We can’t decide whether last night was an utter disaster or a gift from the Gods.
Mark thought, whilst I was at the gym and he wasn’t doing very much, that he would go to work. There isn’t very much point in going out to work on a Thursday in February, but he thought that he would like to read his book in peace for a while. Indeed, when he got to the taxi rank, it looked as though there would be plenty of opportunity to do this. There were eight taxis there and no customers.
He sat there for ages until somebody eventually came along and wanted to go somewhere, but just after he had dropped them off at their hotel, something dreadful happened.
His gearbox packed up.
It made a horrible grinding noise and banged and sputtered and rattled and jumped. He explained afterwards why it might have done this instead of fading away slowly, in the usual manner of failing gearboxes, but I did not understand and so hence have forgotten completely.
Of course this was awful, not to mention expensive, but when he had managed to chug cautiously home, we could hardly believe our good fortune.
If the gearbox had collapsed halfway through a Friday night, it would have put us completely off the road for the whole weekend, possibly even for the whole of Monday as well.
Instead, it could be fixed on Friday, when Autoparts would still be in operation and a new one purchased. We would not lose the all-important Saturday night’s takings, which, we thought with relief, was entirely due to the benevolence of a kindly fate. Better still, it could be fixed in good weather. The forecast is dreadful for the weekend, with lashing icy rain and gale force winds predicted. How unspeakably awful that would have been.
We got up early this morning and rang Autoparts, and indeed, before lunchtime a shiny new gearbox was sitting in a box on the back doorstep, by which time Mark was in the middle of taking the engine to bits anyway. Better still, it turned out not to be a top-of-the-range expensive gearbox that was required, but a cheap Chinese imitation plastic low budget sort, thank goodness for rubbish cars.
All the same, it proved to be a terrible labour, and indeed at the time of writing it is still going on. I am on the taxi rank, the world is a dark place, but still he is working patiently away. When I left he had attached the engine to his crane hoist to stop it from falling out, and he was just about to disconnect the old gear box, in the back alley by torchlight.
In order to get to the gear box, it appears that you have got to take pretty much every single thing out from underneath the bonnet. This is made difficult because he has not really done very much to this car, and so nothing is nicely greased and moveable and easy to take out. Everything is rusted into solid lumps, and has got to be bashed into submission with a hammer. It is a wearisome task.
I have kept him warm and fed throughout the day with plates of cheering hot food, and we have still felt monumentally relieved that the whole thing happened yesterday and not this evening.
Obviously he is going to miss most of tonight, but it does not look as though that is going to matter, because I have been here for ages and done almost nothing, probably people have not come because of the weather forecast. Even poor Lucy has been laid off this weekend. The pubs are not expecting any customers, and so nobody needs door staff. She is quite relieved, because of having lots to do for her A Levels, but cross with the world, because like everybody else, she needs the cash.
It does not matter. Mark will probably make it out to work in time for the nightclub at three, and he will have a car to earn some decent money tomorrow night. He has not had to spend too much on a replacement gearbox, and he will not have to fight a broken engine whilst drenched with icy rain when winter reappears tomorrow.
We have been, we think, jolly lucky.
