Excitement and adventures.
This has been One of Those WeekMonthYears.
Car issues (multiple). Electrical repairs. Dishwasher broke down. Spa pool broke down (twice).
I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned the problems with the Ford. But after the many and varied issues, we gave up and sold it back to the dealership.
The giving-up point with the car was the day, about a month ago, that Tobermory picked it up from a service, drove off, and broke down at the lights. I received a phonecall that went something like this:
“I’m at the traffic lights, and the fucking Ford has fucking died. Car just went *chugchugDOOooooo…..* and everything turned off.”
“What?”
“Car died. Now it won’t start.”
“What…”
“Dead as a doornail. The highway patrol had to bump me off the road.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
It turned out to be an alternator fault, which seemed a bit crap on a car that’d only done 60k. But, anyway. We went to the dealership, bitched, eventually accepted a price that was a bit less than we wanted but not entirely unreasonable, and departed for home.
Tobermory was in the Subaru, having come from home; I was in the Mazda, having come from work.
Five minutes later, I was calling Tobermory.
“Guess what?”
“What..?”
“I’m at the traffic lights! And the Mazda has died!”
“What…”
“Just sitting here and car went * chugchugDOOooooo….*, everything turned off, and now it won’t start.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
I love the AA. It did take the better part of three hours to get me home, as I’d helpfully broken down at one of Auckland’s busiest intersections at about 5.30pm. Someone nice pulled over and helped me push the car off the road, so at least I wasn’t in danger.
Ninety minutes later, during which time I sat in the car and conversed with my mother lacking anything more interesting to do, the chap from the AA turned up, stuck various electronic prodding devices in my engine, and announced that my battery mumblety mumblety, ignition module mumblety broken, mumblety towtruck.
The towtruck was a further thirty minutes away. I took the opportunity to go to the nearest Starbucks, buy a coffee so as to be able to use their toilet, and walked back to the car just in time to see the towtruck two blocks away. We had a little race down two blocks (he won), and I ran up to the car just in time to receive the phonecall from the towing company announcing that the towie was there and I was not.
So! Car will be delivered, somehow, to the Place of Fixing on Monday.
In the meantime, I would like my life to stop containing things that fall apart.
