Friday, 4 August 2017

MOT TIME

It's MOT time. I'm waiting in a lonely car park, ready for the garage to rattle open its shutters and switch on the greasy radio. Then I can drop off the keys and walk round the corner to work.

This is one of the bits of motoring I really don't like - the is-your-car-roadworthy-exam. Hopefully it is, but there's always the chance that later they'll phone me up and take a sharp inhalation of breath before telling me that I've been driving around in a death trap.

But that's the point isn't it? It's all about preventing me and everyone I drive with or near to, from death or injury. And so that can't be a bad thing.

It's just that if my car is falling apart it always feels like it's somehow my fault. In a curious way, this might be the closest I get to knowing what it's like to be a parent - heavy dread attached to the uninfluencable performance of another. Alright, it's not quite the same but I do sort of get it.

A burly man in shorts has just arrived. One day I'll find a garage that plays Vivaldi and lets you wait in leather wing back chairs. A mechanic in a pristine boiler suit and bow-tie will emerge with a white wine spritzer on a silver tray, hand me my keys and tell me that my vehicle is sparkling like a futuristic vision from the 50s.

Today is not that day. I'm deliberately chewing gum to come across as confident and casual in the oily reception.

Some days I think I'd quite happily just walk everywhere.

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