Eric Gets the Wobbles
You know how it is when you are middle aged. Actually, of course most of you don't, as you are so far from middle age it is a mere smudge on the horizon.
Let me enlighten you a little; to encourage you to avoid middle age and go for the sniff it then snuff it life/death approach displayed by James Dean, Jim Morrison or, for your lot, Kurt Cobain; a short life but a heavy one.
Middle age is all pain and limited future. Parts of you begin to perform less well and break, even fall off. This is happening to Eric. Being a Jaguar this is not surprising. According to our ex-Arms minister Alan Clark it is 'a very fast cheap car. This has always been true of Jaguars.' He ponders 'what right did the owner have to complain when bits fell off?'
Eric's bits are, in the main, secure. Is he not the proud owner of a recently earned MOT certificate? It's the bobs that are the problem. Cars are meant to be like computers or washing machines. You turn them on and they perform perfectly. Boats are different, all that water seeps into them and in spite of their simplicity compared with cars or aeroplanes they are always breaking down.
Eric's bobs are the twiddly bits. He doesn't have a carburettor, he has a flow meter. He doesn't have a heater or even plain old air conditioning. He has climate control.
And when the climate gets out of control life becomes uncomfortable. Ask the Doctor who sat shivering in the front passenger seat the weekend before last when winter popped into our lives for 48 hours.
Eric delivered air for windscreen defrost. Unfortunately the air was colder that that being delivered by the driver and the Doctor. The result was that South London in the early morning was even more murky than usual and only constant wiping of the windscreen gave us some visibility.
I delivered Eric to the menders some days later. The Greeks of Primrose Hill guffawed morosely, they knew what they were in for. Why did the prat buy the car? they asked themselves, as it became apparent that the result of years of mismanagement and bodged engineering was to become their personal problem. Making the driver happy is a hard task when the climate control system consists of a myriad of parts any of which may go phut at a moment's notice.
The magical inventions of Heath Robinson or the railways of Emmett are simplicity itself compared with the valves, thermostats, filters and relays of the climate control system.
In the old days windows wound, seats slid and heaters heated. Okay, there was no air conditioning, but there were no traffic jams and no hot Summers so even if it had been invented it wouldn't have been necessary.
The more morose of the Greeks, after two days under Eric, stitched up a compromise solution. We would have Winter running and Summer running. This meant limiting the car's climate control to delivering only warm air in the Winter months, switching off the air conditioning and reversing the process in the Summer. This arrangement would remain until one of Eric's brothers was found in a scrap yard and cannibalised to yield the relevant parts. This suggests that all elderly Jaguars should carry donor cards to be used after a smash to rejuvenate others.
This last weekend proved a perfect starting point for the new arrangement. A swift return to the hot moist air of Autumn, perhaps brought about by the winds blowing North from the Argentine carrying a million tears of sympathy and frustrated lust, resulted in Eric getting hot flushes.
Twiddle as I might, all was moist and warm. Traffic is hell at the best of times but keeping cool and collected when suffused in warm air is impossible.
To add to the drama Eric's computer bust. No longer was I able to gain the knowledge that we had just travelled 2.3 miles in 9 minutes using 0.33 of a gallon at an average speed of 0.255 mph. Tant pis. I shall have to rejoin the uninformed and await yet another donor.
In view of the hot flushes and Eric's general demeanor, I have ordained a sex change. For Eric read Erica. I will need to watch the bonnet/hood for bulges . Perhaps Erica will follow Twickenham streaker Erica Rowe who was pertinent in her plumptiousness, making Pamela A. look like Olive Oyl.