Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. It would seem that I
should spend my whole life apologising, despite the fact that you might often
think well, should I? I suppose it’s
easier to say sorry and forget about it or does that approach show a certain lack
of humility? See; I can’t even say sorry
without dragging myself into an argument, there will be fists flying soon. Strange I should mention flying as that is
what I wanted to talk about. And for the
more senior members of the Illuminati you will know when I mention flying I’m
not talking aeroplanes.
I’m talking flying Ford Cortina’s, mark three. I can still remember the registration of that
car, FLO688J. How sad is that? Anyway.
It was a Saturday and I would have been playing rugby for
Wymondham. I can remember that I had a
car full of drunk rugby players one of whom was Chidge. Peter Chidgley was a mechanic type fellow who
worked at Honington but lived at Watton.
He was a very good rugby player and drank like a fish. To prove a point I made some time before, it
was during this match that I was attacked.
I know it was rugby and I was attacked during every match but
during one particularly rough scrum, a hand came through the mess of bodies,
and two fingers inserted themselves into my nostrils. The fingers then tightened and the hand began
to withdraw, in a movement designed to remove my nose from my face. Roughness and brutality was quite common in a
scrum but a directed attack was something I had not come across before, unless
of course you count the punch in the face from Martyn Bennett resulting in stitches.
But that was training, and not a match, so doesn’t count.
I grabbed the retreating wrist and held tight. As the scrum disintegrated I continued to hold
on to my attacker until we were standing alone.
I called for the referee to come over as I needed to report this fellow
for ungentlemanly play. The referee ignored
me and continued running after the ball in play. I shouldn’t have released my attacker’s wrist
for he now used the wrist to propel his fist into my face. The result was an enormous black eye which I
believe showed, if not proved, that I was not a dirty player, it is the one
time in my life that I wished Brown had been there so I could have proved my
point.
Anyway, there was me and my black eye driving the Ford
Cortina, mark three, and Chidge was acting as navigator, side kick, and
spotter. It was dark so he had an easy
job. Navigating was of course extremely
difficult as someone had stolen all the road signs. We were accelerating to Mach one when we
encountered a small hump backed bridge.
Like any sensible driver I understood the only way to cross the bridge,
especially with a car full of drunk rugby players, was to take it as speed. A
technical term many of you may have heard before.
As I washed the engine every week, this was a high
performance vehicle so it was no surprise that we actually got airborne. I still prefer flying helicopters as the
aerodynamic qualities of a brown Ford Cortina, mark three, were minimal; in fact
they were very similar to those of a house brick. The car landed, however the extra weight, six
rugby players, each containing at least eight pints of beer, meant that not
only did the wheels hit the road on landing but the engine did as well. At least it was clean, I would hate to think
of the mess we may have left on the road had it been a dirty engine like a BMW
or something just as common.
There were, as you may expect, certain expressions of shock
from the passengers however the most observant among us had noticed that the
car had stopped. I think the technical
term was that it was fecked. I turned
the key thing and pushed all of the pedals but nothing. Fortunately, as it was dark, we could see the
lights of a farmhouse, so we all staggered off to see if they would allow us to
use their telephone for assistance.
Luckily we were returned to Watton Lodge before the bar closed so could
continue our carousing.
The next day, along with someone who knew about cars and a
mildly suffocating hangover, we recovered my car having discovered that all
that had gone wrong was a wire had disconnected itself. Otherwise the car appeared to be fine. I learned a lot from that incident. In the future I should try to hit the bridge
even faster as this should propel me further along and provide a much smoother
landing.
The car did actually break down once and I took it to the
garage next door to John Fellingham’s for advice. It would appear that I needed a new clutch
plate which of course was double Dutch to me, but they were certainly speaking a
similar language to me when they talked about how much it would cost. I couldn’t believe how much they wanted to
change the clutch plate so I suggested that I would do it myself at which they
scoffed and said that I would need a specialist aligning tool.
Chidge was a tool, but more importantly he was also a
mechanic type of person so sod them I thought, I would do it myself. I ordered a new clutch plate and waited. We had the use of the facilities at Watton
which was a real bonus. There was a
complete mechanical transport yard complete with its own vehicle hoist. Chidge wasn’t available so Martyn Bennett and
myself decided that we would change the clutch plate. We each knew a mechanic so we were well
qualified for the job.
We put the Ford Cortina, mark three, on the lift and raised
it up. We did have one of those books,
you know with the pictures and drawings that take you through a lot of this
stuff step by step. I undid the bolts on
the bell housing and dropped the drive shaft.
The old clutch plate came out and the new one went in. I lined it up with my fingertips, specialist tool
my arse. However we encountered a small
problem when we tried to put the drive shaft back on. It wouldn’t go.
Now Martyn and I were both big strong rugby men so I can tell
you we put a fair bit of effort into that thing, but it just wouldn’t come together. We lowered the drive shaft and I immediately realised
what we had been doing wrong. We hadn’t put the gear stick thingy through the
hole in the floor of the car. Once we slipped the gear stick thingy through the
hole in the floor, the whole shooting match fitted together perfectly. We tightened everything back up, lowered the
car and unbelievably drove it out. It
was fixed.
It was sometime later when I was driving to Liverpool and
giving John Hodgskinson a lift to Manchester.
We were waiting at some temporary traffic lights. As they went green, I slipped the car into first
and moved off. Unfortunately the gear
stick thingy had come off and was now looking quite useless in my left
hand. It would appear that the gear
stick thingy was held in place by a big plastic bung that screwed into
place. Our attempts had sheared all the threads
on the bung, which now had decided to leave its normal position and explore the
rest of the car.
John was a little concerned but I managed to push the gear
stick thingy back into place and it worked.
Now I just had to be careful when changing gear however more importantly
I had discovered a brilliant anti-theft device which I knew I should patient
and take to the market. Suddenly my red bricked
Victorian mansion, Rolls Royce and turban wearing Indian manservant were much
closer indeed.
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