Skip to main content

Mega busted

Image
By

To be honest, I wasn’t really expecting this.

I mean, I know it was a bargain, but sitting on the tarmac with a gun pointing at me definitely wasn’t mentioned on the website.

I have an amazing ability to turn perfectly good cars into the sort of vehicle even Arthur Daley would have a problem selling. My 2 year old Fiat Punto developed a strange electrical fault that meant the battery entirely drained on a completely random basis, and even the local dealership tried to convince me there was nothing wrong with it. Except that it sometimes wouldn’t start. Other than that – absolutely fine. It had it’s own twitter hashtag for a while too - #crappyfiat

Now I have a Mitsusquishy Colt. Under a year old, 3000 miles on the clock, and an airbag warning light came on. After a sensor replacement, it calmly waited a few months, then came on again, just to spite me. Since then, the gearknob came off in my hand (which isn’t a euphemism) and now a wheel bearing is making every journey sound like I have an insane bagpipe player on board. And it’s still only got 15k on the clock. Although I suppose it’s entirely plausible that that might be broken too. It’s getting hard to tell.

Needing to get to a meeting in London, I decided against risking the car (I didn’t want to wind up sat on the hard shoulder) and had a hunt around for alternative forms of transport. The train was ridiculously expensive, but luckily I found a bargain elsewhere.

What with all the car woes, and the stress of needing to get to this meeting, I was finding that quitting smoking was becoming increasingly difficult, so decided to invest in something to help me stay off the cigarettes. In hindsight, I really should have read the instructions, but I was in a bit of a hurry.

So there I was, heading down the motorway towards London, and as we approached the Toll Booths, I thought to myself, “Well, this is mega bargain – I don’t have to pay the toll either!” Knowing there was still a long journey ahead, I thought I’d check out my newly acquired aid to staying smoke free, but as I undid the packaging, it dropped onto the floor. As I got up to get it, it rolled back under my foot just at the wrong moment. A nasty cracking noise emanated forth.

It looked OK, but then the white steamy stuff, that’s meant to make you think it’s smoke, started leaking out. I quickly grabbed a plastic bag out and popped it in. Annoyed that I’d wasted my money, I looked around the coach, and noticed a chap having an agitated conversation on his mobile. “Wow”, I thought – “at least I’m not the only one having a bad day”.

Shortly afterwards, our Megabus stopped on the hard shoulder, and then lots of armed police showed up. Someone’s in really big trouble!

Have a good, terrorism free, weekend.

If you can.

This post first appeared in my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column in the North West Evening Mail on Friday 13th July 2012. This is the unedited version - you can view the printed/online version here: "Didn't expect to see a gun pointing at me", was used as the title by the NWEM, who also kindly rang me to see if I actually WAS caught up in the Megabus/M6 caper. Nope - that bit wasn't true. The stuff about me and cars is, though. Unfortunately... It'd be grand to see some comments, so please go there and leave one. A nice one, if you like. Or a bad one. It's a democracy, after all.

(Some quality guitarage is filling my head tonight, courtesy of David Gilmour's "Live In Gdansk" album.)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shouting in the social media mirror

By
It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...
Post a Comment
Read more

A fisful of change at the shops

By
A recent day out reminded me how much the retail experience has altered during my lifetime – and it’s not all good. I could stop typing this, and buy a fridge, in a matter of seconds. The shops are shut and it’s 9pm, but I could still place the order and arrange delivery. I haven’t got to wander round a white-goods retail emporium trying to work out which slightly different version of something that keeps my cider cold is better. It’ll be cheaper, too. But in amongst the convenience, endless choice and bargains, we’ve lost some of the personal, human, touches that used to make a trip to the shops something more than just a daily chore. Last weekend, we visited a local coastal town. Amongst the shops selling over-priced imported home accessories (who doesn’t need another roughly-hewn wooden heart, poorly painted and a bargain at £10?) was one that looked different. It’s window allowed you to see in, rather than being plastered with stick-on graphics and special offers calling ...
2 comments
Read more

Making an exhibition of yourself

By
Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...
Post a Comment
Read more