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Oh bruv, that'll go bang soon!
Chronicle deputy editor, April 10, 2009
A week or so ago I was chatting on the phone with my younger brother and the conversation came round to cars.
He asked how my battered old motor was doing and I said it was driving like a dream, and I couldn't be happier with it.
Baby bruv, a trained mechanic, let out a long, weary oooooooh, tut-tutted in the time-honoured tradition of oil monkeys and builders and warned me that that's exactly what happens before they go bang.
Me being the doubting Thomas type, I thought my reliable little heap would be fine and that he was just trying to wind his older brother up. He warned me to mark his words.
Come Saturday afternoon, I was driving from Bedford to Luton when all of a sudden the engine maintenance light came on.
'That's not good,' I thought. 'That hasn't come on for a good long while. In fact, the last time it came on something went bang not long afterwards.'
A couple of minutes up the road, I felt all the power drain from the car – and this was on one of the dual carriageway parts of the A6 with cars zipping along at a minimum of 70mph.
'That's really not good,' I thought, 'that's one step removed from the car going bang.'
Thirty seconds later the car went rattle, bang and pop and started spewing steam from under the bonnet.
I should have seen it coming really. On the whole I look after it, but I might, just might, have forgotten to check the water levels lately.
The bang was the head gasket shaking its head in disgust at me.
On Monday I took it to the garage and another bang was heard – this time it was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor at the repair costs.
And the third and final bang was the sound of my brother rolling around on the floor laughing at my misfortune and his amazing prescience.
Brothers – you've got to love them. But he'll be laughing on the other side of his face when I send him his share of the bill.
After all, if he hadn't jinxed it by saying it would explode, I would still have a car and a few hundred extra quid to play with over Easter!
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Weather for Biggleswade
Sunday 12 February 2012
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Cloudy
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