15th June 2025
Nicola’s a keeper (in more ways than one 😉). I’m definitely a chucker. I reckon it’s a reaction to my upbringing. During the 55 years my mother lived in our family home, it became increasingly cluttered. Eventually the front room wouldn’t have looked out of place on ‘The Hoarder Next Door’ or similar reality TV. Bless ‘er.
As well as not being a keeper, I’m emphatically not an engineer or a mechanic. Practical skills don’t come naturally, so there’s always a little pride when I master a new discipline – taming the Beast (that’s our drive mower, for newer readers) being a good example:
I also celebrated when I successfully disconnected the negative terminal on the battery of the car in anticipation of our current absence from Pollards Mill, the idea being to avoid any drain on the battery while it was laid up. This was an excellent strategy – until our top roofer, Sean, had to move the car out of the way of his work crew. Fortunately he’s married to our terrific property manager Jennie, so he got hold of the key, got into the car, reconnected the battery and fired up the afterburners. At this point he realised that the brakes weren’t working and the fuel seemed ropey too. He called me to ask whether I’d disconnected the fuel supply and brake fluid as anti-theft measures. He sounded impressed. When I finished laughing at this entirely unfounded and totally incorrect belief in my practical know-how, I scratched my head to try and work out what the problem was.
I remembered a bizarre episode a few years back when our lawnmower at home wouldn’t start one spring. Closer inspection revealed that the rubber priming button which forces fuel into the engine (who said I wasn’t a mechanic?!) had disappeared. Mice had chomped it away over the winter. I didn’t see the attraction myself – rather like a human chewing on a Space Hopper – but I guess one mouse’s meat is another mouse’s poison 🤷.
Lo and behold, examination of the brake cable on the X-Trail revealed this:
All I can say is that I hope the little blighters are going to have to shell out a fortune for root canal work. Our real mechanic, Alex, reckons he can replace the cable without too much difficulty. After that he plans to spray the engine with kerosene oil as a deterrent – unsurprisingly, rodents find that a little off-putting. Let’s hope the car doesn’t spontaneously combust next time the ignition’s fired 🙄…
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