Screen Test

If I was a responsible motorist I would know exactly what was happening underneath the bonnet of our car at any given time. I don’t mean I would necessarily know the precise workings of the internal combustion engine, but I’d know the basics, like the oil and water levels and, well, notice if everything wasn’t exactly tickety-boo.

Things do not improve beyond the bonnet either. I’m vaguely aware of tyre pressures but I’d really only notice if the tyre was flat at the point that I’m frantically revving and the car is dragging itself along the road on its rims. I occasionally give one of the tyres a kick if I have doubts about it, just like I saw grown men do when I was a kid but I frankly have no idea what I’m looking for. Perhaps they didn’t either, perhaps this is one massive blag by men since time immemorial.

I do sort of envy those who keep their car sparkling clean without resorting to the economy wash at the Morrisons petrol station, and those who have a glove compartment full of useful things like maps and travel sweets and chamois leathers, rather than rammed full of the present Mrs Hayward’s CDs. If you’re a fan of poor quality cheesy music it’s a treasure trove. If not, then like me you are trapped in a motorised equivalent of the worst nightclub in the world. There’s not even a bar to speak of although I’m working on it.

However the basic thing I can do is manage the screen wash. I know what screen wash is and I know where to put it. The problem is, due to a total lack of organisation, I never know how much is in there at any given time. Consequently it always runs out at totally inconvenient moments. Yesterday morning was a case in point. It ran out on the way to work. 

I am organised in that I have a bottle in the boot but this doesn’t help when a dirty and unnecessary lorry chugging up the A15 passes by and douses the car in muddy water and I then find out I can do nothing to clean the windscreen as the screen wash has run out. Compounded to this the windscreen wipers are also unaware of this change of circumstances and they just merrily wipe the mud more broadly across the windscreen just in case they were worried that I actually might have some sort of visibility.

So there I was, in a layby, on a cold and wet Wednesday morning, pouring a glut of screen wash into the car. This led me to think there’s an obvious design flaw here. There should be a little light on the dashboard to tell me when the screen wash is nearly empty. Then I could, at my leisure, sort it out, like I do with petrol. There could even be a little watery fanfare if necessary. 

Surely the technical bods at our leading car manufacturers could run to that, after all they don’t want me to end up in a ditch do they? That wouldn’t be a good advert for their cars at all. 

I think I’m going to work on this idea......what? I don't need to. Some cars already have this feature? D'oh! Back to the drawing board.

Driving in my Car

I think that I’ve mentioned before that I like cars but I know virtually nothing about them. Driving is still fun although I don’t go out driving for driving’s sake like I used to in the months after I passed my driving test. In those days a friend introduced me to a game where we would pick a colour and follow the next car of that colour for nine minutes, wherever it went. These days this would be considered stalking and even then it was frowned upon, particularly when I followed one such target into his own driveway.

These days driving a car is all about taking me from A to B as quickly as possible. I watch Top Gear on the TV but this really tells me nothing about cars. Yes, I can marvel at a Bugatti Veyron and wish that I owned one but in the real world it would be like me trying to open a can of baked beans with a pneumatic drill, it’s the wrong tool for the job. 

What would be more frustrating than sat in a Veyron, knowing that with a slight tap of the accelerator I could be launched on to the moon, when in fact I’m most likely going to be sat behind a tractor crawling along the A15 at 20mph? Despite the Veyron’s top speed of 253mph I won’t even be able to overtake as there’ll be too much traffic skulking behind another tractor coming in the opposite direction.

Did you know that tractors don’t have to have any road tax because they’re primarily off–road vehicles? I often ponder that peculiarity of the law when I’m slowly trundling along in a queue of traffic behind Farmer Barley Mow on his way home, and note that he could be making use of the empty fields either side of the road rather than holding up a mile of traffic. This is a pet hate of mine so don’t get me started.

I am left therefore with the choice of a normal run-of-the mill road car that’s efficient but has a little bit of poke to alarm the present Mrs Hayward with on the motorway, but not enough to have me pursued down the A1(M) by screaming squad cars. 

I do like an unusual looking car though. I put this down to the fact that the earliest car I remember my parents having was a Morris Traveller. Whoever thought of adding a large proportion of wood to the outer shell of the car was a genius and a madman in equal parts. It looked less like a car and more like a sideboard but as a small child I was fascinated with it. 

I convinced myself that when I was old enough to drive I too would have a funny looking car. As it was the first car I drove after passing my test was a beige Austin Maestro that you could only crank into fifth gear when the moon was in alignment with Neptune. It wasn’t funny looking, it just wasn’t very good but it got me about.

Now I drive a Vauxhall Astra. Not the most exciting or attractive car in the world but not the worst looking either. Most road cars blend into one amorphous mechanical blob to me but the Astra has that nice silver band across its rear that I quite like for some reason. Don’t get me wrong, I covet the Honda Civic, the new one with an interior like a spaceship, and in comparison the Astra is a cheap boiled sweet, charming but boring, whereas the Civic is the Malteser sweet out of a tin of Celebrations, all shiny and exciting and full of chocolately naughtiness.

I don’t know what it is about discussing cars that forces an individual into spouting clichés like they’ve been possessed by the agitated spirit of Jeremy Clarkson but I note that it’s happened to me here and I shall ride that wave until I crash face first on the jagged rock of unoriginality.

In the end it doesn’t matter. I’ll probably go and choose another Vauxhall next time because the people at the service centre are quite nice. Not that I intend to be visiting them that often but if something goes wrong I have no idea what to do. What goes on under the bonnet is a mystery to me. I’ve heard of the carburettor and the head gasket but I don’t really know what they are. I’m not bothered by this. People ride horses but I suspect that very few know how its respiratory system works. They just like riding them.

So that’s really where I came in. I have explained in a convoluted way that I like cars but I don’t understand them, and that I don’t like tractors. 

Mind you, give me a tractor and I’ll show you how it should be driven, at speed and in a field with ‘go faster’ stripes down the side. Tractor Drag Racing anyone?

Vorsprung Berk Technik

I have realised that I know nothing useful about cars. I like to think that I know how to drive them although those who have been my passengers may disagree. As to what goes on underneath the bonnet I have no idea. For all I know, under the mass of metal that technical people call ‘the engine’ there could be monkeys on tricycles making it move, although I’ve not seen any mention of this in the adverts.

What made me think about this was an occurrence on the way to Southampton on Saturday. There I was, minding my own business, cruising down the A43 at a steady speed when suddenly I noticed a jolt on the accelerator pedal and my speed slowed. It’s then I noticed a little innocuous light on the dashboard. Illuminated was a little picture of a car next to a giant spanner. Even to the mechanically illiterate like me it suggested that all was not well.

The present Mrs Hayward, who up to this point had been sound asleep, was suddenly awake and sat up attentively like a Meerkat, as if some sixth sense had kicked in. I abandoned the A43 at the next junction while Mrs H rummaged around in the glove compartment for the manual to ascertain whether it was my fault so she could shout at me.

This little event has made me realise that, unlike men of yore, in the event of a car-related breakdown I am helpless and have no option but to put myself in the hands of the gentlemen from the Royal Automobile Club. Of course there may also be ladies in said club but I’ve yet to see one fixing cars, and I’ve been rescued by a few now.

So the sad fact is that I know absolutely nothing about how the car moves, apart from putting petrol in it. I have seen under the bonnet and am aware of some key areas, such as oil and water, although this is only as a result of a previous mechanical misdemeanour. This means that I can stare thoughtfully at the dipstick and declare, apropos of nothing, that we need more oil, or possibly water. I am also familiar with screen wash. In fact I would call that my specialist area after the actual driving part.

Other than that my knowledge of things such as tyres, carburettors, suspension, etc, is non-existent and I have to nod sagely and make what I think are appropriate sounding noises when the man from the garage flagrantly ignores Mrs H and discusses the vehicle’s woes directly with me.

I’m good in a crisis though. I know how to stop a car when the engine blows up whilst in the fast lane of a motorway (the A1(M) near Peterborugh on a cold December night – they deployed an RAC man to come and get us, but as he was in Durham he wasn’t a lot of use to us), or at a junction when the cam belt had been chewed off by the monkeys and snapped (A34 on another cold December night – we were towed out of the way by the police and I left the steering wheel locked so the WPC in our car had quite a surprising journey around the roundabout), or when the clutch broke (Danes Camp Way, Northampton – a passing motorist with a fag hanging out of his mouth arrived and investigated our hot engine without starting a fire, much to our relief), or when the handbrake snapped while I was trying to park on a very steep hill (City Road, Sheffield – I had to go and find a flat piece of land to park it on, which if you’ve been to Sheffield you’ll know is quite a challenge).

So, I should learn more about the motor vehicle as, whilst my driving style is sometimes flamboyant a la James Hunt or Lewis Hamilton, I don’t have a reassuring pit crew in easy distance to sort the problem out. Surely the very least I should know, as a man with a house and a wife, is to how to change a tyre.

In the end we solved our most recent problem by following the advice in the manual – by turning the car off and turning it on again. It seemed like a very 21^st century solution.

Maybe the monkeys just needed a rest.