Sunday 18 November 2007

Life over death

My car's a bit poorly. The power steering's a bit off colour. During parking manoeuvres it grinds and groans like someone in a torture chamber. While being driven sometimes the power steering fails leaving me to steer a beast weighing one and half tonnes. The lay diagnosis is air in the system combined with a potential leak of fluid.

My journeys are generally short: to the station and back, to work and back, the Brentwood centre and back, to local friends and back. Most of my journey time is solo, just me in the car. Until this weekend I hadn't really considered the consequences of driving a car that doesn't always operate as predicted.

This weekend we took both cars to Dave's parents and we had to drive both cars back. We had to decide who travelled in the dodgy car.

It was clear that the children should travel in safety. Dave offered to drive my car, and I considered the offer.

I didn't think I'd want to be left as a middle-aged widow with two young children. Plus I knew how the car felt when the steering went so I felt that I was better prepared than Dave might be.

I should point out that intensive car care has been booked for Wednesday.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you remember, there was a fire in a car factory in Germany earlier this year. It was all a hush-hush affair and the authorities would not tell which car factory it was or how many died.
All I can say is: your car is haunted. Someone wants to get back - they know what you did last summer !!!

Ann Cardus said...

Well I'd be happy to believe that there's a ghost in the machine.