MOT failure disasters/Where's Alec Issingonis now?
"Eh, yer know when somebody from fookin' HAMPSTEAD's dying, right? All their fookin' previous FURNITURE passes in front of their eyes!" [/Alexei Sayle][1]
With me, it's cars. A dismal parade of rusty heaps or shedlike repmobiles. I shall die while swearing cheerfully at AF versus Metric and spend my eternity waiting in line at the Regent Components trade counter.
First there was a blue Mini pickup. The ideal vehicle for the post-punk chap with a few hardy friends, because there's nowhere for them to go but the load-bay. (in contravention of several traffic laws, obv.) Unfortunately a bit less than ideal if you've to pelt down the M5 every day from Cheltenham to Bristol. Inasmuch as a ten year old car with an 850 engine could be said to 'pelt' anyway. There was less traffic in 1984. The abiding memory I have of that thing is going to see Major Detail (a reasonably raucous punk band) play in some horrible pub (The British Flag) down in Gloucester docks, when it was still a working port. I got volunteered to cart the band and PA back to somewhere like Matson (rough area) or Quedgeley (ditto) and was paid in beer which we drank first. The problem was that you could get the band or the PA in the back of the Mini. 'Bollocks to that' we said, as they climbed on top of the speakers. I suspect I was somewhat less sure of myself when we steamed past the polis on the ring-road, cheerily waving beercans at the nice officers.
That was followed by a filthy shed of a Ford Escort (un)popular Mk II. Hateful bloody thing. I'd been persuaded to buy a 'proper' car because it was more suited to the motorways. This one didn't go, didn't stop, was a pig to start, but excellent at performing pirouettes in the snow. I kept a concrete block and a sleeping-bag in the boot that winter. Abiding memory: the bastard thing expiring at junctions All The Bloody Time. Preferably while turning right or at the head of a queue of traffic.
Thankfully, that was replaced with My First Company Car...
... Another Ford Escort, this time a MkIII. I picked it up in Preston after a tiresome week learning about some terrible S100-based ICL abomination of a computer that ran (well, I say 'ran'. I mean 'staggered and fell over a lot') Concurrent CP/M. The bloody car got as far as bloody Wigan before the bloody distributor exploded and spat a trail of shrapnel down the M6. I spent the night in a brown motel listening to Peelie on the headboard wireless. He played the Art of Noise & Duane Eddy for the first time.
In due time, that was swapped out with a Ford Orion diesel, which was only slightly slower off the mark than a clockwork 2CV. You know how in the old days you used to see wagons and vans with a lump of cardboard covering the radiator in winter? Orion diesels, too. It stopped the fuel freezing in the pipes. That car expired in unfortunate circumstances (earth-sky-earth-sky-boot through windscreen and run away) while listening to Big Black's 'Sound of impact', which always seemed appropriate.
The Peugeot 305 diesel that followed was... Worse. Mostly because it was 'serviced' by a mob of incompetents. The brakes had always been a bit rubbish, but early one morning while driving through Cheltenham they went SCREEEE! as I pulled up at some traffic lights. Luckily, (FVSVO) the mob of incompetents were only the other side of town, so I SCREEE!ed my way though the traffic, dumped the thing on their forecourt and called my boss in a temper. A couple of hours later, the man from the hire company arrived with the spare car at about the same time the chief greasy incompetent came noncing out of the workshop with that unbearable smug expression worn by all bearers of mechanical bad news. "I dunno who fixes your car, mate, but they're a right set of cowboys. You need new brakes all round."
"Oh really?" goes the JHR in a rare burst of tradesperson confidence "Because that one's regularly serviced by you lot..."
Hire-car bloke does his best not to laugh. JHR feels guilty about being rude.
After that, there was a Shiny! New! Petrol! Sierra. That I drove for about four months before resigning to go do something else. Thus I had to find a car of my own again, which wasn't easy given I'd been spending all my money on records and musical instruments. In the meantime, I borrowed Small Brother's truly diabolical Mini pickup. This... thing had had an Austin 1300 engine thrown carelessly at it by some mouth-breather from Hereford. While it was faster than anything else away from the lights, the seatbelts were for demonstration purposes only, only one corner of the brakes worked and there was a bloody great hole in the passenger footwell. While this hole just provided ventilation in the dry, should you rashly decide to hit a puddle at speed you would be pressure-washed with a jet of muddy water. I plugged the hole with a copy of MotorCycle News and wedged it down with the spare battery. The next time I hit a puddle, the water threw the battery at the gear lever, I was hit in the head with a soggy wad of newspaper and then pressure-washed for my trouble.
[I need to shut up now and try to remember some more]
[1] Which is why alternative comedy will always be better than Bernard 'dead' Manning or Jimmy 'one can but wish' Carr.
With me, it's cars. A dismal parade of rusty heaps or shedlike repmobiles. I shall die while swearing cheerfully at AF versus Metric and spend my eternity waiting in line at the Regent Components trade counter.
First there was a blue Mini pickup. The ideal vehicle for the post-punk chap with a few hardy friends, because there's nowhere for them to go but the load-bay. (in contravention of several traffic laws, obv.) Unfortunately a bit less than ideal if you've to pelt down the M5 every day from Cheltenham to Bristol. Inasmuch as a ten year old car with an 850 engine could be said to 'pelt' anyway. There was less traffic in 1984. The abiding memory I have of that thing is going to see Major Detail (a reasonably raucous punk band) play in some horrible pub (The British Flag) down in Gloucester docks, when it was still a working port. I got volunteered to cart the band and PA back to somewhere like Matson (rough area) or Quedgeley (ditto) and was paid in beer which we drank first. The problem was that you could get the band or the PA in the back of the Mini. 'Bollocks to that' we said, as they climbed on top of the speakers. I suspect I was somewhat less sure of myself when we steamed past the polis on the ring-road, cheerily waving beercans at the nice officers.
That was followed by a filthy shed of a Ford Escort (un)popular Mk II. Hateful bloody thing. I'd been persuaded to buy a 'proper' car because it was more suited to the motorways. This one didn't go, didn't stop, was a pig to start, but excellent at performing pirouettes in the snow. I kept a concrete block and a sleeping-bag in the boot that winter. Abiding memory: the bastard thing expiring at junctions All The Bloody Time. Preferably while turning right or at the head of a queue of traffic.
Thankfully, that was replaced with My First Company Car...
... Another Ford Escort, this time a MkIII. I picked it up in Preston after a tiresome week learning about some terrible S100-based ICL abomination of a computer that ran (well, I say 'ran'. I mean 'staggered and fell over a lot') Concurrent CP/M. The bloody car got as far as bloody Wigan before the bloody distributor exploded and spat a trail of shrapnel down the M6. I spent the night in a brown motel listening to Peelie on the headboard wireless. He played the Art of Noise & Duane Eddy for the first time.
In due time, that was swapped out with a Ford Orion diesel, which was only slightly slower off the mark than a clockwork 2CV. You know how in the old days you used to see wagons and vans with a lump of cardboard covering the radiator in winter? Orion diesels, too. It stopped the fuel freezing in the pipes. That car expired in unfortunate circumstances (earth-sky-earth-sky-boot through windscreen and run away) while listening to Big Black's 'Sound of impact', which always seemed appropriate.
The Peugeot 305 diesel that followed was... Worse. Mostly because it was 'serviced' by a mob of incompetents. The brakes had always been a bit rubbish, but early one morning while driving through Cheltenham they went SCREEEE! as I pulled up at some traffic lights. Luckily, (FVSVO) the mob of incompetents were only the other side of town, so I SCREEE!ed my way though the traffic, dumped the thing on their forecourt and called my boss in a temper. A couple of hours later, the man from the hire company arrived with the spare car at about the same time the chief greasy incompetent came noncing out of the workshop with that unbearable smug expression worn by all bearers of mechanical bad news. "I dunno who fixes your car, mate, but they're a right set of cowboys. You need new brakes all round."
"Oh really?" goes the JHR in a rare burst of tradesperson confidence "Because that one's regularly serviced by you lot..."
Hire-car bloke does his best not to laugh. JHR feels guilty about being rude.
After that, there was a Shiny! New! Petrol! Sierra. That I drove for about four months before resigning to go do something else. Thus I had to find a car of my own again, which wasn't easy given I'd been spending all my money on records and musical instruments. In the meantime, I borrowed Small Brother's truly diabolical Mini pickup. This... thing had had an Austin 1300 engine thrown carelessly at it by some mouth-breather from Hereford. While it was faster than anything else away from the lights, the seatbelts were for demonstration purposes only, only one corner of the brakes worked and there was a bloody great hole in the passenger footwell. While this hole just provided ventilation in the dry, should you rashly decide to hit a puddle at speed you would be pressure-washed with a jet of muddy water. I plugged the hole with a copy of MotorCycle News and wedged it down with the spare battery. The next time I hit a puddle, the water threw the battery at the gear lever, I was hit in the head with a soggy wad of newspaper and then pressure-washed for my trouble.
[I need to shut up now and try to remember some more]
[1] Which is why alternative comedy will always be better than Bernard 'dead' Manning or Jimmy 'one can but wish' Carr.