A pain in the forecourt, and the legs

15st 6lb, 11.5 units. Yesterday evening we finally managed to collect Mrs H’s new car from the dealership where it has allegedly been languishing for a full six weeks while they and the DVLA between them made an almost incredible meal of transferring her personalized number plate. Or, rather, my personalized XPR number plate which she is kindly fostering for me until I can resume my retirement from the public relations business and it will once again become a prime example of my wit, rather than just a random series of letters and numbers.

Oliver the salesman at the garage said the paperwork would take 30-40 minutes to complete. This proved as accurate as most estimates in the motor trade. We finally escaped after an hour, and then only because I cut short the spiel about some of the many wonderful features of our new motor car on the grounds that The Boy’s nursery was about to close for the night and he would have to be taken into local authority care if we did not get there pronto and pick him up.

Getting there pronto was not assisted by turning the engine on for the first time and finding that the fuel gauge was on zero.

“We only put five litres of fuel in,” Oliver explained. “But you’ve got plenty to get to a garage.”

So long as you go the garage half a mile up the road in completely the wrong direction, that is.

Here’s an idea: if you’re going to charge £25,000-odd for a car, why not slap another £80 on the bill and fill the bloody tank up? No one’s going to notice the extra, and it would avoid your customers driving off your forecourt with the sense that they are dealing with a bunch of twats.

It was me who did the aforementioned driving, even though it was Mrs H’s new car, on the grounds that we were in a tearing hurry. But it was just as well, as she foolishly volunteered the information that she would never have thought to look at the fuel gauge before setting off, and would therefore have ground to a halt on the dual carriageway somewhere en route to the nursery. Which would, I’ll admit, have made a good anecdote for this blog.

Later in the evening we had a vicar and a churchwarden to supper. There was a certain amount of alcohol involved. I woke in the middle of the night with terrible pains in both my legs, convinced that this was a symptom of heart failure and that I was imminently doomed to life in a wheelchair if not to death in a coffin. The worst thing about the former option, I recalled from conversations with my double amputee mother, is that you continue to suffer pains in your limbs even after they have been cut off.

Maybe I should try going a little easier on the booze and see whether that helps at all. Or should I keep on drinking in the hope that it will blot out all visions of my future?