Thursday 12 July 2012

Another 50 thousand miles of boredom


Ok, I lied.  I saved myself £119,000 by buying another old Volvo - this one.  I also saved myself some petrol as this one should do about 30 MPG, as opposed to the 8 that the Bentley would have done.  Since I have just picked up a speeding ticket, I should save myself some licence points as well, because - unless the seller knows something I don't - I will have a hard job to do about 200 MPH in this tub as well, let alone 0 - 60 in 3.5 seconds.

It's always a lottery buying any car that is less than brand new, so I tend to rely on a sort of 6th sense, which involves having a chat with the seller, whilst wired up to a lie-detector on the phone.  He seemed like a decent sort of bloke, so I agreed the price without looking at the car itself and semi-arranged to pick it up from Devon soon, about an hour's drive from here.

I just wouldn't have felt right when loading blocks of stone into the back of the Bentley anyway, and I hate feeling precious about cars.  I don't get too emotional either, so when I waive goodbye to the old 850, I might choke up a little, but I won't look back.  How people can see pigs off to the abattoir is beyond me.

The last car that H.I. actually owned was a classic Citroen CS Pallas.  It was very tatty on the outside and the inside (people seemed to use it for target practice in car parks) but it still had those feminine lines so beloved of Citroen fanatics, and the engine was amazing - it was an extremely fast car.

The trouble with Citroens is the maintenance - EVERYTHING runs off a single hydraulic system, including the speedometer!  They all develop leaks, and this one had such a serious one that I would have to top it up with fluid about every two days.  Once the fluid level drops below a certain point, the car becomes undriveable, so I used to buy a gallon of green oil about every 6 weeks.

Late one night, after she had gone with a friend to Bristol in it, H.I. called me to tell me all the red lights were on, and asked me to pick her up.  I pointed out that I did not have the car to hand at that point, but she insisted, so I borrowed a car from someone and went - but not before I had suggested that she top the system up with the fresh gallon of fluid that I had bought that morning.

"I already have",  she said.

"Well put some more in then".

"I can't - I used it all up and the lights are still red."

"ALL OF IT?!  YOU CAN'T HAVE!" 

She had.  I arrived an hour later to find the car forlornly sitting over a lake of green fluid on the road.  She had poured the entire gallon into the top, and it had simply come out of the bottom and onto the tarmac.

The next day I called up a local scrapper and he arrived with his lorry.  He opened two windows, put a chain through the cabin and picked up the Citroen to the back of the lorry.  Before he drove off, he stowed the massive hydraulic lifting-arm by ramming it through the windscreen and pinning the whole thing to the lorry bed.  Brutal, but effective.

Even I felt emotional - I'm glad H.I. wasn't there to witness it.

21 comments:

  1. She looks OK. Have you named her yet?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. IT is called 'V70' - saves tears when it's time to put them down.

      Delete
    2. Miss V Seventy; it certainly has a ring about it.

      Delete
  2. I hope the V70 serves you well, Tom.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Congratulations on finding what you want in such a short time. I'm impressed. I'm wondering how long it will be before my husband does the same. He can no longer get breakdown cover on the continent as his current car is too old... He, too, has a thing for the Citroen (deux chevaux) -- he fancies a pink one, which priggish as he is, is bizarre!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A PINK 2CV? Are you sure he's not a closet gay?

      Delete
  4. When I believed that you were buying a gleaming new Bentley, I wrote you a cordial little note hoping you were feeling well and suggesting that I might call over to see you soon. I even affixed the correct postage. Please just disregard that note when it arrives in the post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You only wanted me for my Bentley? How shallow. I'll post your letter up here for all to see. So there.

      Delete
  5. A nice upgrade ..... I look forward to a photograph of you, in your Armani suit, draped over 'V70's' bonnet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The suit would have gone better with the Bentley... sigh... oh well.

      Delete
  6. The title - 'Another 50 thousand miles of boredom', represent a hope, by the way. Like that old Chinese curse: "May you have an interesting life".

    ReplyDelete
  7. A friend who is, in my view, a car snob came upon us taking out the back seats of our little Audi A3 in order to load up with sand and cement.

    You don't deserve that car, he said.

    I expect he wouldn't give a damn what we pile into our Ssangyong...

    And I take our pigs to be slaughtered myself...at the farm down the road.
    Once the EU pushes Costa Rica into banning local slaughtering under their new 'free' trade pact I'll give up keeping pigs.
    I've seen EU approved abbatoirs and I would not send a banker there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I totally agree with you about the EU regulations on pigs. So many small and humane places have been closed down because their ceilings are 25mm to 'low', etc. I would keep animals if I was allowed to put a .22 through their heads myself, and avoid the harrowing 100 mile journeys.

      Delete
  8. A respectable ride for a respectable gent. I expect you to tool around wearing your South Pork T-'s blaring out any sort of music you choose. I also expect pics

    ReplyDelete
  9. OMG twinned with Mr EM who sees cars as something to get from A to B. Or maybe to carry builder's supplies for renovating the French ruin. In which case it's called a pick-up.

    We were once stopped by dashing leather-booted gendarmes on huge motorbikes who had been alerted by a snooper while we were parked at a local bar for lunch. Seeing a pile of sand in the back of the pick up, the proximity of the beach and our GB licence plates we'd been reported for theft. Having imbibed freely of the vin de table we shoved peppermints into our mouths when stopped only to cause collapse into laughter of all parties when we produced our receipt from the local builder's merchants.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have driven right across the beach at Penarth and Blue Anchor, just to steal the alabaster minerals from there, but was not stopped. Good thing, because I WAS stealing.

      Delete
    2. Well, alabaster melts in the rain anyway, so it would have gone by now anyway.

      Delete
  10. Changing cars... It's a nice feeling driving a clean one and mine are never as clean again.

    I got so fed up, though, with the bills that go with old second hand ones that I started buying new ones. I decided it was better having a slightly breathtaking bill to pay every month rather than almost lethally breathtaking bills, say, two or three times a year.

    ReplyDelete