Car Trouble..

So I broke down…well not me in a sense, but my car.

While I wait for the recovery guys to come to me, I thought I would put my time to good use and... well fill this blog with my quite so random musings.

I mentioned previously in the week that the last few days haven't been going too well so when I couldn’t start the car earlier, I resigned to the fact that this was karma taking its chance yet again.

I finished work and headed to the gym to release some stress and gather the day’s thoughts together. I find it usually works well and by the time I reach home for the evening, I am somewhat ready to tackle any drama that's going on with the family or quite simply share a subdued evening with mom and dad.

I actually felt refreshed after my short workout and proceeded to return to my car, not thinking that today’s to be the day where in the car park of my work place, was I to cause somewhat of a commotion. My attempt to start my car was fruitless, it appeared that I have somehow locked my steering wheel! My calm and composed manner soon turned to frustration as the more I fumbled with the key and the steering wheel, the more stiff things got and well quite frankly this car was not going to start in a hurry.

What did we ever do in the days when we didn't have mobile phones? I rung Dad and as I made my call I cringed for I remember always Dad saying, "if you have a car and things go wrong, will you be able to manage?" and I’d sheepishly say "well I can always call on you!" and Dad would be like "that isn’t the point!" I know he meant taking full responsiblity for anything and everything, help is always there but the point was to learn to manage on your own. Probably because of this type of caoching from mom and dad is the reason why I can more or less stand up on my own two feet and be rather responsible.

But tonight, I desperately needed Dad’s help and finally when he answered, I uttered a sigh of relief. Without alarming him too much I relayed back my little problem…! Dad being Dad said he would be straight there. It was such a relief to see him as his car pulled up alongisde mine but his attempts at starting the car were also fruitless and finally I told myself I was going to have to get on to the recovery guys. The problem seemed so trivial but I just couldn’t fix it.

I sent Dad home, told him I would be OK. I’d go back into the office, ring the service guys and then just wait. The service guys gave me a response time of 1 hour and while I waited I mindlessly browsed the net and made some random remarks on FB. A short telephone call to mother was an earache as she went on to tell me how I mustn’t rush and because I was that hurried always, this is a consequence of it. How could I convince mother that the car was as temperamental as I and really was nothing to do with how rushed or how relaxed I was.

An hour had passed and still no recovery van showed. Dad phoned "do you want me to fetch you something to eat?" Dad phoned again "do you want me to come wait and you can come home?"

Ahmed texted ‘just come back from salah etc.’ Marlene texted ‘confirming details for next weeks outing for afternoon tea’

I am hungry, I am tired, I want to get home and I am still sat at the office. I have to be back here again in the morning and if I don’t get out of here soon I am going to feel like I have never been home.

Just called the service helpline again, would you believe there is a delay?? Don’t these people have a response time that they work to? I mean there are Britain’s No1 response and recovery service, they mustn’t have scored too well on their response time targets!

I keep bobbing my head up to look out of the window every time I hear the heavy engine of a car, still no patrol car.

This has got to be my first breakdown experience on my own. If I hadn’t called Dad, I actually would have had to deal with this all on my own but all in all if I get through this day , I will actually have done something that I’ve never down before. Work through a Car Breakdown...now that is something to be proud of. Women aren’t completely useless, I am not completely useless. Now I know I haven’t fixed the problem but I have been patient waiting for the service guy to turn up and that is something for me…


...and there he is, I see big yellow transit van pulling up…that must be my service guy..


finally…now I can look forward to getting home..-J

Aisha