My taxi used a gallon of water last night.
Oliver and I ran it up on the ramps this morning to have a look.
I would just like you to note how technically competent I have become. You might observe that I dropped that mechanical terminology, Ran It Up On The Ramps, into the last sentence as though I had been airily propping vehicles up to examine the underneath for my whole life, which, as you know, I haven’t.
I was not, alas, technically competent enough to fix it. We found the leak all right, but it is coming from a bit of engine called the water pump. It should not be coming from there because that water pump has only been there for a year, which makes it practically brand new by taxi standards, but it seems that something in that general vicinity is pouring out water, and that seems to be the most likely.
Mark says that I am not likely to be able to mend it and I am just going to have to carry on putting water into it. It seems that I need to do this roughly about every twenty quid.
I chucked some Rad Weld into it anyway, you never know.
We also had a very horrible moment during the examination process. I do not mean the sort of horrible moment where you are lying underneath and suddenly a whole load of oily black water squirts into your eye, although we both had several of those. I mean that we had turned the engine off to crawl underneath it. I was underneath and shouted to Oliver to turn the ignition on, which he did, and nothing happened.
Obviously something happened. The starting noises rattled away enthusiastically, but the engine did not start.
We tried it again, and again, and again, with no results.
We stared at one another in horror, and then looked it up on Google. It turned out that Google knew almost nothing about taxis whose engine will not start when you are trying to mend a water leak. It had lots of enthusiastic ideas about fuel pumps and spark plugs, all of which we knew were completely wrong.
Then I had an inspiration.
You might remember when I went to Cambridge and the wretched thing broke down on the way that Mark repaired an electrical connection by stealing a plug from somewhere else, explaining that it wasn’t doing anything where it was and so it could be repurposed. He bodged it together with some sticky tape and made the engine work again.
I remembered that the very bit had been somewhere in the general area where we had been faffing about, and Oliver crawled underneath to have a look.
He found it. It was some blackened bits of wire taped to a plug, which had come out of its socket.
He plugged it in again, and you will be relieved to hear, although not as relieved as we were, that the engine fired into life.
After that I felt as reassured and encouraged as if we had fixed it. Of course we haven’t fixed anything at all, the water is still dripping out with the sort of annoying monotonous regularity of the sort of tap that keeps you awake in the cheapest sort of bed and breakfast house. Still it goes, which is now a bonus, and I can carry on earning money in it as long as I remember that it now has a chronic drink problem.
Hence the evening is all right. I can’t take anybody to Liverpool, so I hope that nobody asks, it would be very irritating to have to say Oh No I Couldn’t Possibly, Ask My Competitor Over There.
The sun is shining. That is helping a very lot.
I am feeling quite cheerful anyway.
I have got a functioning taxi.
