Poor Mr. Waffle has been on the road a lot visiting his parents who, sadly, are not at all well and live on the opposite side of Dublin. He heard a funny noise from the car but ignored it. A mistake, it transpired.
In his extensive car time, he noticed that one of the front light bulbs had gone so he wrestled with replacing it and while he was doing so, our neighbour who does haulage and van hire, saw him and hoved up to help (our neighbour has a pretty accurate understanding of our technical abilities).
Later that day as Mr. Waffle was, yet again, enjoying the delights of the Dublin ring road (the unlovely M50), the funny noise reached a crescendo and it turned out a tyre had gone. He pulled in and called our insurance (he discovered that the jack would go just high enough to remove the old tyre but not high enough to put on the spare – a truly terrific spot to discover this). A young woman from Northern Ireland dispatched a tow truck and he sat forlornly on the verge (he felt sitting in the car might put unwarranted pressure on the jack) as cars whizzed past. Very quickly a tow truck came up – not from the insurers but from the M50 authorities who have their own people prowling the ring road on the alert for anything which might cause a delay. They fixed the tyre in about 2 minutes and Mr. Waffle was able to step down the Northern Ireland tow truck. On one level, how impressive. On another, still doesn’t work as the M50 doubles as Ireland’s largest car park most of the time.
Anyhow, he limped home, a bit put out. As he parked the car outside the house, the neighbour from across the road turned up and said, “Hasn’t been a great day for you and the car has it?” It transpired that he had passed Mr. Waffle sitting on the grass verge on the M50. “I couldn’t stop, as I was transporting whiskey,” he explained. Who even knew there were special rules for transporting spirits? Anyhow I suppose Mr. Waffle was amply supported by others. On the other hand, our neighbour’s already poor perception of our technical abilities has fallen even further with the story of the jack. Alas.
Also the wretched car failed its NCT last week. Apparently, irony, it has the wrong kind of tyres.