO CREDIT ON MY PHONE.
So I emailed him instead, with a vague, but urgent, “call me!” Then I sat there and wondered if there was any way I could escape before Terry got to me. “At least I’m wearing my running shoes,” I reasoned. “I’ll just leave a “sorry for breaking your car!” note on the windscreen, then I’ll make a run for it…”
Before doing that, though, I had one more look at the gear stick, just to make sure I was, indeed, in reverse.
It was in neutral.
OF COURSE IT WAS.
I had been sitting there for ten minutes trying to get a car to reverse, without actually engaging the reverse gear.
And that’s why I’m not allowed to drive Terry’s car any more.
Oh, there was also this:
 Oops In my defence, the wooden thing was already at that angle. (Maybe I did that the last time I was at the gym?). And the car doesn’t have a scratch, seeing as it just, you know, nudged it. While it was in neutral.
On second thoughts, maybe I should just never leave the house?
Tagged car wars
On Friday night, Terry’s car left us forever. It was a sad time for us me. I’ve said before that I get ridiculously attached to things, especially cars, so I may have gotten just a little bit misty-eyed as I walked past it that night and thought, “This is the last time I will ever lay eyes on you, oh good and faithful servant! Well, ‘good and faithful’ except for that time you dumped us on the motorway at 11pm in the rain, and then refused to ever work again, obviously.”
As it turned out, I was wrong about the whole “last time ever” thing, because when I glanced out of the window an hour or so later, the men who’d bought it were still out there trying unsuccessfully to push it onto the back of a pickup truck. In the end Terry had to go outside and spend 30 minutes helping them push, so that made the whole thing a little less sentimental, to be honest, but hey ho. So, the car is gone, but not forgotten. It was the car that saw us through the first seven long years of our life together in this house (because, yes, it was THAT OLD.) It was the car we had when we got married. It was the car that took us on dozens of happy days out, and it was the car that drove Terry to hundreds of dialysis sessions and hospital appointments. (Well, I mean, Terry drove it, and sometimes I did. It didn’t drive itself: if it could’ve done that, there’s no way we’d have sold it.) It was the car that got pulled over by the police three times in as many weeks, because they were convinced we’d stolen it. It was the car Rubin once had really explosive diarrhea in on the way back from…oh no, wait: that was MY car, wasn’t it? Gah.
What I’m trying to say is: we will miss it. Or I will, anyway. It was a good car – when it wasn’t breaking down on the motorway, obviously. Its replacement, meanwhile, will hopefully be joining us at some point this week. I’ve decided that this time I WILL NOT GET ATTACHED. This will not be like that time when I was a child and I refused to speak to my parents for a week because they’d sold a car I’d viewed as an integral part of our family. Oh hell, no. It is JUST A CAR. Just. A. Car. I will be friendly but detached. Yes. Just you watch me.
 Goodbye, old friend “They don’t make cars like they used to
I wish we still had it today
The love we first tasted
The good life we’re still livin’
We owe it to that old ’57 Chevrolet”
~ Billy Jo Spears, ’57 Chevrolet
P.S – I got me a shiny new Google Friends Connect thingy, (which is the same as the Blogger followers widget, and is integrated with it), which you can see in the sidebar, so if you want to follow, please do, and I will follow you back!
Tagged car wars
After the “catastrophic failure” that mysteriously led Heart Internet to lose all of my websites on Friday afternoon, I had thought all of our bad luck for the year had been used up in one go.
But no. Of COURSE not.
On Sunday, we had dinner with my parents. On the way home, we were driving along the motorway when the car suddenly gave a little judder, almost as if something had just dropped off it. We drove on for a few seconds, and then, “Something just broke in the car,” said Terry. “I thought I felt something,” I replied. “What was it?” At this point I was thinking it had to be something minor, because obviously the car was still going, and we were still travelling along the motorway at a fair old speed.
“Well,” said Terry, “It has no power. At all.”
OH. CRAP.
It was what you might call a “catastrophic failure”. Another one.
By this point we were approaching the slip road we would normally take to exit the motorway, so Terry took the exit, got the car stopped and the hazard lights on. I was shaking like a leaf, having imagined us careering wildly through town, unable to stop our amazing runaway car, but I was trying to stay calm. We have AA membership (That’s the Automobile Association, by the way, not Alcoholics Anonymous. Although, the way things are going…), so we would simply call them on my phone, and within minutes a cheerful man in a bright yellow coat would appear to miraculously fix the car and bring us home, just like on TV. He would probably make us a nice cup of tea, while he was at it.
But no.
Because when I pulled my iPhone out of my bag and looked at it, the words NO SERVICE were sitting at the top of the screen like a skull and crossbones, and the phone, it would not work.
OF COURSE NOT.
I think it’s fair to say I panicked a bit at this point. There we were, sitting on a motorway slip road at 10pm on a Sunday night with a car we couldn’t drive and and a phone we couldn’t use. Oh, and a small white dog.
Of course, there are emergency phones all along the motorway at one mile intervals, but after a bit of thought, we worked out that we were actually closer to the petrol station at the bottom of the slip road than we were to the nearest emergency phone, which could be a mile away (or possibly more given that we had left the motorway and would have to walk back to it, and then along it, to get to the phone. It’s a really long slip road.) So we sat and quietly panicked. Terry was all for flagging down a passing car. I’ve seen far too many horror movies that start with a young couple hitching a lift with a stranger to even countenance this suggestion, and so it was that we found ourselves walking along the deserted road in the middle of the night, hoping to reach civilisation before we were killed by either a passing car, or the homicidal maniac who was almost certain to stop and offer us a lift.
I, naturally, was wearing ridiculous shoes. Terry was carrying Rubin under his arm. It was freezing. And dark. So, when a car suddenly pulled up alongside us after ten minutes of walking, I just thought, “Oh good, that’s the homicidal maniac. I hope he kills us relatively painlessly.”
Luckily for us, it was not a homicidal maniac. It was, in fact, a very nice man who kindly drove us the rest of the way to the petrol station without once trying to disembowel us, or even torture us slightly. It would’ve taken us ages to walk, but was only a couple of minutes in the car. Nevertheless, I spent those two minutes with my hand on the door handle, ready to open it and throw myself out at the slightest hint of trouble. Happily, though, we arrived at the petrol station without further incident. And, once there, we discovered that, hey! They had no public telephone!
OF COURSE NOT.
Once again, however, we were lucky (if you can call us that), and one of the employees let Terry use his phone, while I stood outside in the cold, clutching Rubin and shaking with cold and panic. I’ve done a lot of shaking since Friday. It’s been just as much fun as it sounds. He called the AA, and then called a taxi, which arrived mercifully quickly. The taxi, Terry said, would take Rubin and I home, and would then take Terry back to the scene of the crime car to wait for the AA, who would be along in around 30 minutes.
Or so they said.
We managed to execute stage one of the plan successfully. The taxi brought us home, and Terry came in to pick up his phone, before heading back to the car. I sat down to wait. And wait. And wait. And PANIC. And start a vigil, involving much pacing of the floor and wringing of the hands as I waited for Terry to either return safely home, or call and tell me he was at least still alive.
He called just before midnight. And told me that the AA had just contacted him, and had said the bad weather conditions across the country meant they were being inundated with calls, and would now not be able to get to him for THREE HOURS. During those three hours, Terry would have to remain in the car, with no heat, no light, and nothing to do. If he abandoned the car, this would be illegal, and the police would remove it and then fine us a lot of money. There was no option but for him to sit in the car for three hours. The car has automatic transmission- it can’t be easily towed, so none of our friends or family could have gone out to help him, and because of the location of the car and the terrible weather conditions (not to mention the fact that it was now midnight), it would’ve been dangerous for them to even try. I couldn’t go out and wait with him because Terry had my car keys in his pocket at the time. So he just had to sit there and wait.
Did I mention he’d had almost no sleep on Friday, because he was up most of the night trying to rescue the websites Heart Internet had lost? And that we’d gone to a Halloween party on Saturday night, not getting home until late, and getting up just a few hours later to once again begin the task of restoring the websites? So neither of us had slept much all weekend, we’d had a horrible shock on Friday, followed by hours and hours of stress, and were still pretty freaked out by what had happened to the websites. We were both absolutely shattered, basically, and were coming home to try and get some sleep before getting up to once again begin the task of trying to rescue our business. And now Terry was stuck in the middle of nowhere, and would be there for up to three hours.
I’m not ashamed to admit that when I hung up the phone, I sat down and cried. After everything that’s happened this week, the thought of Terry sitting on his own in that car for hours on end was just the last straw. Poor, poor Terry. He’s worked so hard to get things back to normal following The Incident. As well as our own websites, we also host dozens of websites for Terry’s clients, and, of course, all of those had been lost, and with Heart Internet unable to do anything to help, Terry had to restore every single one of them from our own backups (which THANK GOD we had, otherwise we’d be in even more of a mess than we are.) Then he’d had to start the business of restoring our own sites. We still have hours of work on that ahead of us, and will be basically working around the clock for the next few weeks just to keep our heads above water. A good night’s sleep wouldn’t have made all of this miraculously better, but I think I can safely say that sitting in a freezing cold car until 3am has made it all seem a hell of a lot worse.
It also seems likely that the car’s failure truly was catastrophic, in that it’s likely to cost much more to fix than the car is actually worth. So there’s that, too, but to be honest, we don’t even really have time to think about that at the moment, much less work out what we can do about it.
Oh, and just to make matters worse, as soon as I got home and I was able to get online, I discovered that all I had to do to get my phone to work again was reset the damn thing. When I did that, it worked perfectly.
OF COURSE.
Tagged car wars, heart internet, really bad things
Remember the sorry story of how I lost my TAX DISC? And had to apply for a new TAX DISC? Because the old TAX DISC was lost, and when something is lost, you don’t have it any more?
(Don’t worry, the caps are there for a reason. I haven’t just developed a weird case of car-related Tourettes. TAX DISC!)
Did you, at any point in that story, get the feeling that, “Oh my God, we haven’t heard the end of this yet?” Because if so, you were right. Sigh.
First I had to print out and fill in a form. You know, to get the DVLA to replace my missing TAX DISC? That was a bit of a saga in itself, partly because I really suck at filling in forms (I used blue ink rather than the required-on-pain-of-death black ink, and I put my date of birth in the “today’s date” box), but also because this form contained a bunch of questions like: “Please enter your BlahBlah number. This can be found on your TAX DISC”. And I was all, “Oh, my TAX DISC, you say? The one that’s LOST? As in, I don’t have it? Sure, let me just grab my LOST TAX DISC that I don’t have, so I can fill in this number from it, so that you can replace my LOST TAX DISC!”
It also contained the question, “How was the original TAX DISC lost?” Which stumped me a little, I have to admit. I considered two different answers:
1. Provide them with a link to this post.
or
2. Write something along the lines of “If I knew that, I’d have a chance of finding it, and I wouldn’t have to fill in this stupid form, brainiacs.”
But in the end I went with option 3, which involved the laborious printing (in block caps! That I had to write with my hand! I don’t ever write by hand now. I barely remember how to do it, to be honest.) of a lengthy explanation that went something like, “Well, it was on the worktop in the kitchen? Next to the kettle? Or maybe the toaster? But the original tax disc still had a few weeks to run, and I was about to go on holiday, then with all of the excitement of the holiday (I touched a dolphin!!) I forgot all about it, and then suddenly the tax disc wasn’t there any more, and I think I might have thrown it out by mistake, but I’m really not sure. Do you know? Also, have you seen my green dress?”
It was at this point that I realised I’d used the FORBIDDEN blue ink, though, so I had to print out a new form and start all over again (this time I just wrote “I think I threw it out. Whoops!”), then I had to write out a cheque for £7, and I haven’t used cheques since about 1999, so first I had to find my cheque book, then I had to hunt down my Vehicle Registration Document, which they also needed, and I had to put these items into an envelope along with some powdered unicorn horn, a 4 leafed clover gathered by the light of the full moon, and a clipping from one of God’s toenails. Then I had to get into my car (which, did I mention, does not have a valid TAX DISC?) and drive to the post office, because apparently it’s still 1987 at the DVLA and you can’t just do all of this online, like a normal person. I bet they still use typewriters there, too.
So, all of this just to get a replacement TAX DISC, and do you know what the DVLA sent me this week?
Yes, they sent me…. a replacement VEHICLE REGISTRATION CERTIFICATE!
So that sucked. Remember the bit where I had to send them my existing Vehicle Registration Document? You’d think that would’ve been a clue that this particular certificate WAS NOT LOST. Unlike, say… actually, no, I can’t bring myself to say it one more time. And then I had to pick up the phone (I never “phone”) and go through the whole “Press 1 if you’d like to sit in a call queue for an hour, 2 if you’d like to be transferred to someone who does not speak English, or 3 if you’d prefer to just die now,” thing, so they could tell me they have no idea why they sent me a Vehicle Registration Certificate rather than a You Know What.
They tell me a replacement YKW will be on its way to me later this week. I await its arrival with bated breath.
P.S. TAX DISC!
Tagged car wars, things I lost
Way back in June, just before I went to Florida, my road tax came up for renewal. And so did my car insurance and MOT. Actually, that’s not quite true: the tax disc was due to expire while we were away, and because of the general stress/excitement involved in going on vacation, not to mention all of the other car-related expenses going on at the time, I became absolutely convinced that I would forget to renew it, and when I got home the police would be waiting for me at the airport or something. Because clearly I have no idea how these things work AT ALL.
Anyway, I was so sure that Bad Things were going to happen involving this tax disc that I ordered and paid for it online the very second the renewal notice came in the mail, then I sat back and congratulated myself on being so freaking organised.
A couple of days later, the new tax disc arrived, but – and here’s the kicker – rather than sticking it on the inside of my windscreen, as required by law, it’s looking increasingly likely that I just stuck it INSIDE THE BIN instead. Or, you know, somewhere.
Then I went on holiday, in blissful ignorance of the fact that my careful planning had all been for nothing, and my car was now sitting in the driveway displaying an out of date tax disc.
Then I came home and proceeded to drive the car here, there and everywhere (well, to the gym and the mall), STILL without the tax disc. Terry drove his mum to the airport in said car-with-no-valid-tax-disc. Then, four weeks later? He drove her back. And still the tax disc was out of date.
Today, though, while out in the driveway, Terry finally noticed the fact that my car was sitting there being ILLEGAL. So he told me about it and I, of course, proceeded to freak the hell out. A fingertip search of the house was undertaken, but I knew that it was in vain, and I knew this because it’s only been a few weeks since the LAST search of the house, and I’d like to think that if the missing tax disc had turned up while I was searching for the green dress, I’d have noticed it. I mean, I’d LIKE to think that, but last time I checked I was still Amber, and you really never know with me, do you?
In the end I called my bank and was all, “Oh, hai, do you by any chance know if I paid my road tax in June?” Luckily my bank are used to such questions from me, and they confirmed that yes, I had, in fact paid for the new disc, so I am not being quite as illegal as I thought I was. It’ll now apparently cost me £7 to get a replacement disc though, and meanwhile I am sure – SURE – that wherever it is, it is probably with the green dress and missing top.
WHAT WILL BE NEXT?
Tagged car wars, things I lost
OK, February, you win. It’s become clear to me now that absolutely EVERYTHING I try to do this month is doomed to epic failure, so I’m just going to go back to bed until March, OK? Actually, wait: make that May. I’ll get up when it’s Spring and not before…
So, I haven’t been to the gym this month, other than one Body Pump class that was so long ago I’ve almost forgotten doing it. This has been particularly annoying to me, because on the last day of January, I went out and bought a bunch of brand new gym clothes. I figured it was the only way I’d be able to motivate myself to actually go to the gym because, OK, they were exercise clothes, and therefore ugly by nature, but beggars can’t be choosers, and if new gym clothes were all that was on offer for the month, then by God, I would be taking full advantage of them!
Except I wouldn’t, because the day after I bought them, the snow came. And stayed for a week. During that time, not only was it dangerous to drive (Well, dangerous for ME to drive, I mean), the horrendous weather forced me to curl up into a tight little ball and not move. Just in case I haven’t made myself clear enough the million or so other times I’ve mentioned this: I DON’T “DO” COLD.
The week after that (last week), I caught the cold. Oh, and it snowed. Again. So all gym-going was put on hold that week too, making this week the first time this month that I haven’t had an excuse not to go to the gym. Yesterday, though… well, yesterday was Monday, and we visit Terry’s mum on a Monday, which leaves me with less time to do my actual work for the day, so I decided to let myself off the hook when I woke up at the appointed time and then totally failed to get up and go to the gym.
Which brings us to today.
Today was Body Combat. It’s my favourite class, so last night I prepared for it by laying out my gym clothes in preparation for the morning, and then lying awake all night. I didn’t do the last bit deliberately, you understand: it’s just that my brain likes to do this thing whereby if it knows I have to get up early the next day it will keep me awake, purely so it can go, “Ooh! Not long now! Just a few, short hours until you have to get up, in fact! Man, you’re going to feel like CRAP. You hate getting up early, don’t you? Don’t blame you: you should really have been asleep HOURS ago if you wanted to feel anything like “awake” when that alarm goes off. Seriously, you’re going to feel SO BAD you’re going to pray for the sweet release of death. Even if you go to sleep RIGHT NOW, you’ll still not get enough sleep, and you’ll feel TERRIBLE, like absolutely HORRENDOUS. Man, this going to SUCK!” And so on and so forth.
All of this internal chatter, however, meant that I was awake a good hour and a half before my alarm went off, and even although I sank into the deepest and most blissful sleep imaginable minutes before it did, by that point I had spent so much time thinking about how I was going to get up and go to the gym that there was no way in hell I wasn’t going to actually do it. Seriously, I had even dreamt about that Body Combat class during the short periods of sleep I managed to snatch. I wish I was joking.
Anyway. I dragged myself out of bed, pulled on my (Shiny! New!) gym clothes and headed out to the car.
Which was, of course, totally frozen solid, with both locks impenetrable. %$£^&&”^*&!!!!!!
This was mostly my fault. You see, this is now the THIRD time this has happened to me this month. It happened for the second time on Saturday morning, when I tried to go to my optician’s appointment, and found the car locks frozen solid. That night we went to visit my parents, and I whined so much about my passenger-side entry, and trips up and down the driveway with a mug of hot water, that my dad went out to his garage and returned with a can of “LOCKS NOT FREEZE!” or something, which he gave me with instructions to spray it on the locks.
(Aside: where does my dad GET all this stuff? Seriously, you could go round there and say, “Damn, I really wish I had a flux capacitor,” and my dad will get this thoughtful look on his face and say, “You know, I think I may have one of those in the garage…” And he WILL. It’s amazing. Sadly, this doesn’t work for Christian Louboutin shoes and ponies, though: I’ve checked.)
Obviously, I brought the LOCKS NOT FREEZE! home with me, put it carefully away in the spare room wardrobe, and forgot all about it. Until this morning, when I once again was forced to enter the car via the passenger side, having first of all travelled up and down the driveway three times with a mug of hot water. GOD.
(Yes, dad, I have sprayed the locks now. Thanks!)
Luckily for me, I now have the whole “Mug/hot water/passenger side entry” down to such a fine art that I’ll probably still be getting into the car via the passenger side by June, out of sheer force of habit, so by the time I finally pulled out of the driveway, I was still in plenty of time for my Body Combat class, and feeling not a little bit smug about it, let me tell you. At last, I was following through on a promise I had made to myself! I was going to the gym, and even although it would hurt, I knew that by the time I got home I would be feeling even MORE smug, and so it would all have been worthwhile.
Of course, I had forgotten an important fact here: I had forgotten that, last I checked, I was still Amber, and things just don’t tend to work out like that for me.
That’s probably why, after having driven for approximately three minutes, I encountered a traffic jam. And I sat in that traffic jam, almost without moving, for the next 25 minutes. When the time came for my class to start, and I was still sitting in the same place, still a good 15 – 20 minutes away from the gym, I accepted the inevitable, got out of the car and started walking amongst the stationery traffic, singing “Everybody Hurts” to the sky. Whoops, no, that was just in my own head. What I actually did, was turn the car around and return home*, taking a curiously circuitous route that was only vaguely familiar to me, on account of all of the stationery traffic that was just littered around the roads, going nowhere. It was like a scene out of one of those “End of the world, OMG, only Will Smith can save us now!” movies, honestly.
And this is why I try not to ever leave the house, if I can possibly help it. Every time I do, it’s just all stressstressstress, failfailfail, and I normally end up buying something I don’t actually need, into the bargain. (Not today, though. Because I would’ve needed to actually GO somewhere to have been able to buy something, and instead I just drove around, wasting my precious, precious, heart-breakingly expensive fuel instead. AAAARGH!)
I’m going back to bed now. Wake me up when it’s Spring, would you?
* Yes, I know, I could’ve just gone to the gym anyway. But it would probably have taken me another 30 minutes to get there, God knows how long to get back, and anyway: by that point? I just didn’t want to.
Tagged car wars, gym
Does anyone else ever get that thing where you go somewhere in your car (the local mall, say) and when you come back a couple of hours later, it’s SO COLD both of the locks on your car doors have frozen solid? So solid that you can’t even get your key into either one of them, never mind prise the door open with your fingernails, like you did last time?
So you drop your bags, containing the shiny new bikini you just bought (because you are stupid, and therefore exactly the kind of person who goes out and buys BIKINIS in February. When it is snowing) on the frozen ground, and then you drop YOURSELF onto the frozen ground too, onto your knees, in fact, and you pray to the God of Cars. “Please GOC,” you say, “Let the doors be opened, because this car park is dark and cold and I’m all alone in it, except for the crazy old man who will surely turn up any second now to torment, and possibly kill me. Also, this new bikini won’t be much use in the snow.” Maybe you even say a few “Open Sesames” at this point, who knows.
But it doesn’t work. The doors remain resolutely frozen, and no matter how hard you pull and yell and try to force the key into them, they will not budge. But wait! Wait! There is a can of de-icer in the car boot! If only the lock on the boot will open for you! Oh, sweet, merciful Jesus, it WILL! And there is your de-icer! Hallelujah, you are SAVED!
So you skip like a lamb (albeit a clumsy lamb. That is wearing high heeled boots on an icy day.) back to the driver’s side door and you spray your de-icer like there is no tomorrow. You spray, and you spray, and then you spray a little more. And it does not work. The door is still frozen solid, so you mosey on round to the passenger door to try your luck there, casting furtive glances over your shoulder as you go, fully expecting to see a stooped and sinister shape shuffle into view in the deserted car park (did I mention that the car park is also pitch dark? And that soft flakes of snow have started to fall?) and start making its way towards you. “Ya’ll need some help there?” the stooped figure will ask (because in your foolish head, you are now apparently living in Hicksville, USA, as well as being stranded in a frozen car park in the dark), before bludgeoning you to death with the crowbar he was hiding up the back of his filthy trench coat the whole time. When your body is finally found, it will still be clutching the carrier bag containing the new bikini. It is a mystery that will puzzle your friends and family for months, until they finally remember that you always were a bit wrong in the head anyway.
Anyway.
You spray your de-icer on the passenger side door, to the point where you actually start to get high from the fumes. But the door does not open. So you shuffle back round to the driver’s side, and you rinse and you repeat. And then you do it again. And maybe once more for luck.
Finally, success! The passenger side door succumbs to your mighty efforts, so you throw your bags into the car, and you climb in, snagging your thigh really painfully on the handbrake as you do so, and making a mental note NOT to buy a coupe next time. Then you realise that, why, the snow that has fallen has formed a solid crust on all your windows, so you must get right back out again to scrape them!
First, you try opening the driver’s door from the inside, using the very scientific method of throwing your body against it like a lunatic in a padded cell. Needless to say, this makes absolutely NO DIFFERENCE to the door whatsoever, so you’re forced to once again climb across the central console, this time snagging your OTHER thigh really painfully on the handbrake. You spend a few unhappy minutes scraping down the car, and getting your coat soaked in the process, before repeating the whole process once again, with the passenger door and the handbrake. GOD.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking that after all of that, what would’ve been really funny would be if the car decided to pull its “stalling at low speeds” trick again on the way home. I thought so too. In fact, I thought of little else all the way home, but actually, after my ill-fated trip to the gym last week the car was sent to the naughty step, and has never done that again. In fact, if you asked it, I bet it would say it has NEVER done that, no siree!
I had to climb out of the passenger door when I got home, though. At least I will have matching bruises on both thighs. And hey, it is a really cute bikini!
Tagged car wars, the weather, Things I Bought
One of the biggest advantages of being self-employed and working from home is that I don’t really have to leave the house very often if I don’t want to. In the winter, I don’t normally want to, so while we obviously HAVE to leave the house sometimes, I will actively avoid anything that puts me in contact with the icy chill of the outside world for longer than it takes to walk from the house to the car. The car that has generally been pre-heated and de-iced by Terry before I have to go anywhere near it. Sometimes it pays to be a total princess about stuff, you know?
This morning, though, I wanted to go to an early morning (!) gym class, and Terry didn’t, and so it was that I found myself face to face with a car that resembled a block of solid ice. Of course, given that I don’t generally go outside at this time of year any more, I had totally neglected to allow time before my class for the scraping of the car, and so once I’d managed to prise the door open with my fingers (it was frozen solid and I should just have taken that as A Sign and gone back to bed, in retrospect) I decided there was no option but to go for the old “lukewarm water on the windows” trick (Note: don’t try this at home, kids.) if I wanted to get to the gym on time.
What I didn’t realise, though, is that Terry had rearranged the contents of the kitchen since the last time I’d been in there, so I couldn’t find any kind of jug/other large water receptacle suitable for the pouring of lukewarm water on my car. I guess I could’ve used the kettle, now I come to think of it, but… well, I DIDN’T come to think of it. It was early. I don’t really “do” early.
So I used a teacup.
It was the only thing I could find in a hurry, and seriously, never use a teacup to carry lukewarm water to your car, because only stupid people do that. It does not save time, because you have to make eleventy one trips to and from the kitchen, clutching your cup of lukewarm water, and if you’re anything like me, your paranoia of cracking the windscreen will mean that your water isn’t quite lukewarm enough, and so, by the time you’ve finished pouring it onto the car, and have managed to locate a pair of old sunglasses in the Ikea Cabinet O’Doom that lives by your door (because despite being freezing cold, it was naturally so sunny I couldn’t see a damn thing without them), the water you’ve just poured over your car to defrost it will have re-frozen, and you’ll have to start all over again, only this time using the scraper, like you should have done in the first place.
Also, if you’re like me, the leg of the old sunglasses you dug up will fall off on your way down the driveway, but by now you’ll be running so late you won’t have time to return to the house for a new pair, so you’ll be forced to drive to the gym with the broken sunglasses perched on your nose, held there by a single leg and sheer willpower. GOD.
Having gone through all of this even before leaving the driveway, though, it stood to reason that my car would wait until we were halfway to the gym and then decide to pull one of its “I’m about to break down and ain’t nothing you can do about it!” tricks. I had been expecting this. As those of you with the patience of saints will recall, the car has done this before, last winter, and the considered opinion of Those Who Know About Cars on that occasion was, “The car doesn’t like the cold.” Yeah, no joke. I know how it feels.
So, we get to the first set of traffic lights between the house and the gym. Naturally, they are at red, so I stop the car and as soon as I do, it starts the whole, “I think I might… Yes, I will! I’m going to stall now! Yes, I am! I am! I totally am! Actually, no, I’m not. All fine. As you were.” To which I replied: “#%$!!*”&”
Despite this, we reached the gym without stalling. Only to find that the class I’d tried so hard to get to on time? Wasn’t on. Instead, they’d decided to have a step class. I do not do step classes. So I dragged my weary ass into the gym itself and onto a treadmill. The treadmill was next to a window. From the window, I could see my car sitting in the car park. It looked like it was planning something. Something probably involving stalling in the middle of a busy roundabout and condemning me to certain death. I was sure of it. And there was no way I was driving it home while it was in that kind of mood.
So I decided to make Terry drive it home.
I think it’s fair to say Terry wasn’t exactly thrilled to get that phone call. In fact, I may have become slightly hysterical as I tried to convince him that the car was totally trying to kill me, and that he should come and drive it home, leaving me his safe, non-murderous car instead. Terry did his best to convince me, in turn, that no, the car was fine, and that maybe I could just bring The Drama down a notch or two and DRIVE HOME LIKE A NORMAL PERSON but there’s no reasoning with me when I’m like… there’s no reasoning with me. Terry would have to bring himself, his car and his headache to the gym, and that’s why the next time he sees MY number come up on the caller display, he’ll know better than to answer.
Terry had told me to go and start up the car while I was waiting for him, so I went downstairs and as I opened the double doors of the gym’s snack bar, which you have to walk through to get out, I heard The Beatles strike up on the radio. Really loudly.
“PAAAAAAPPPPPERRRRBAAAACKKK WRRIIIIITTEEEER! ” said The Beatles. “Writer, writer!”
“That’s nice!” said I. “Love that song. Also: I would like to be a Paperback Writer too someday! Lovely. Very loud, though.”
I walked to the doors, humming along as I went, and actually feeling quite sad as the gym doors closed behind me and the music stopped. I headed to the car, got in, and turned the key in the ignition.
It would not start.
I tried again.
It STILL wouldn’t start.
I tried one more time. This time, the car started, and as it did, the car spoke.
“PAAAAAAAAAAPPPEEERRRRBAAAACK WRRIIIIIIITTTEEEER!” said the car. “Writer! Writer!”
“Freaky!” said I. “I hope Paul McCartney isn’t dead or something, because why else would Paperback Writer be on constant rotation on the radio?”
But the radio wasn’t switched on. And I’m ashamed to admit this, but when I realised that, it took me a good couple of minutes to stop freaking the hell out and wondering why The Beatles were haunting me, and just what it was John Lennon was trying to tell me from beyond the grave. Other than that he wanted to be a paperback writer, obviously. For surely, I told myself, the fact that my every move was now accompanied by the playing of Paperback Writer was some kind of Sign?
And it was. It was a sign, people.
It was a sign that SOMEONE WAS TRYING TO CALL ME, because Paperback Writer? Is the ring tone on my phone. The ring tone I set back when I first got the phone. In JUNE. This tells you how often people phone me. It also tells you that I’d obviously been walking through the gym with loud music blaring from my person. Yes, I was that asshole with the loud music! And now I feel bad about that girl whose eyes I wanted to poke out last week because she was playing music from her phone/MP3 player/thingy while wandering around a clothes shop. Maybe she just forgot what her ringtone sounded like too?
Anyway. Terry turned up not long after that, and pretended he didn’t actually mind being dragged out of the house to come to my “rescue”.
And then my car drove like a dream all the way home.
Figures.
Tagged car wars, phones, Terry
 Yes, it’s that radiator again. It’s living at the top of the stairs now. I think it’s probably trying to work its way out of the house gradually – maybe it’ll make it back to the garden shed, and from there, who knows? The world is its oyster. Perhaps it’ll join the circus, make its fortune on the stock exchange, or dry towels in a traveling show? God knows, ANYTHING BUT THIS, says the radiator-come-towel-rail. And also: WHY DID I NOT GET OUT FIVE YEARS AGO, WHEN I STILL HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO FULFILL MY DESTINY AS A DRIER OF TOWELS. WHY?!
The towel-come-radiator will have to wait a little longer, though, I’m afraid, for although the plumber did finally turn up on Wednesday (two hours late, natch), he spent only thirty seconds in the presence of the radiator, during which he stared at it aghast and then adopted that look doctors on TV dramas always get, right before they utter those fateful words: “I’m sorry, but you’ll never dry towels again.”
This plumber didn’t say that exactly, but he may as well have, because it all seemed to boil down to the same thing. Our humble radiator-come-towel-rail, you see, is a “two man job”, according to the plumber. Specifically, a “plumber AND joiner” job. He would need to consult a joiner about it, he said, and oh, by the way, we better start trying to sell the family heirlooms to pay for it. These were grave tidings indeed, not only because we don’t got no family heirlooms (although we’re thinking the radiator-come-towel-rail is swiftly turning into one. Maybe one day we’ll be able to take it to the Antiques Road Show, who knows?), but because we had not the slightest intention of paying more than the radiator cost to have it fitted.
Luckily for us, a reprieve came in the form of ANOTHER plumber, who Terry once made a website for, so who is less likely to try and fleece us. He had been off sick during our original round of phone calls-to-plumbers, but is now back in action, and is coming round on Monday morning, at which point we’re hoping that the radiator-come-towel-rail will finally be pinned down, ideally in the bathroom. I mean, I say, “we’re hopeful”, but actually, we’re thinking of putting a sign above the bathroom door reading “ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE”, that’s how UN-hopeful we are.
Yes, this was almost an exact repeat of my last entry, wasn’t it?
Just to add to the deja-vu (and to explain the title of this entry, which I actually didn’t intend to be about the radiator when I sat down to write it, but I figure I’ve lost my last few readers anyway now, so what the hell), my car broke. Again.
This time the car broke down much more dramatically than it did when it wanted a new exhaust, first refusing to start, and then cutting out altogether when we were stopped at traffic lights. Terry, who was driving at the time, managed to work out that the car only wanted to cut out when the speed dropped below about 30, so if you happen to live in our town and saw a couple of lunatics in a green Honda Civic racing around town looking absolutely terrified on Tuesday afternoon, don’t worry, we’re not just a couple of assholes, we were trying to get home without ever having to slow down or stop.
We took the car to the garage the next day, and would have heard no more about it had we not called them up late last night to remind them that they had my car, and could they please tell us what was wrong with it, how much it would cost to fix, and whether they accepted radiators-come-towel-rails as payment.
“Oh, that,” said the garage. “No, we don’t know what’s wrong with it. You can come and pick it up – just don’t ever try and drive it again.”
Or words to that effect.
OK, what they actually said was that they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. So we picked it up today, and it seems fine, although I just KNOW that next time I drive it on my own, and have forgotten to take my phone with me, it’ll die again. Current thinking is: “It was just a bit cold. And maybe wanted some more fuel.” Ah, who knows. Is it the weekend yet? IS IT?
Tagged car wars
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