The Heart to Heart Blog

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“Imagine you had Heart Failure”

by John - 14:19 on 04 May 2014

It had been a most enjoyable day.   Lunch with a few old friends and a chance to catch-up with all that had been happening since our last get-together.

When the time came to wend my way home I decided that rather than join the frantic fray on the frighteningly busy main road, the A96 for those who know it, I would instead take the scenic route home along the quieter ‘B’ roads,  where meeting the occasional farmer on his tractor constituted a rural rush hour.

All was going beautifully till about five miles from home, when the car’s engine began making some very strange noises. You know the ones, those that sound like a paper-clip when it is sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.    These noises were then followed by a few ominous phut phuts, and the car began to loose momentum.   Finally there was one very loud Phut and blue, grey and white smoke emerged from under the bonnet, and my poor car came to a grinding and undignified halt.

Thank goodness for mobile phones.   I was immediately able to give my friendly mechanic a call, who kindly dispatched one of his ‘lads’ who arrived at my assistance in what seemed like no time at all.

The inner workings of the combustion engine, I must confess, is a branch of the dark arts that has completely eluded me.   The sum total of my knowledge consists of knowing that one has to insert a key to make the thing go and that when the little arrow on the dial points to ‘E’ it’s urgently time to put fuel in her.
You will note that I refer to the car as ‘her’, very much a ‘she’, for just like a woman, I find motor vehicles to be equally mysterious, complicated and often perverse creatures.

The young ‘lad’ began to explain the extent of the mechanical problem …

“Your timing belt has gone, which has probably caused considerable damage to the pistons, rods and valves, and possibly even the cylinder head and camshaft.”

I stared at him blankly, not understanding a single word of the language he was speaking.

He then tried to explain in what he thought were more basic mechanical terms …

“I’m afraid your car has had it - its ‘engine failure’ - she is a right-off – she is done for.”

[… in all truth, my pet mechanic didn’t actually say she ‘has had it’.  He was a little more direct, using only the past tense of a single ‘f’our letter word which conveyed succinctly the same meaning]

I still stared at him blankly, not understanding the significance of what he was saying.
He could clearly see that I was incapable of grasping even the most basic of mechanical explanations, so he thought he would try a completely different tack …

“Just imagine you had ‘heart failure’ – that would be it – you would be done for”

I had to stop him there …

“Well actually …”

post script
- I now have a functioning replacement vehicle  (please keep fingers crossed as to functioning)
- Would anyone be interested in a previously owned vehicle that might be in need of some work to the engine?

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