What does it mean when things keep
crashing into you?
Just before Christmas some guy
staggered out of the pub, drunk as a skunk, weaved down the centre of the road
to his 4x4, got in and promptly ploughed into our RAV4, reversed and pissed
off.
The door was staved in.
‘Shame he didn’t write it off for good
and proper while he was at it,’ I said.
Oh, be careful what you wish for – the
bloody insurers did write it off which would have been fine and dandy if
a)
We hadn’t just had the damn thing serviced.
b)
We hadn’t just shelled out for two new tyres.
c) The bastard insurers didn't give us a seriously crap price
for it, with no chance of renegotiation.
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘Double shit,’ said Adrian.
‘Does this mean we get a Ferrari?’
said James.
‘NO!’ said Adrian and I, in blissful
harmony for once.
In fact it appeared our options were
seriously limited, given we needed a replacement PDQ (you simply don’t function
without a car out here in the sticks) and we didn’t exactly have a lot of dosh
with which to play.
‘I’m leaving it up to you,’ I said to
Adrian firmly.
‘What? But you always pick the cars.
You’re the one who cares about cars.’
‘Yeah, but maybe it’s time for a change.’
‘Really?’ He looked suspicious. Who
could blame him? ‘And you won’t blame me
if it’s not right?’
‘Of course I will. But that’s the
chance you take. I wash my hands of it.’
He vanished for a few hours. ‘I’ve got a Subaru.’
My eyes widened. ‘Oooh.
Okay. The Imprezza? That’s pretty cool.’
 |
| Kinda funky, huh? |
‘Er, no. The Legacy.’
‘Oh.’
 |
| Like this but much, much older. |
Now, you know me and cars. I like
nippy and sexy or thuggish and tank-like. One or the other. But an estate car, a station wagon? Oh, purlease.
In a flash I was back in North London watching the convey of Hasidic
families in their monster Volvos wallowing down Stamford Hill. Estates are death to fun motoring: staid,
sensible, stoic, snoringly boring. Nobody ever eyes you up in an estate car at
the lights, inviting a burn-up. In fact,
nobody even notices you. People are
liable to drive into you because of your sheer lack of visibility.
And this one? Bless its engine, it’s
so ancient that, not only is the dash wood but the bloody steering wheel is
wooden too. And the SatNav appears to be
a CD. WTF?
But hey, it’s got four wheels, it’s
dry (the poor RAV was incontinent after its smash and made you feel like you’d
wet yourself every time you got out of the passenger seat). And, to be fair, it does have a bit of poke
in the engine.
So that was crash #1. And then, a couple of days ago, an email
popped into my inbox from our neighbor, the vicar, entitled Your Wall.
Shit. Now what? We share a 20 foot stone wall and if that had
caved in, we were looking at debtors’ prison. But no. It seemed a delivery truck had decided it
would mount the pavement and slice through our arch, leaving chunks of stone
and smashed up rock all over the road.
‘You’re not having much luck lately,
are you?’ opined a neighbour, watching Adrian shoveling stone. ‘Whatever next,
eh?’
I could hear my grandmother’s voice
loud and clear – ‘Bad luck comes in threes.’
So, umm…what else can be smashed or
crashed, I wonder. And what does it mean…all
this…implosion?
