Saturday 23 May 2015

First night fright

I have been badly but strategically parked outside the pub for the last few days, so that I can park even more illegally in the road to make a space for people watching the video-mapping thing (which I have been droning on about for weeks).

So all I had to do last night was to switch the equipment on and shift the car 15 feet. It wouldn't start.

It has never not started before, so I put this down to God having what I am reluctant to call one last joke at my expense, to punish me for saying that everything that could have gone wrong has, and now it should be plain sailing.

I had to be pushed the 15 feet as the crowd gathered, then pushed back again. Imagine the ignominy of it. The bloke who set up the entire event has a car which will not start.

Within two minutes of finishing, 30 seconds of the video projection was up on Twitter and You Tube, having been filmed by one of the crowd. We are making the full length version (taken from the scaffold) tonight, but I also saw a well-known local film-maker (no, not Ken Loach) recording the whole thing with two cameras. She has an interest in it anyway, because clips of her film have been included (with her permission) in the projection.

My friend Simon was in the audience. He is a professional cinematographer, and it was him who first introduced me to 3D video-mapping after I had asked him to help me with something else. He came back from Cornwall (where he is filming the next series of Doc Martin) to see the 5 minute thing of ours, but I think he also had a family to see at the same time, so I am not taking it too personally.

Last night, after I had had probably one beer over the limit for driving, I looked for the only tee-totaler in the crowd so he could shift my car the fifteen feet, but he was nowhere to be seen, so I decided to move it that teensy-weensy car-length myself. Naughty, I know, but I had to move it there and then.

When it wouldn't start, I opened the bonnet and began searching in vain for a fuse marked 'fuel pump', because it was showing all the symptoms of fuel-starvation.

With my head stuck in the darkness of the bonnet and trying to read tiny writing on the fuse-box cover with a torch, I didn't notice a uniformed policeman walk up alongside me - someone told me later.

This policeman is a friend of mine, and a regular in the pub. He is probably the only policeman who goes into the pub - or at least the only one who admits to being one. Thankfully, all police ignore drivers in trouble (for fear of being asked to help) unless they are causing an obstruction, so he just walked on by. I wonder if it is an offence to be pushed in a car without the engine on if you have had a beer?

So today I will wait for roadside assistance, but I am asking them to bring some petrol. I might just have run out of fuel - as everyone suggested last night whilst I was developing conspiracy theories about having been sabotaged for bad parking.

I even shone a torch up the exhaust-pipe to check for potatoes. The ignominy would have been compounded if it turned out that I had simply run out of fuel, and the gauge was telling me this. It had to be foul-play. Anything else would have been beneath my dignity...

16 comments:

  1. Just watched the teaser on YouTube Tom …….. it's brilliant. You can be very proud and, for all of the man hours that it took, it was worth it. XXXX

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    1. Thank you Jack@. I should have gone to your son for the music, but I went to Purcell instead. Because he's been dead for about 400 years, he's out of copyright and therefore cheap. I paid a Canadian $10 for the remix download.

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    2. Ilooked on youtube too..... How cracking is that?
      Loved it......

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    3. Yeh, cool. I thought the bricks were being chucked at me and then they all went back into their places. Nice..

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  2. I feel strangely that I talked up you having a car problem.

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  3. The reason the car would not start is that you did not put a link to the Youtube video. I searched in vain; I know nothing of technology.
    Congratulations on what was a sterling opening.

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    1. Wait, I found it. Excellent.

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    2. You need to see the whole thing really. I will put a link up for that when it appears.

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    3. I shall wait for the whole caboodle. When cars were simpler, one always checked petrol, plugs, and points. Nowadays one calls the RAC or whatever. I preferred the old way, and it cost nothing.

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    4. If you can get to the engines of modern cars (my friend never once saw his Porsche engine the whole time he had it) you need a diagnostics computer to tell you what's wrong. Running out of petrol is the ony thing you can sort out yourself.

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  4. I just watched the teaser on YouTube. Brilliant!! I love it!! Well done. I look forward to watching the whole thing. Next time, ride a bike, although you could probably be arrested for that as well. Perhaps you'll be requiring a limo in this new career.

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    1. Bikes don't take up as much strategic space as Volvo estates, I'm sorry to say. Limos do though....

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