This is Gaia, she's my bottle-green Subaru, my Scooby-Doo.
And she's pretty old already. But I love her.
She's great and despite the fact that she may have cost a bit of money to repair over the last two years, she's looked after me when lesser machines might have failed....
Yes, I've had to be collected once or twice and yes, she's left me stranded too but that's only because I tried brainlessly to kill her, not intentionally you understand - but I was the guilty party.
There was the time she kept cutting out and I thought there was some intermittent electrical problem so I kept on going until one day she stopped and said - fuck you - listen I've got a problem. And she did. She'd kept going for goodness knows how long and far with a knackered water pump, and overheating block and yet she got me to where I needed to be. A lesser car would've destroyed itself.
And I hadn't even noticed. Prick.
More recently she did it again. Protected herself that is.
Remember I wrote recently that the gods were taking the piss - her aircon belt snapped (shredded would be more accurate) halfway between Adelaide and Sydney and this in 35°C plus temperatures with a holiday weekend looming as I arrived and no service until after New Year.
This resulted in goggle-eyed people starting visibly as the open windowed car pulled into various car parks along the way with Hugh Fraser projecting volubly through said windows, the narrative from the pen of one much beloved and seriously twisted Dame Agatha Christie, murder yarner extraordinaire. Hey, as the heat and speed increase, so too commensurately the degree of window openness, the external wind noise and inevitably the audiobook volume to which I'm riveted. Fraser bellowing period Christie prose in a fabulously BBC-styled accent through the echo chamber of an underground car park is a joyful endeavour indeed.
People are perplexed at the widower's intimate revelations as I park my trusty green steed. So, it must be said, am I. I've heard them all before but can never remember whodunnit nonetheless. The joys.
I do, however, digress.
So off I go, I scout around and find a decent outfit who'll do the job - shouldn't be more than $160
Great.
It's Saturday morning, Trump has been inaugurated, women are taking to the streets in America, some maniac has gone on a motorised rampage in Melbourne killing innocent pedestrians and Gaia is up on the lift having her innards examined.
A perfectly ordinary morning in a nutty world.
The mechanic strolls into the waiting area where I'm shaking my head at the goings on being beamed at us on repeat from the flat screen on the wall - he's expounded the opinion that this is just another New World Order tactic to maintain us in a yoke of fear while not so subtly removing our individual and collective freedom. I like him but I'm not sure the lone maniac was really a state programmed robot. I think the prick is just a twisted fuckwit who lost his shit. No matter. Well, it does, but not in this story.
Graham, the mechanic, smiles wryly at me, drily at me even - if his name had been Riley it would've been funny - it would've been a Riley wryly drily smiley. But his name wasn't Riley it was Graham so it was just a wry Graham smile. Not as dramatic but the news his pained smiley lips imparted was onerous beyond amusement.
"I need to show you something," says he.
"Uh oh..."
One of those concealed throat-clearing harrumphs by way of reply. Harrumphs in lieu of words, is a disaster, not unmitigated irretrievable like but not good, definitely not good.
He pulls up short of Gaia's yawning front, clicks on a flashlight and beckons me look with a twisty faced leer and a glance toward the gap where an aircon belt and pulley should be.
Only the pulley's in his hand. I look at that first. And I wince.
"That doesn't look good," says I.
"It's not," he says, " but look down there, mate. Look at the timing belt cover."
And not being one to quibble over the demands being made by Baulkham Hills mechanics, I takes a peek at the spot from whence the nasty looking contraption has been liberated.
"Ooh fuck!" Says I, thinking a working man with oily nails isn't likely to be fazed by this expletive, not that it was offered for effect - it was an involuntary ejaculation (too much period Agatha Christie?) occasioned by the sight of a ragged wound in Gaia's timing belt cover and a length of naked timing belt peeking out from the gloom almost shamefully.
"What the...." says I, leaving the second exclamation deliberately expurgated.
"Yeah," he says knowingly in a nudge-nudge, wink-wink kind of a way.
"What the hell happened?" says I, sensing his eagerness to reveal all.
"Pulley seized, was being driven back more and more into the timing belt casing and if it hadn't snapped, would've snagged the belt and then you'd probably be looking at replacing the engine."
I lets out a long mournful sigh.
"So how much to fix?" says I. "And how long?"
"Aw, around $890 and should be done by Monday arvo..."
You little minx, I'm thinking as I gaze at my car. That could've been thousands but you got me here and didn't succumb.
"Do it," I say.
And as I wander back to the waiting room about to call one of my colleagues for a lift back to site, I see the pumpkin headed orange man, now US president, grinning beatifically at the cameras which gets me to making the comparison.
A costly repair versus a whole new engine - the lesser of two evils.
And there in the crowd sits Hillary Clinton, pale, stolid, unflinching. And just for a moment I imagine a translucent reptilian eyelid blinking across those cold orbs but I know it's just my mind.
Today, I collected my beloved Gaia, all better and raring to go, solid, reliable, trustworthy.
That's where the analogy must end.
Namaste, mothersuckers.
Peace
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