All Creatures Mostly Small

 

On Sunday, Andy’s car started making an awful banging noise. Think ‘brick in a washing machine’ vibes. This occurred when the heater blowers were on, and the noise was accompanied by a non-too-subtle hint of something burning. Andy poked around under the bonnet of the car in the best way a surgeon-but-not-mechanic can do and then there were various WhatsApp consultations with our son-in-law who DOES know a thing or twenty about cars. A variety of possibilities were proposed, all of which filled me with a sense of impending doom. It didn’t help that the model of Andy’s car, whilst a fairly common make, appeared to have been built in a woodshed/Victorian iron foundry in the back end of Bulgaria, making it a sod to source parts for. I refer, specifically, to the five month wait for a motor for the broken electric window débâcle a year or so ago. 

Of course, this latest episode coincided with a particularly sub-zero cold snap of weather, the time of year when one needs one’s heater blowers to be working in top ticketty boo fashion for the purpose of unfrosting/unsteaming windows and also keeping oneself warm. Advice seemed to be to NOT use the blowers whilst there was a smell of burning - sensible - and thus, on Monday, Andy found himself driving to work with all the windows open and freezing his ‘nads off. An open air carriage ride would probably have been warmer.

After work on Monday, he popped around to the son-in-law who had a root around and removed a revolting and very mangled pollen filter. Indications were that all was not looking good. Sound effects and whiff of bonfire continued. There was talk of having to remove the ENTIRE dashboard to further investigate the problem, requiring A LOT of garage time AND trying to source suitable parts from the depths of Eastern Europe. 

I had started to look for a new car. 

On Tuesday, Andy did the drive of Artic Conditions to work and back. 

On Wednesday, he took the offending car to Bruce at our local garage. ‘Leave it with me,’ said Bruce. ‘I’ll squeeze in a look during the day at some point.’ You can do that at our garage - just leave it for a squeezed in look.

We tried not to catastrophise whilst we were waiting for the Bruce verdict. We tried not to think about having to get a hire car, about a huge bill which might be more than the car is actually worth. Jokingly, I said to Andy, ‘I bet he finds something like a desiccated mouse in there. Ahahahahahaha!’ 

At five o’clock I dropped Andy off at the garage. 

At a quarter past five, he walked back in the door. ‘All done!’ he said. ‘Just over £100.’

Well! The relief! ‘All done?’ said I. ‘What was it?’ said I. 

‘A dead mouse,’ said Andy.