Psychic Mechanic

I become emotionally and physically drained by my car's crippling need for constant attention and finances. It's worse than a teenager!

And now it has enlisted outside assistance – Quick Fit (so called because that’s what I suffer whenever I have dealings with them) have taken to emailing and texting me to remind me my MOT is due, again. This is for a car that barely scraped through the last one, coming away with two A4 sheets of “recommendations” that will, knowing my luck with great hunks of metal, have transformed into “repairs”. My moral compass twitching like a four year old in a sponsored silence, I decide I can’t ignore them any longer and will have to book the darn thing in.

With the easy tones of a well-paid consultant, the mechanic suggests I just “pop her in on Monday morning and we’ll take a look at her”. Could he plausibly remember us from last year? I swear I can hear him twisting the ends of his greasy, black, Stromboli moustache and rubbing his hands together in anticipation. He whips his long cloak over his left shoulder and slides into the back office with a, “Mwwwhaaa!”

I hold the back of my wrist to my forehead and sink to my chaise longue with a touch of the vapours.

Monday morning arrives with foreboding in the air and my little car cowering by the kerb, trembling like a dog in the vet’s waiting room. As we pull onto the forecourt a large orange, neon sign boasts ‘MOT only £35’. If only, I scoff to myself, wondering if I should have emptied her of all my personal belongings, in case it is so bad I have to tell them to keep the damn thing?

“Did you want to wait?” the chap enquires, “There’s a coffee machine over there.” Drink coffee? I can barely take a breath, I am so anxious, let alone consume a beverage. And wait? Wait for what? Wait to be utterly humiliated face to face as he reels off a catalogue of mechanical failures of Titanic proportions? No thanks! I am going to pace, fretfully, up and down the High Street, checking my mobile every five minutes and building a ‘worst case scenario’ that would make “Final Destination” look like a documentary.

Because they never phone you, as requested, I take a deep breath and dial the garage's number. Keeping it light and pleasant I explain who I am and which one was my car and ask the fateful question, “How did we do?” The well-heeled, smooth tones of the consultant float through the air as he tries to prepare me for the diagnosis and prognosis. Nervous and impatient, I interrupt him, "So what exactly is the problem and how much will it cost to fix?" There is a pregnant pause and then it comes, the sound of air sucking backwards over the mechanics dentures, a deflating balloon, nay a punctured tyre of a sound. You might imagine he is pulling his finger down a laminated sliding scale of prices but no - that is the sound of him plugging in to the Matrix! He is now psychically connected to the balance available on my current account.  I'll give him his due, he rounds it down to the nearest pound, but, the amount needed to mend my ailing vehicle is within pence of any cash I have left remaining in my account (which is usually already in the brown!)

And so, credit card maxed out again, I pull away from the garage, plastic seat protectors rustling under my weight, my shoes sliding on the paper foot-well covers, grumbling to myself that for that price they might have, at least, tidied up after themselves. And someone has re tuned my radio to some mindless twaddle. I hum along, “Oh lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz, my friends all have Porsches, you must make amends…..”