Dear Car

I’ve had just about enough of your nonsense for now, thank you.  Kindly stop causing trouble and expense, and do what you’re supposed to do.  Just take me where I want to go, cost me a fortune in petrol and road tax and insurance as agreed, and behave yourself.

I don’t know why I’m so attached to you, you little fecker.  Maybe it’s the same sort of mental hiccup that causes people to stay together for years, well after they’ve lost their looks and become cranky and shouty and difficult. 
I’m assuming, for example, that when His Nibs looks at me, he sees me as I was at nineteen, when he first met me.  I hope he doesn’t notice the stones of extra weight, the grey hair, the lines and wrinkles that now adorn me.

In the same way, when I look at you, car, I don’t see the scrapes and bumps and I don’t hear your rather persistent cough when I drive you.  In my head, you’re still the same sleek and shiny model you were when I bought you, when you were just a year and a half old.

You’re making it difficult now though.  It hasn’t been a great few months for you, has it?  First of all, at the end of May, we had that bit of trouble that resulted in your whole back door having to be replaced.  The less said about that, the better.

When you went to have your NCT, still with your back door in flitters, we discovered that you needed a new pigging steering rack.  I was not impressed with that little development.  Especially not at the same time as the door had to be replaced.

When His Nibs was kind enough to go out last week to change the oil filter and plugs, I expected no trouble.  I wasn’t pleased to hear that your bonnet no longer opened.  What the feck would cause such a thing?  I’ve never even heard of that happening to a car before.

Once again I took you to the very nice and reasonable, (and quite attractive) mechanic that His Nibs uses.  If this caper doesn’t stop he’s going to think I fancy him, I’m at his gate so often.  (This possibility is only scary because it’s true, I kind of do fancy him.)

You’re a pain in the arse, you really are. 

His Nibs, having more common sense than me, had suggested that I get the plugs and oil filter and so on sorted out while you were in the garage anyway, and I agreed.

It was just another disappointment, when I collected you this evening, when you started jumping around the road after a mile or so, and a new and unknown yellow light presented itself on the dashboard.

I had to U-turn, and go back to the mechanic again. And not in an approved u-turn space, as it happens.  His Nibs would have had a fit. 

I didn’t want to do it, at seven in the evening, the man has a life and a family, and probably wanted to go inside and stop having to deal with gobshites.

And that’s mostly my problem with you.  That you make me feel and sound like such a complete gom.

When I’d collected the car, I’d done so in more or less silence. Or at least what passes for silence for me.

“Hiya.  I’m here for the Nissan.  Is everything ok with it?”

“Yeah, it’s all sorted out, I fixed the bonnet, and changed the oil, and the filter and the plugs, it’s ready to go.”
“Thanks a million, here’s your money.  Bye now.”

All very simple.  Even though it’s no secret that I’m a person who likes to talk, I try not to blather incessantly in situations where I won’t know what I’m talking about.  Because I always end up sounding like a complete twit.  So our transaction was completed in a dignified and swift manner.

But when the light came on, and stayed on (I could have ignored just an odd flashing light) and the car started sounding like it had emphysema, I got a bit panicky.

I don’t like those dashboard lights.  I always assume that their illumination in the first in a two step process.  And that the second step is the engine blowing up.

So back I went.

“Hiya.  Sorry for coming back.  (Why was I sorry?  Why?  The light wasn’t there when I gave him the car, surely it was his problem to sort out?)  There’s a light on the dashboard.”

“All right.  Which light?”

“The yellow one.”

“But which one?  What does it look like?”

“The one above the oil light.  The yellow one.”

Now this is what I mean.  I own you, and have done so for years.  Being asked what light has come on and only being able to respond “the yellow one” makes me look like a fool.

The mechanic sighed, and stopped what he was doing, and fetched a little machine yoke, and came over to the car.

“Has this light been on before?”

“No.  I’m sure it hasn’t.  Because I would have gotten panicky if it had, so I’d remember.”

More of it.  I was trying to conduct myself as though I can run a life and a job and a household, and now I sounded like I shouldn’t be left in charge of a cat.

Apparently, one of the plugs, supplied by me, was damaged.  He asked me whether there was any chance it had been dropped.

“No.  Not really.   Sure where could it be dropped from?  It’s been on the floor of the car for weeks.”

He looked at me.

“On the floor where it could have been kicked, or stepped on, or some other damage could have happened to it?”

“Oh God yes.  I’ve been stepping on the bag and everything.”

It seems that the plugs used in cars should be handled in the same way as light bulbs.  And our mechanic has quite strong feelings about it. 
It seems to bother him hugely that people don’t take this seriously, and then blame him when he puts the plugs in cars and the cars won’t work properly.

So I got into a small amount of trouble with him.  I had to promise never to mistreat a plug again.

He had to put one of the old ones back in.  So I have to go back to the auto factors next Saturday and buy another plug and torment His Nibs to change it again.

Will you please control yourself?  I have enough to be doing with a job and a house and a husband and two dogs and the rest of my life without throwing money and time at you.  That’s quite enough nonsense for this year.  Cop on.

Or I’ll sell you to a farmer to use as a henhouse.