Blog
17
Mar
2010
Ed’s weekend from hell
Written by Ed Stone
You may have read in Jimmy’s recent blog that I missed our latest studio session due to meeting of minds (and fenders) between my little Mazda and a giant Romanian truck. If so, and you want to know more, read on. If not, and you don’t want to know more, I suggest you amuse yourself by watching this other car related snippet
The car part I
So, I’m a bit of a car nut. I can name, in order, every single F1 champion. I used to watch Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on repeat, not to mention read every Mini/ Beetle/ Ferrari book and magazine I could get my hands on. And I love driving – I even made it to the final of “So You Wanna Be an F1 Driver?”, Pop Idol for racing drivers that was screened on Channel 5 back in 2003.
Despite this, I have spent the last 4 years driving around in a Mazda Xedos 9 (which we named Mattie), a kind of BMW 5 series made in Japan. It was an awesome cruising car – automatic, air condidtioning, 6 rack CD multichanger, cruise control, nice soft squishy suspension, very quiet etc. but it didn’t exactly get the pulse racing (though I did discover that it was quite good at lift off oversteer, but it’s probably best if you ask Cambridge constabulary about that…). And a few months ago it started falling apart – we’ve had issues with the battery, the rear suspension started getting very stiff, she was squeaking and creaking everywhere – she was on her way out.
So, I have just taken advantage of the government’s attempt to keep Japanese auto workers employed by trading in Mattie on scrappage to get Missy, the brand new MX5 Roadster Coupe Sport (I felt like I was putting down an animal when I left her for the garage to scrap. Seriously, I nearly cried- I just can’t help this feeling that all things, even inanimate objects like cars, have feelings and probably don’t want to be crushed. I expect my parents gave me acid as kid to help bring this on, or it could just me stil being a 6 year old at heart). And, damn, Missy is a seriously awesome car. She’s not super quick – 160bhp, 1100kg, 0-60 in 8 secs or something like that – but with rear wheel drive she’s so perfectly balanced and chuckable it’s unbelievable. Where ever you point the steering wheel, that is precisely where she goes and all the control feels almost telepathic – you think left, she goes left. Makes me feel like a Jedi.
Now, I know, I know, why on earth would anyone ever buy a new car?!? You lose a few grand as soon as you drive off the forecourt etc. etc. But, in my defense, I did get £3k off thanks to scrappage (which in my head cancels out a healthy amount of the first years depreciation), and by getting a new car I got to get cruise control (we do a lot of motorway driving and I’m a seriously lazy motorway driver – get it to 75, hit the cruise, feet off, steer with one hand and sit back and listen to Radio 4 or The Eels. But, it turns out, the only way to get cruise control on an MX-5 is to purchase a new one, a mk3.5, as up until September last year you couldn’t get cruise control on them).
So, for the first 5 days of her life, Missy was the most loved, cared for, fun car in the whole world. Then, on her 6th day of being, she had…
The shunt
So there I was, sitting in Missy (ahem…), guitar and trumpet in the boot, warming up my singing voice to the tunes of Pet Sounds when I feel a bump. And then a bit of bump and grind. And a horrible squeaking, scraping sound. I whip my head around to the left to see the bottom bumper of a huge articulated truck scraping it’s way all down my passenger door. It was a seriously slow accident, but it takes a lot of MX-5 to stop an articulate truck. I actually had time to put my hand out towards the passenger door, shout “No, no, please stop”, before the wing mirror was gone and Missy was blind and not road legal.
I felt terrible. You know that feeling you get when you’re 5 and you break your mum’s favourite plate, or get found out lying about something – it was that feeling. I sat in Missy for a few seconds trying to stop shaking (haven’t had that kind of adrenaline rush for a long time!) then got out to point the truck to the side of the road. And nearly got run over by my own car – I hadn’t realised we were on a slight hill and I didn’t have the handbrake on. My first reaction was to try and hold her back, but then I say the car in front of me – Missy was heading straight for it with me hanging out of the door. I scrabbled back into the drivers seat, fumbling with all my feet (all two of them) to find the brake. When I did find it, we stopped with a jolt about a foot from the car in front. Second panic over.
After much hooting from people behind me and lots of indicating/ very slow edging out (I no longer had a LHS wing mirror, after all!) truck driver and I pulled over the side of the road and proceded to swap insurance details. Where upon I discovered he was Romanian and barely spoke any English. We jumped in his cab where he had a computer translation device that we proceeded to communicate through – that and numerous charades type mimes and sound effects. We swapped phone numbers, I used my phone to call him to ensure he gave me the right details, I copied everything I could off of his Romanian insurance certificate…and that was it. I jumped out the cab hoping never to see him and his stupid big truck again but to see plenty of his insurance company’s money to pay for his rubbish driving.
The phone part I
I wondered back to Missy, and fished my phone out of my pocket to call Helen to let her the bad news about Missy’s blindness and to let Jimmy know I wouldn’t be able to come given our lack of road legality. Or rather I didn’t. I couldn’t find my phone. And then it hit me – it was in the truck’s cab where I had called Susan (yep – his first name was Susan) to check the phone number he had given me was kosher. I looked back up the road to see Susan, the truck and my phone pulling away. I did one of those things they do in movies where I tried to run both from the truck and to Missy at the same time – legs, arms and eyes going in all separate directions as I tried to weigh up staying with my broken car at he side of the road vs. chasing down my phone. In the end I plumped for the phone and hared off up the street after my phone, with the shouts of “hey mate, your car” ringing in my ears. I must have sprinted 500m, narrowly avoiding people at bus stops and a guy eating fish and chips, sometimes closing on the truck, sometimes losing ground. Closer, and further, closer and further I came. In the end, it pulled away too much and I gave up – I think that lack of decisiveness at the start cost me.
Back to Missy I walked, dejected that I now had a bust car and was going to be even further down on money once I had paid to replace my phone.
Drove back home with hazards on, shouting some really quite bad words at how stupid people can make a cool day into such a sh1t one, and then called Lou to let her know I wouldn’t be around to make any sweet music with her and Jimmy (ahem…). I then called my company to tell them the bad news about my phone and to get them to remotely wipe all the info off it, in case the truck driver turned out to be on the payroll of some other management consultancy and was interested in what was on it (or just wanted to break my amazing brick breaker score). Then, after all the important things were done, I called my insurance company…
The insurance company
…who told me I was not insured by them. As Missy was so new, I had only taken out the insurance a few days before, but I had a very clear AXA certificate of motor insurance (good thing too – without it I’d probably be in jail for driving without insurance!). After much deliberation it turned out that, whilst I had taken up insurance with AXA (partly due to them being nice and cheap, partly due to my having had great service from them for my bust leg), I had in fact been transferred to their sister company Swift Cover. Which meant my insurance premiums were going to pay Iggy Pop and his stupid puppet companion in all those terrible adverts…not exactly what I wanted to happen to my premiums.
I also found out the weird fact that the repairs on my car will be covered by a 5 year warranty. The standard manufacturers warranty is 3 years. So, if I wanted to maximise my warranty, the best thing to do would be to smash my car to pieces and have the entire thing rebuilt…(note to all insurance companies – I am not going to do this, it is an entirely hypothetical, theoretical thought experiment. Please do not take my Missy away from me…)
Anyhoo, crisis averted, I was insured by someone, and now I just need to get them to chase my keen-to-make-contact Romanian truck driver friend.
The phone part II
So, my phone was now wiped and devoid of functionality. At this point, I decided to call the truck driver to let him know he had my phone, and would he be able to post it back to me (I had little faith he’d understand the word for “address” over the phone – I even had Google Romanian translate up, but it was worth a shot!). After much chatting and more charades type hand mimes that Susan sadly couldn’t see, he told me he had parked up a few minutes after the shunt as his tacho said he had to take a break (well, he said “I park – Beverely Way” – I assumed the rest!). So, on my bike I hopped and cycled after him, knowing if I didn’t make it in an hour he’d be pulling off again with my phone in his cab.
Fortunately, I did make it (although cycling down the A3 in damn scary!), picked up the phone and also managed to get a few more details (he had, for example, given me the wrong registration of his truck – he’s a nice guy, so I’m sure it was accidental, but it would have had a big impact!)
The car part II
Now, along with the sad news of Missy’s injuries, I also had some sad news about our family dog, Moriartey. After 13 years of of stirling work eating rabbit poo, eating shoes and trying to eat our cats (they are no longer with us, but not for that reason), he, like Mattie, had come to the end of the road (now there’s an idea – a scrappage scheme for dogs…). So, I needed a car to get back to my parents place for the weekend after the shunt. I was put in touch with the helpful people at HelpHire (who provide courtesy cars to people who are in not at fault accidents, then charge the rental back to the at fault people), and they agreed to give me a car.
As I was speaking to HelpHire, they asked me numerous questions about why I had purchased Missy – “for the love of driving, and a tiny little bit because she looks cool” (that tiny little bit was the part of the decision that Helen contributed!). Now, I think HelpHire may have got things confused, because when the courtesy car turned up the next day, it was a Mini Convertible – all style and very little substance.
Now, the reason this is relevant is, back when we going through the options for cars to replace Mattie, we considered numerous fun cars – Merc SLKs, Honda S2000s, Ford StreetKa (OK, less cool, but there you go) and Mini Coopers. And, man, am I glad we got Missy! She is just such a great car – awesome fun to drive, easy to live with, comfy on the motorway, solidly bolted together etc. Where as the Mini – nice for a test drive, but having had a few long runs I can say that it’s less fun to dive, far noisier and crashier over bumps (I presume because, despite being a BMW in disguise, it’s less well bolted together), despite being a 4 seater it was a serious struggle to fit my mum, dad and sister in (all of whom are on the He Pingping side of height), and it’s a hairdressers car.
The moral of the story? If you want a proper test drive, get run into and get a courtesy car for a few weeks. You’ll soon know if you like it or not.
That’s about it so far for my car shunting escapades – Missy is still in the shop, I still have Mavis the Mini Cooper, but normality should be restored in the next few weeks or so (though chasing Susan the Romanian lorry driver to re-imburse me my excess may take a little longer). In the meantime, I’ll end this as all stories written by song writers must end – “I think I’ll write a song about it“