I was a little bit slow off the mark this morning. Mr C left the house for work earlier than usual because he had to catch an early train to London for a meeting. The lack of movement in the house and the fact that the radio’s Breakfast Show had a different presenter than normal which led to me to sleeping through the alarm. I managed to recover the lost time but as I was leaving the house I heard the phone ring. I realised that it was my mum so I answered the phone.
She sounded flustered and said, ‘Oh you’re still at home! I have a sorry tale to tell you.’ My heart had that sinking feeling as I wondered what she was about to tell me. She went on to say that Mr C’s car had rolled off her drive (she lives near the railway station) coming to rest against the wall across the road and that the car’s bumper was hanging off. Not exactly good news, but not exactly bad news either; my heart resumed its normal position. She asked me to bring the spare key so that I could move the car. I went round straight after I had phoned work to let them know I would be late.
I drove to my Mum’s house and was pleasantly surprised to see that although the car was at a jaunty angle, it was taking up no more room than other cars that park on the side of the road. As I walked up my mum’s drive I saw a man coming out of the property behind the wall and we met on mum’s drive. I told him that I had the key to move the car but was not sure if I knew how to move the car because I had never driven it and it has a silly automatic handbrake and a quirky way of starting! I have often quipped with Mr C that his car is a gadget and not a car.
We went over to the car and I unlocked it. We both pondered the handbrake and decided we didn’t know how to work it… We considered various options and I elected to phone Mr C but his phone went to voicemail. The gentleman assistant suggested that I leave the car in neutral and he would push it back onto the driveway if I would steer the car. Whilst doing this we encountered two problems at the same time… The steering lock was on (even though the key was in the ignition) so it was hard to line up the car with the drive and, once we got the car to the curb, it started to roll backwards. I was worried that it might knock my gentleman assistant over so I applied the foot brake. Now that the car was away from the wall I tried to start the engine so I could drive it and in the process managed only to activate the automatic handbrake. No matter what I tried the handbrake would not turn off and the engine would not start up!
By now the car was blocking the road and another man had stopped to assist. He looked at the handbrake and shook his head. At this point Mr C rang back and I was able to ask him to tell me how to get the car started. He told me the exact same procedure that I had just tried and the car started like a dream… Then he gave instructions for the handbrake and I found that I had been doing the right thing but for some reason it hadn’t worked. At this point I said I would call him back when the car was safely on mum’s drive. By this time a lady had also come to assist. She mentioned that her husband had an older model of the same car and that its automatic handbrake had failed on more than one occasion… I left the car in first gear and mum put bricks behind the rear wheels before I left for work.
The really puzzling thing is that my mums drive is level which means some form of manual intervention, accidental or deliberate, must have set the vehicle in motion…
