Putting The Boot In

Since the time I gave up playing with my Dinky Toys, I've had little interest in cars, and had no desire to own one. However, moving to Gullane in 1998, necessitated the purchase of a modest vehicle, a Nissan Micra, in fact. (A neighbour has described this model as 'popular with the ladies'.)

We've owned four Micras and, apart from persistent and mysterious rattles, they have been largely trouble free. However, last weekend we arrived home with lots of shopping and discovered we couldn't open the boot. It sounds like something minor but it isn't. As I'm rather long, worming my way into the boot, via the folded-down rear seats, was a somewhat Houdini-esque exercise. But I am perseverant (a quality learned through dealing with tradesman, builders and poetry editors) and with a torch (yes, it was dark, of course) and a screwdriver I freed the lock. Sheer delight, chez nous!

But when I tried to close the boot, I couldn't. The lock had jammed in the closed position while the boot was open. So, we couldn't drive anywhere as the boot door would be bouncing up and down and, even if we reached somewhere, we couldn't leave the car as we couldn't close and lock the boot.

And so, the RAC arrived from Livingston in the shape of a vast pantechnicon with flashing lights and a helpful but puzzled mechanic. After about 20 minutes with various screwdrivers he succeeded in getting the boot closed. A brief moment of jubilation lit up the dark until we realised the boot couldn't be opened again. Still, this was the lesser of two evils and I put up with wriggling into the boot from the inside of the car until the nice men at the garage in Loanhead rectified the fault a week later.

They didn't charge for this service. But then they'd had the car nine months earlier - because the boot wouldn't open. I'd discovered it wouldn't open on a dark December night while I was attempting to load our suitcases, in preparation for driving to the airport to fly to Amsterdam. It did not help that I was till suffering from a gastric complaint that had reduced me to spending most of the Christmas period either in bed or heading to the lavatory.

Never had those problems with my Dinky Toys. But then maybe the Cadillac Eldorado Tourer, Chivers Jellies van, MG Midget and Triumph Herald (with suspension) were considerably more robust than our modern ladies' car.

 

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