Flaming Cars

I had an unexpected trip in my new old car today.  Up to God’s Own Country and back again.  Ordinarily a pleasant enough drive but today a bit against the clock.  Still, a good opportunity to enjoy my new wheels.  Of course I’m not under any illusions about the general appeal of my car - it is stunningly dull.  It’s not fast, luxurious or sexy; no-one would call it a hot rod, it would be virtually impossible to Pimp My Ride and it’s inconceivable that any kind of kitten would opt to travel in this wagon.  It is frankly embarrassing and wholly in keeping with my inability to be cool.

This afternoon I discovered an unexpected feature of the car.  Fire.  Now, I’m a great believer in fire; it wasn’t so long ago that some Neanderthal chums and I rubbed our sticks together somewhat too vigorously and saw them burst into flames.  It was a bit of a shock at the time but soon those little sparks became our regular playmates.  Even now in these sophisticated times there’s nothing more homely and welcoming than a good blaze.  So, I am no stranger to combustion although the allegations that I was the Phantom Fire-starter of Pudding Lane were never proven.  I generally understand when and where to expect it.  I didn’t expect it in my glove box as I hurtled down the motorway.

It taught me a valuable lesson though: no matter how hard one tries to ignore a problem, it rarely takes the hint and goes away.  Damn it.  We live in such an inconsiderate world.

The unmistakeable smell of melting plastic was the first sign.  I willed it to be the sulphurous gases from the nearby coal processing site.  It wasn’t.  The initial gossamers of smoke, I imagined as simply Summer haze.  They weren’t.  Great plumes of grey smog I decided came from another vehicle.  They didn’t.  Paradoxically, it was at the point when I couldn’t see any problem at all, or indeed out of the windscreen, that I thought it wise to investigate.

I believe the correct protocol in these situations is to run screaming from the car, preferably with some part of one’s anatomy in flames.  I was too cross to give anyone the satisfaction.    I pulled over, turned off the ignition and kicked the offside rear wing as I retreated to the verge.  Damn car.  This would never happened if God had enabled me to fly as I’d always asked.  He and I will have a lot to talk about one day. 

I stood indignantly for a few moments, the object of intense rubber-necking, as smoke billowed across the road. Hard shoulders are miserable places.  You’d have thought the Highways Agency might have made a little effort to make them more accommodating.  I mean if it wasn’t inconvenient enough having to pull off the main carriageway, there wasn’t even a bench from which to watch my car burn.  At least, I thought to myself, I could record the explosion on my mobile phone and earn £250 from some Schadenfreude television programme. 

It stopped smoking.

It stopped doing anything at all.

It sat like a failed firework. 

Balls.

I tried to recall the Public Safety Announcements of my childhood.  I could remember Tufty but now in my memories he was being abused by Itchy and Scratchy.  And there was another advert with a boy, a ball and an electricity substation but I couldn’t see any relevance there except a warning about tank tops.  And, though I wracked my brain, I couldn’t bring to mind any guidance about a car that had failed to detonate.

I waited.

I kicked my heels.

I waited some more.

I popped the bonnet.  Thankfully it only popped.  There wasn’t any scorching let alone any flames.  I admit, I was mildly disappointed.

I checked the wheels.  Still nothing unusual - although with my negligible mechanical knowledge I was only really checking to see if I still had four of them.  I did.

I looked inside the cabin.  Apart from looking like a soap bubble cleverly filled with cigarette smoke by a children’s entertainer, there didn’t seem anything untoward.  I opened the door.  The fumes slunk out like naughty children.  I kicked to disperse them and scolded them on their way.

More disappointment.  No charred remains.  Nothing resembling the petrol-bombed wreckage that littered my Sunday School outings.  In fact as the smoke disappeared I began to wonder if I hadn’t imagined the whole thing.  Then I opened the glove box.  It looked as though it had been redesigned by Salvador Dali.  The compartment bore only a surreal resemblance to what I remembered.  I looked in vain for my mittens.  Gone.  My jousting gauntlets hadn’t fared much better.  Nor my oven gloves.  All incinerated.

Through a droopy hole in the back I saw some mangled wires and a fuse box that had fused to some unidentifiable fixture or fitting.  Not troubling any sense or intelligence I used my finger to check if it was still hot.  It was.  I removed as much molten plastic from the fuse box as the fuse box removed skin from my hand.  I think we came out equal - although of course I am human being who can feel pain and it was an inanimate object made in Singapore.

Now, the sensible thing would have been to call for some professional help.  But I haven’t got to where I am today by worrying about distractions like common sense.  I prefer the road the less trod, the one with obvious flaws, obstacles and really prickly brambles.  Besides I just wanted to get home rather than wait on the tarmac for another couple of hours.  Free of the constraints of wisdom, protocol and acumen, I quickly determined that the best solution was to disconnected every wire from the remnants of the fuse box.  It took me ten minutes to prise everything apart but finally I pulled out what looked like a mutilated sea urchin.  I knew that that would sort it out.

Miraculously, the ignition still worked.  Nothing else did.  The lights didn’t light, the wipers didn’t wipe, the radio didn’t radio.  But there was no more fire.  I drove home, occasionally thumping my impotent horn at the unobservant drivers that didn’t see my hand signals.  Sometimes the road can be a very dangerous place.

Comments

[the boy who likes to]

Its funnier how those old cars came with built in fire in the glove box.

[James]

I nearly wept, thankyou.