Car Trouble

Blood was 5.6 this morning, for those who care.

Today has been pretty much a sit-on-your-ass kinda day, as we discovered that after my UberActive day yesterday I'd given myself a foot-blister that felt (and looked, in actual fact) more like a burn than anything else.

Tomorrow though...
Tomorrow will be Interesting.

Tomorrow, you see, sees me get behind the wheel of a car for the first time in a decade or more.

That sound you hear is the sound of my friends barricading themselves in bunkers at least ten feet underground.

I have something of a volatile relationship with cars.
It took my five attempts to pass my test, each of which was marked by, if not tragedy, then at least panic and gibbering on the part of my examiner. The first time I took it, I was halfway round a roundabout when the examiner told me he'd said "turn left." Without thinking, I turned left - into the path of oncoming traffic. Oddly enough though, that's not what I failed on.

I failed because of the bus.

There was a narrow street, with parking on both sides and perversely two way traffic. I happened to think the gap was big enough for both me and the oncoming bus. The examiner took a different view, and grew at least a little greyer that day.

To be fair, it wasn't just me - it's something of a family legend that the same instructor taught my mother, my brother, and me to drive. And then dropped dead of a massive heart attack.

Once I'd passed my test (weirdly enough, the day I finally achieved it, we were burgled to buggery while I was out), my mother put me on the insurance for her ancient, automatic white Mini. It was like a bumper car! Well, it was the way I used to drive it, anyway - I actually went over a couple of roundabouts, inclusing one time in the company of my pal Rebecca - who now, oddly enough, gets paid to report on mad fucks in very fast cars, driving like weirdly responsible lunatics. Nearly killed Karen Pulley one night, when, faced with one of the many hugely steep hills in this area, she asked me how fast the Mini would go. We hit 90 going downhill, and then we hit a kerb...We were on two wheels for a moment there, skidding downhill into the path of - yep, you guess it - oncoming traffic. Fortunately, my fat fuckery saved us that night, as I leaned heavily over to one side and convinced gravity to be our friend...

It was perhaps inevitable that my first job in print journalism would turn out to be for a motoring magazine.

I got lost in almost every country in Europe. In Naples, the Mazda press team and the rest of the journalists ended up having to comb the area for me, which is the kind of thing that really loses you face in the bunfight...
Inbetween the European...well, embarrassments, frankly...I was able to borrow a range of cars direct from teh manufacturers...

Yes, seriously. They let Crazy Mini Boy loose with some proper vehicles.
I crashed a Kia at two miles an hour in a Tesco car park. Interesting conversation ensued:
"Is this your car?"
"Ermmm....no."
"Got the paperwork for it?"
"Errrm...welll...notsomuch, no."
"Well, who does the car belong to?"
"Erm...well, Kia, really..."

It's the kind of conversation almost guaranteed to get you slapped.
I scraped the bejeesus out of a Jaguar when I radically misjudged its width in a parking situation. Turned a Mitsubishi 4x4 completely over in the Highlands of Scotland, nearly killed a group of New Year revellers - also, coincidentally, in the Highlands (the Highlands appears to hate me). Annnnd so on.
Probably the most typical example of my...erm...prowess was the Porsche Boxster.

It had become something of a legend in the office that I could blag any car from any manufacturer, despite, as it turned out, never actually writing anything about the cars I borrowed..
"Betcha couldn't get a Porsche!" said my fellow journo, Louise.
"You're on," I said.
By the end of the week, I'd done it.
"Soooo, who can't get a Porsche again?" I asked, taunting her.
"I've got Wimbledon tickets," she batted back.
"LlllikeIgiveafuck," I grinned.
Then I thought again. As it happened, the woman I was with at the time lived across the country in Bristol, and she was a tennis fan.
"Hmm," I said. "Alright. I'll bring you back the Porsche, you fashion-obsessed maniac, you give met the tickets."
"Done," she agreed.

Then I buggered off - as I say, I was involved with a woman living in Bristol at the time, and I used to go across the country on a Friday night and come back on a Monday. This time, I was going across in something useless like a Subaru, getting that piece of shit picked up, and having the Porsche delivered to Bristol, then driving it back to Surrey.

Come Monday morning, it was abbbbbsolutely pissing down, and I got into the Porsche miserably. It was horrible, frankly - if you were ever thinking of buying one, don't, they suck. I drove it a couple of hundred miles in the sheeting rain at speeds at which it shouldn't have been driven. Then, on the M25 London ring road, I saw a stick on the road. I don't, to this day, know what possessed me, but I remember actively thinking "Ooh, a stick. I'm gonna drive right over that." I even swerved slightly to make sure I hit it properly.

BANG!

Ah, I thought.
Fuck, I thought.
That was no stick, I thought. I was right. It had been a metal rod with somejagged bits. And suddenly I was driving a borrowed three-wheeled Porsche at 90 miles an hour, about 60 miles away from the office of a car magazine.

Now...I know this sounds stupid now, but this is how my brain worked in those circumstances.
1) I need to change my tyre.
2) I've never changed a tyre...in my life.
3) I'm not about to start in a borrowed Porsche in the pissing down rain.

So I drove it.
I drove this poor, wretched Porsche on three wheels and a tyre shredding into uselessness, 60 miles around London and into Surrey.
When I got into the office, late, I had to explain to three seasoned motoring journalists what I'd done. One of them came out and jacked up the car, and changed the tyre, putting on its low-quality 'replacement' tyre. Then I had to call Porsche and tell them what I'd done. They weren't amused, and came and took away their car. I never did get those Wimbledon tickets either...

Anyhow - that was probably the pinnacle of my history with cars. I haven't driven one in a decade because I've been living in London. Now - mad as this is - my mother has added me back onto her insurance, so I can help, for instance, take her to appointments to get her dodgy eyes looked at.

Which means tomorrow, I'm having the first of my 'refresher' lessons.

If I make it out alive, I'll be back to my Disappearing ways tomorrow night...