My wife texts me a picture of a strange car sitting outside our house. At first I don’t understand its significance; she has supplied no caption. For a moment I think it’s one of those mistakes that comes of having a phone on your person, like when my wife pocket dials me from a party and I hear a load of people laughing at what I naturally assume is my expense.
Then I realise the car in the photo is our car. I didn’t recognise it – we bought it from Farouk the mechanic in January. We had it for a week, until my wife could no longer tolerate the engine light warning tone that sounded every 30 seconds. She took the car back.
Farouk assured her the problem lay with the warning light and not the engine, but when he set about repairing it further, complications emerged. The nature of these was never clear to me, because my wife dealt with the whole business, and her main defence against not really understanding Farouk’s explanations is not really listening to them. By the time her version of events passes to me, not much remains.
“So is he saying the car is haunted?” I say.
“Not in those words,” she says.
“Has a priest been called?” I say.
“I’ll give you his number and you can ask him,” she says.
Farouk is so mortified he offers to lend us his car. My wife accepts, but insures only herself to drive it. This seems a suitable temporary solution, until February slides into March.
“I went to see Farouk about the car today,” my wife says. “He’s got a new engine for it.”
“A new engine?” I say.
“Or something,” she says. “I had my fingers in my ears by that point.”
“If the car gets a new engine, is it even the same car?” I say.
“Fine,” she says. “I’ll tell him not to put a new engine in it.”
In the meantime I’ve been delaying a chore that requires a car: at the end of the band tour in March all my equipment ended up at the accordion player’s house, including my banjo. I could go and fetch it all in a taxi, but I keep thinking our car might turn up. A week goes by, then two. I send an apologetic text. The accordion player replies with a picture of my banjo sitting in his recycling bin.
At the beginning of April, Farouk offers to gives us his car permanently.
“OK,” I say to my wife.
“It’s diesel,” she says.
“We’ll take it,” I say.
“I already said no,” she says. The accordion player sends me a picture of my banjo lying on top of his barbecue.
When I see the picture of the car parked outside our house, I immediately text the accordion player to say I’ll be round that evening. He sends a picture of my banjo sticking out of his downstairs toilet. He’d probably taken it already.
That weekend, my wife and I are scheduled to drive to the country. The arrival of the car is therefore fortuitous, but in the end I’m delayed by work and have to follow on Saturday morning, by train.
It’s a shame to miss the road trip – the car has heated seats – but it’s a lovely morning for a train ride, I’m being picked up by my wife at the station, and I have a comfortable 10 minutes to change trains at Ipswich. Soon I’ll be driving through the countryside, arse on fire.
The local service leaving from platform one is on time, according to the departure board, but the train doesn’t turn up. I wait patiently for a few minutes, staring at my phone, until I look up and see that I’m standing on platform two.
My wife is not answering her phone. I ring her repeatedly until I’ve built up a suitably urgent pile-up of missed calls – about seven – then leave a message saying I’ve missed the train, and why.
A few minutes later, my wife calls back. I say hello, but it’s clear she can’t hear me, and all l hear is people laughing at my expense.
