Cars

Here is something that happened to me in February:

Last week I decided that the car I had was not the one I wished to keep. So I looked on the Auto trader website to find one I did want. A Suzuki Vitara. There were a number of great ones on there and I persuaded Dad to make some phone calls. Each and every one that was at all decent was sold. How utterly irritating. My parents being older and as a result probably wiser than me told me to simply wait and look each day after work. This was sound advice and sure enough another arrived. This time I persuaded Dad to come with me to see it.

There are some rules to think about when buying a car:

It should not be raining.
It should be daylight.
You should buy it from the person's personal property.

So we went in the dark.
To the guy's supposed place of work.
But it was not raining.
33% isn't too bad a mark.

The car looked shiny. And it was a good colour.

Otherwise it was about as helpful and worthwhile as sandpaper round a toilet roll.

This was because Dad thought the Head Gasket was going, it had clearly done well over the claimed 25,000 miles, and the guy had fiddled round with numberplates. Furthermore, he had disabled the immobiliser and said that the glass in the "door pockets" (as I have fondly named them) was due to someone throwing a stone through the now repaired window.

We didn't accuse him of stealing it there and then, we waited until we were safely out of ear and gunshot.

Upon reflection the glass in the door pockets is the strongest evidence that he didn't steal it because any criminal worth their freedom would hoover it out, unless of course he realised we would realise this.

Anyway, as is clear from this small tale we didn't purchase the car. We, instead, continued to look and decided to phone about one we had seen previously but hadn't liked the colour of. It hadn't sold and we went to look at it the next day in the daylight, when it was dry, outside the man's house. And there was no glass in the door pockets.

We did some hard negotiating and got a car with an unattached CD player. This was instead of coming away with it with no CD player at all, I might add. It was also a different colour to that in the picture.

It has driven beautifully and reminds me of my first car in that the number of noises it comes out with could only be copied by a strangulated mule who has eaten only baked beans for the past three days. It also often feels as if it might just fall apart. It's brilliant.

Anyway, my love for my car was so large that I took it to visit my dear married brother on Saturday. He coveted my oxen and should be ashamed of himself. But I'll let him off because he gave me jam sandwiches. And let me play with my niece's toys. With her.

And I distinctly remembered on Sunday morning that I had certainly not brought any of those toys home, or anything remotely stripy. Hence my confusion when peering out of my window having just awoken to see something colourful and stripy in my passenger seat. I thought hard about what it was I could forget so easily, as the realisation dawned that this was nothing I had brought home, but it was in fact a man. A man, head bent invisibly towards the handbrake and sleeping soundly. Whilst I watched, astonished, he stirred and I thought it was the silhouette of my neighbour. Whilst he stirred, still apparently asleep I phoned my parents who were having one of their "Let's leave Inigo alone because he smells" trips on holiday. They were as astonished as I, and whilst I was phoning them the man left the car and headed away from the house from which I believed he should be heading. Later on I saw him in the front garden of that same house, contriving a way to enter. I made no comment, despite not having been arrested.