The Alternator

After passionately defending my car against accusations raised against it yesterday by Cream, the bloody accelerator pedal broke on the way home tonight.

Thankfully I had paid my AA membership and rung them from my mobile to tell them that the car had broken down in a dark wooded area on a bend in the road. The call centre told me someone would be there in an hour and a half ... after narrating the story of the Blair Witch project to him, he assured me, as a lone female in the middle of nowhere and with cars hurtling towards both myself and my stationary car, that I would be prioritised!

And they were true to their word ... The AA man was there within 5 minutes! Good start ... "Let's move your car out of dangers way" ... very good ... "Just the throttle cable broken, I can fix that with a temporary cable" ... great ... "Should get you home in no time" ... excellent!

Cream turns up at this point looking guilty and sheepishly apologises to the car for any previous unfounded remarks. A couple of kids pass by and joke "Should have gone with the RAC!" Now I wonder ... had they met this AA man before or did they have a premonition?

The AA man detaches and discards the old broken cable, attaches a length of new cable and cuts it to size, placing the offcut to one side with his tools ... Starts the engine ... acceleration pedal now seems to work perfectly ... engine purrs beautifully ... SPARKS START FLYING OUT OF THE ENGINE!! The AA man stares at the firework display in awe and says reassuringly "Ooohh ... I never seen a car do that before!"

Bless him ... he managed to get us home and spent the next hour trying to yank out the offcut of cable that had found it's way into the alternator ... Luckily it would not budge from its new home ... I say luckily as I feared what damage had already been done ... and in the end he conceded defeat, pulled out the complete alternator and drove off yelling "I'll be back" Arnie style. I can't complain too much as he did return an hour later and replaced it with a brand new one! Free of charge!

So remember this ... if you call a car a useless pile of metal and rust .. it will act like one ... if you call an AA man ... who knows what can happen!!