Reminds me of the day that I wrote off my second car in a week. The first, I have the confidence to say it really wasn’t my fault; the rain came down and the floods went up as the song goes, something about a wise man building his house somewhere inappropriate, but what the wise man hadn’t factored in was the landowner altering the water table by building Dams higher than they should have been, but this is now water under the bridge literally, and for another day. Fact was the Ford Focus Climax (my name for it) was outside the house and was inundated with water when the road filled up with dirty bastard flood water, the house was screwed and the car was a company car, so why should I care?

I had to empty all the detritus and work stuff form my car into a massive box, didn’t realise I had so much shit in my car; lego men, blunt pencils, golf tees, maps; so many maps, lots of dust, dried up dirt turned into dust and dust from the floor mats. I didn’t like cleaning my car, I didn’t like driving my car, but I had to, essential for the job see, and its not like I carried sheep from here to there as a colleague did, the whole car covered in sheep shit and wool grease, he lost a deposit and had to pay a fine, but didnt have to buy a landrover so swings and roundabouts I guess. I ended up with a Ford Mondeo Shooting Brake, a massive beast, really long and plenty of room for all my unnecessary shit, the box, the high Viz stuff, the helmet, the gloves, coats from years ago, too tight to throw out as I may need them, I never die, and still have some of those coats, because i’m too tight to throw them out. Maybe its an adoption thing, I’m open to suggestions.

So we moved into a new place,  friend’s house which we got our insurance company to pay an extortionate amount rental, there was an Aga, no normal cooker and with it being the height of summer we turned the Aga off, our mate suggested just having BBQ’s every night, I hate BBQ’s; I’m no good at eating them, I like to sit down to eat, so at BBQs just end up getting drunk and forgetting my 5 a day. Over 3 or som months of summer this didn’t seem practicable. It carried on raining, summer showers, and the sand was washed from the fields onto the lane we now lived on. I drove out to work one day, driving relatively slowly down the lane, and had only got about 300m from my driveway when a massive Range Rover was coming the other way. The roads were narrow and so someone would have to reverse, I slammed on the anchors, skidded on the sand and drove up onto the verge at about 5mph whereupon I had the misfortune to percuss with a belfast sink buried in the verge and hedge, on a steep angle the car stopped suddenly and slowly started to lose balance ultimately turning onto its roof whereupon all the lego men, the tapes, cds, pencils, maps and dust all jettisoned from the massive box and ended up on the roof inside the car, shit everywhere, the car blocking the road, and me, only 300m to work, upside down strapped in, covered in dust and detritus. I’d only had the hire car for about 4 days and had already visited the scratch specialist to remove a massive gash where i’d misjudged the gate post with the hearse length estate car.

I got out. I was safe. The car was taken away and written off because the roof was knackered; too expensive to fix, too many panels. They gave me another one which I kept for 3 years before something called the Con Rod fell out. There goes another fucker! God help me, I hate cars but unfortunately have to have them for work, next one is going to be full electric and I aim to fuse that before the time is out. Watch this space