Yesterday the car went into the Garage … it had been making funny noises for a week and we were having trouble changing gears as smoothly as usual.
Hubby and I consider ourselves to be careful drivers, I mean we use indicators, let people into the main traffic queue before us and actually stop for pedestrians on crossings… although I will admit to being tempted at taking out a Dutch cyclist every now and again. ( you need to know that many of them habitually run red lights and necessitate you slamming on your brakes to avoid getting them under your wheels)
This is turn necessitates trying not to let the abusive language slip out of your mouth and into the ears of the innocents in the rear in their child seats… or trying to quickly trying to convert the larger profanity that you were thinking, into some far less explosive expletive that is too far gone in the rapid thought process and about to exit your mouth involuntarily.
The next step after that is that said innocents then spend the rest of the car trip telling me off for saying the “S” word, and telling me gleefully in their best school master voices that “we are going to tell Papa on yooooou“
Photo © Kiwidutch
Just to be clear on one point though: I never ever hope to kill a Dutch cyclist, that would awful. I do however have moments where I wish them bad Karma and this mainly takes the form of ” I hope you have a flat tyre next time it rains Buddy !”
Meanwhile back to the car… they broke the bad news into stone cold facts: the gearbox is in a bad way, it’s going to cost and “why didn’t you bring it in earlier? it’s actually mechanically unsafe to drive in this state”
err… what? it was working ok, (apart from some sloppy gear changes ) and as soon as we heard noises out of the ordinary we booked it in for an urgent look… personally I am thankful that nothing terrible happened while we have been driving our unsafe car unawares, but I do think that I can’t be held accountable for not actually knowing what happens under the bonnet… am I supposed to?
What do I look like? … a mechanic?
