Archive for February, 2005

Background: At the beginning of December 2004 the fan belt on my car’s alternator snapped which meant the engine was not recharging the car battery while the engine was running. Cut a long story short the battery went flat while I was giving my dad a lift home and we had to call out the AA who saw us home. We re-charged the battery and replaced the fan belt and everything was fine. Except every now and then one of the connectors on the battery would get loose and the car wouldn’t start so I’d have to open the bonnet and move it about a bit to get a firm connection again. Hey presto! Everything working again. Anyway, it has been quite a few weeks since I last had to reconnect it so I thought I’d fixed it properly. Nothing so much as a peep for ages. So that’s the background done.

So I’m tootling along to TESCO and as I’m pulling into the Entrance of the car park there’s a police car going in too. So I follow the police car in and park next to it near the main Tesco entrance. I get out of the car, shut the door, just at the same time the police geezer is, I press the central locking button on my key and then, lo and behold my car alarm goes off. Full fucking pelt, next to a police car at four in the morning on a Thursday. Fucking perfect. So there I am pressing every button on my keys to try and shut my car up and then, much to my surprise the police geezer just looks at me and carries on walking into Tesco. Phew!

So I quickly pop the bonnet, disconnect and reconnect the battery for the first time in fucking ages and it’s all fine and dandy. What I want to know is why the fuck did my car decide to do that and at that specific time?! I’m sure my car has a personality and thought it’d be really hilarious. It wasn’t.

I go into TESCO and the security guy (I should really know his name seeing as how I’m ALWAYS in there at night when no-one else is) looks at me and says “That’s just what you want to happen next to a police car eh?”. Yeah, exactly!

Think the story ends there? Nope. So I get my bits and bops from Tesco, go back to my car and start driving out of the car park. I turn a corner which is partially blind due to a bush being in the way, and just as I get round the corner there’s three trolleys. Right there. In the middle of the fucking road. BUMP. I couldn’t stop in time, and to be honest I couldn’t see them. It was fairly windy last night and rainy pretty heavily. I was going at about 4mph, only managed to hit one of them but it went scooting off for about 20 metres. As it’s sailing off I look towards where it’s headed… can you guess? Yup! It’s headed straight for that goddamn police car. Well shit me, isn’t this great?! Then as I’m watching it powerlessly is starts to slow down as it goes up a slight hill and moves to the left a bit and is stopped by a curb that surrounds a planted tree, in front of the police car. You can only imagine my relief! Thankfully I think the bobby was still in Tesco otherwise he’d most probably have pulled me over and breathalized me. I get out and move the other trolleys out of the way, check my car, no sign of damage and head home rather uneventfully.

Maybe I should start going to Tesco during the day.