Well, it began on Monday morning when I picked up my old Rolex, gave it a wind and then felt the spring break.
Rats!
Sounds so decadent doesn’t it? “Bust my Rolex”.
In my defence I should say it was the cheapest one they made at the time, 1981 to be precise – well not quite the cheapest – I went for the one with the Jubilee bracelet instead of the leather strap. It was the year of my 21st birthday, and the watch was a sort of present to myself. That same year the first DeLorean sports car rolled off the assembly line, Diana Spencer married the Prince of Wales, and the very first Space Shuttle, Columbia, was launched. All iconic in their own ways, and the eighties turned out to be no less auspicious for yours truly.
But why the Rolex? Well, a teacher I’d had at school, whom I’d simultaneously hated and admired, had been fond of flaunting his Submariner, and I’d eventually come to look upon such things in those days as a sign of attaining manhood, or success – or something. So, determined to have Rolex one day, I left school and saved up bits and bobs out of my apprentice’s wages over the following years. Couldn’t afford the Submariner in the end, but I always liked the one I got and it’s been a loyal companion over the years. But anyway, I’ve bust it now. It’s repairable of course – but I’m not in the mood for the expense at the moment, and I’ll be relying on my back-up Timex for a while.
Of course, these things come in threes:
The second thing came on Friday night when the antivirus software flashed up dire warnings about a wriggly-worm that had apparently eaten its way into the hard-drive of my main machine. I spent the whole night sorting it out and managed to lose my XP administrator’s login in the process. It’s all sortable of course, but hardly the way I wanted to spend my Friday night.
The third thing came on Saturday morning, on the way home from the Tai Chi, class when my car, a fairly new – and up to this point quite lovely 1.8 Litre Vauxhall Astra, began steaming, stinking and spluttering. It required a tow from the AA man who suspected I’d blown my cylinder head. I’d burst a hose which is unusual enough on a car that’s only two years old, but the brown sludge that had sprayed all over he engine compartment and left a nasty stain on the A59, near Longton was a mixture of coolant and engine oil – which is a very bad sign indeed!
I ended up at the nearest Vauxhall dealer – workshop closed – left my keys with the helpful young man on the sales desk and got a taxi home. No idea when I’ll see the thing again. I’ve still got a year to run on the manufacturer’s warranty, so I’m hoping it’s covered. If it’s not, if there’s a get-out clause, if it is the cylinder head, and the fault’s not covered, then Christmas is obviously cancelled for this year.
This really does take the biscuit.
I’ve never been so completely let down by a car before in thirty years of driving, and that includes a long string of really old bangers in the early days. I bought this one last year, the newest and most expensive vehicle I’ve ever owned. It ran like a dream for the first 12 months, but has been making niggly noises for a while, when starting up from cold. The mechanic I asked to check it out made me feel like a bit of a girl, when I tried to describe these noises, and he just shrugged and told me it all seemed fine to him – don’t know how he missed the oil in the water though – don’t know how I missed it either! But what could possibly go wrong with a car that’s only done 30,000 miles?
I guess these days there’s just so little about a modern car that’s user serviceable, as they say; you don’t lift the bonnet from one year to the next and just assume it’s all taken care of with your annual visit to the workshop. It’s just one more example of how we are becoming less and less self reliant – more and more dependent on so called professionals who have no more idea than you half the time, but just a better set of tools.
Well, they say these things come in threes, and I’m hoping that’s it for a bit now. It’s Sunday night – just spent the whole of a fine and sunny Sunday glueing skirting boards onto my newly plastered conservatory, and now I’m contemplating the return to work while at the same time looking back over the week’s ups and downs. What can you learn from a week like this? Well, we’ve all had them and I suppose there’s not much else to say except the old adage: “Sh$t happens” of course. You can be bowling along quite happily, not a care in the world and then suddenly loads of things need sorting out, all at the same time. It’s irksome, it shakes you up, sets you back. Now, by far the worst of these incidents for me is the car, of course, because I’m stuck without it – can’t even get to work – to say nothing of the possible cost of fixing it. So what do you do? Well it’s easy to panic, throw your hands up and cry “woe is me”. But it’s really better to disentangle yourself, like the I Ching tells you – just say to yourself, well, I guess it’ll be okay and things’ll look a whole lot brighter this time next week when I’m looking back on it, than they do right now trying to guess what darkness is up ahead. Then, whatever mess it is you’re in, you seem to end up slithering out of it. Your bank balance may be all the poorer but at least your peace of mind is intact.
Sure, the car’s screwed, and I don’t know when I’ll see it again, but I had a darned good chat with the taxi driver who brought me home – talked about nothing really – just chit chat, but it lifted my spirits and was a real pleasure. Then, when I finally made it home, my wife’s aunt, bless her, loaned me her car for as long as I needed it.
Michael Graeme
The Rivendale Review 
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