Thursday 2 July 2009

I’m here to destroy this fucked up system.

Today I finally bother to do something about my car, sadly it is now necessity. Suddenly I am pulled from my comfy little world into having to deal with people and the real world again.

My first call is to my usual garage. After years of being ripped off with shoddy work by various garages a few years ago I was introduced to this place slightly out of town in Lexden with an almost Twin Peaks sounding name and to date they have never ripped me off once and always done a pretty good job. Touch wood, for a car that I have had for five years my Focus has been pretty reliable (unlike my previous two Escorts). When I call them up though it is hardly like calling up an old friend as the guy begins to get a sarky with me. I have to admit that I am nervous about calling these people and dealing with them, I’m not of my father’s generation I do not know about cars and feel totally vulnerable to having them laugh at me and be the butt of their jokes in a sadly immasculinating manner. It doesn’t sound good as he tells me he is buy and might be able to look at it over the weekend and have it ready for next week. Now I remember why I try to get away with sending my old man with the car to deal with these people. To these terms I agree and then he adds “bring it over this weekend, we don’t really have room for it right now” and with that the call is over and he hasn’t even taken my name.

Left scratching my head I weigh up the pros and cons of this option I then give the garage recommended on Sunday by the pick up guy a call. This guy is even less friendly, more gruff and condescending. Immediately he loses my business, he may come recommended but he also needs to be accommodating with it. So with this in mind I sit down and wait for the afternoon with view to taking my car to my regular garage.

With time to kill I look at all my unopened DVDs and pull of The Guatemalan Handshake which is a Region 1 disco I bought from Caiman. This is another movie of the Mumblecore movement but at least this has a recognisable name in Will Oldham.

The Guatemalan Handshake is very different to the majority of other Mumblecore movies I have seen. First there is less whining but in its place comes a lot more dysfunction and quirkiness as small town America is represented in an offbeat depiction away from the annoyingly emotional core that sits on the sleeve of movies such as Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation. It almost feels like a minor league Lynch movie and Will Oldham continues to act stranger and stranger with each new appearance. I have to concede however my attention does wander during the movie and at one moment I even fall asleep.

After this disc I pick up my Thick Of It Specials DVD and have my mind blown by the sheer ferocity of the content of these shows. This is the stuff, television at the height of its game and a truly inventive symphony and cacophony of swearing in the process. This is grown ups television as drenched through Viz. If the people in parliament are really like this then we are all fucked. And the worrying thing is, the people in parliament ARE really like this. If you didn’t laugh you would cry.

At 2.30PM I finally get around to calling out the recovery truck. Unfortunately when it arrives at 3.15PM it is a man in a Fiesta van. What happened to the flat back that was going to take me to the garage?

I head down to great the start up guy and he looks like Henry Owings from Chunklet magazine and he is very cool with it. He begins looking under the hood and nearly gets it going after firing some spray through some cylinders or something. He then begins to wonder if the actual problem with the car is that it has run out of petrol. Now if I have called out emergency rescue due to the fact my car has run out of petrol this is something I don’t think I will ever be able to live down.

After he plays around with a few more parts of the engine we head off to get some petrol in the hope (or rather not hope) that all the car needs is some petrol. He also calls out to a flat back in the likelihood that the car will need taking to the garage.

When we get back to the car with a can full of petrol the pickup truck is waiting for us. Henry puts the petrol in my tank and when he turns it over the car still does not start and my blushes are spared. The new guy on the scene appears to be something of a Focus expert because it is the car he has at home and as he takes his pop at the end he seems to become convinced that it is the throttle that is fucked on the engine.

With this conclusion he sets about hooking up my Focus and dragging onto his truck and we head off down the road past Butt Road and to my usual garage. When we arrive the mechanic waves us in and turns out to be somewhat more helpful in person than on the phone. I give him my phone number and he tells me he will call me tomorrow to let me know what the problem is.

As the truck pulls off I wave with gratitude at the mere reality that he was not a dick.

From here I head over to Balkerne Heights to visit the parents and the dog and to hopefully snag some dinner. When I get there they do not appear impressed to see me, especially in the light that I am only just getting around to sorting the car out.

I badger them to borrow their Fiesta and they are cool and let me take it as I head straight to Asda to pick up some much needed groceries. It has been a while since I had been in Asda on a Thursday night and it’s not as bad as I remember it. I used to avoid coming to the store on Thursday nights because I would occasionally bump into my cousin that looked like Stevo and who I didn’t really want to speak to.

Once done at Asda I head home to a night of bad television and car depression.