Unless you can make a car soft and cuddly and wrap it in a ton of fluff, it will continue to feel foreign to me. I recently had to take the car in because it was squeaking like a constipated mouse.

“Hello there, what seems to be the problem?” says friendly mechanic man.
“Ah, well I have a squeak, well more of a screech coming from my car…”
Pause.
“Is it when you break?”
“It sounds like it should be when I brake, I mean it has that break kind of sound to it but actually it mainly happens when I’m NOT breaking… oh and my break light just came on, but that is, like, totally unrelated to the screech..”

I stopped suddenly feeling ever so slightly out of my depth.

Mechanic dude looks at me expressionless, “Ah…”

So I booked it in for a service and they said that it would flag up any problems. Of course they would also pay special attention to the ‘squeak’. In my mind I put on my demur little bonnet, tilted my head slightly and while doing an appropriate flutter of the eyelashes said “Why thank ye kindly sir. I’ll just take my ignorant little lady butt on home then while you fleece my bank account”

Later on they gave me a call and by this stage I was determined to show a little control, take charge of the situation and gosh darn it just get this sucker fixed already.

“Hello Mrs O, well in a nutshell your whatsit and dinglebong are fused together and you need to replace this flibberwocky and whatnot…”
He carried on and on while I was keeping the tone even and saying what I thought would be appropriate things like “yes” and “of course” and “uh huh, I thought as much”. I ended the call by telling him I was just going to go over what he had mentioned, check a few things and would let him know what to proceed with.

I sat for a couple of minutes processing everything, then picked up the phone and dialled..

“Babe, you’re going to have to call the mechanic – he spoke words to me but I don’t know what on earth he was saying…no, I can’t really tell you what he said – it was, um tyres and um, something was fused and the breaks I think…”

Well at least it’s fixed. It cost one million and eighty pounds and thirty two pence but in fairness it drives so nicely now…

The next morning I lost the car key. Doh!