I have taken Mark’s taxi for an MOT, and it has failed because the chap in the MOT station is a wicked soulless villain.
Just for the record, everybody, it is MGD Motors in Kendal, do not go there.
I am trying to work out if there is a Trip Advisor for garages, because I want to write an bad-tempered and uncomplimentary review, the sort that has the apostrophes in all the wrong places and betrays a definite lack of middle-class sang-froid.
In my head I always pronounce that the way it looks. I have to be extra careful when I am saying it. There are more ways than one of betraying a lack of middle-classness.
I will need to do this, write the review, that is, before I get distracted and forget, which I most certainly will have done by this time tomorrow.
One of their mechanics does not like me. For once I do not know why, because I have not been rude or embarrassingly patronising towards him. There are plenty of people who have got extremely good reasons not to like me, because I can be very smilingly malicious when I want to be. Indeed, I consider it to be one of my more useful talents. I do not think, however, that the mechanic at the garage is among these unfortunates, and for once I genuinely have no idea what I have done to provoke such loathing.
I do not like him either. He is short, and fat, with a lot of tattoos and a ridiculously long grey beard that looks as if it would benefit from a jolly good wash, as if he was auditioning to be an extra dwarf in the film about the Hobbit. He has been ghastly every time we have met, and the last time I took a car in there he was so rude that when I got home Mark rang the garage owner, whom he knows, to complain.
I suppose it has not helped my popularity that the owner was subsequently cross about it, and I heard from the other mechanics that the chap had been in trouble. One of them confided that he was very glad about it, because the said chap was always rude to him as well.
Today the chap saw me coming, and I knew from his glare even as I got out of the car that the poor taxi was going to fail, even though Mark had assured me that it was perfect in every way.
I waited ages. He finished the MOT and parked the taxi in the car park, and then waited half a vengeful hour before he brought the papers through to the reception, and of course it had failed.
He failed it because he said it had a number plate light out, which it hadn’t, and I jolly well knew I was right, because I checked straight away. Then he failed it because he said he would not do the emissions test because he thought the taxi might be so dangerous the machine would blow up. Then he failed it because it didn’t have a spare wheel, and finally he said it was dirty.
I know it is Mark’s taxi but he had spent two hours cleaning it, and it was immaculate.
I rang Mark and made him speak to the MOT man.
Mark explained that you do not have to have a spare wheel for an MOT, and that anyway, like every other modern car in the world, the taxi had a tyre inflating machine in the boot for emergencies. Then he made the chap do the emissions test anyway, which obviously did not blow the machine up, and which it passed perfectly well.
The chap still would not give me an MOT certificate, although he would not say why, and stamped out of the office telling me that he didn’t care if I never came back again.
I concurred with this sentiment, but did not quite know what to do. It is the first time I have ever had a car that has not got anything wrong with it at all, but for which a mechanic will not give me a pass certificate. The receptionist suggested that I brought it back in the morning, when the other mechanic would be there. I tried to ring Mark again to see what he thought, but he had gone back to work and did not have any phone signal, so I went home.
I am not going to go back tomorrow or ever again.
Mark said that he would take it back himself in the morning. He is going to go to work, but he has got to go and see the nurse for a blood test first, and so he is going to go and be cross in the garage first. The other, innocent, mechanic will probably have to listen. He tried to call the garage owner, but he is away driving a lorry in other countries until Monday, so he couldn’t talk to him.
We are going to find a new garage to MOT the taxis, and I am going to tell the world what I think on Trip Advisor.
That will jolly well show him.
Have a picture of a nice sunset.
