Monday, August 01, 2011

Phnd md qtuhgick!

The ‘good’ start to last week continued: On Tuesday, the Renault 5 needed to go to the garage for a service. I don’t know the way there so Rob said ‘Follow me’. It worked really well until I had to wait for 10 cars to go by before changing roads. We hadn’t discussed where I should head for if he went too far ahead. No signposts to the part of town where the garage is. I pulled in it call Rob, but it didn’t help me much as I didn’t know where I was. He advised me to head into town and go to the garage from there (I know that route).

So I was in the middle of town in heavy traffic slowing down and the car stalled. I kept calm, turned everything off, put on the hazard lights and checked that the car was out of gear ready to start up again. The car refused to start. With a lot of impatient drivers whizzing round I started to panic. A nice young man offered to push me onto the kerb, which just happened to be an empty parking space. I was so grateful. He then ran off to help a young woman who had fallen over (‘Tomorrow’s News’ or a Guardian Angel ?). With shaking hands I sent Rob a text message, the title of this post is what I wrote. He realized something was wrong and phoned me back straight away from the garage. The garage manager has been looking after us for 25 years now, so he listened over the phone while I tried to start the car again.

They both came to rescue me and our garage man replaced the spark plugs and took the car off to service. When we collected it the following day he presented us with the bill – no charge for coming out to fetch the car.

It does pay to build a good relationship with your local garage, even if you don’t know where it is. Unfortunately he’ll be retiring at the end of the year.

5 comments:

Lucy Melford said...

What a predicament to be in! I'm glad you were rescued. Your Renault 5 must be getting pretty ancient, now, Anji...is it possible to get a newer (and possibly more reliable) car? Another Renault, of course. Then your obliging garage owner can look after it. He might even know of a bargain - another customer trading in his car, for instance.

Lucyour Renault 5 must be getting pretty ancient, now, Anji...is it possible to get a newer (and possibly more reliable) car? Another Renault, of course. Then your obliging garage owner can look after it. He might even know of a bargain - another customer trading in his car, for instance.

Lucy

sue said...

Hi Anji
Yes it's great having those young men appear out of nowhere to save the day. One time I was driving my car to the wreckers and was quite sad about it and while I was driving on the freeway it completely died in the middle of the road. The car obviously didn't want to go to the wreckers. This wonderful young man stopped and helped me push it out of the way amd called someone as of course my mobile phone didn't work etc. Cars can be stressful. Glad you got it sorted.

Caroline said...

I'm quite dyslexic but that beats anything I have ever come up with!

Sadly the generation of really helpful workers is all heading for retirement!

My sister in law had such a guy at the other end of her French village but he is long gone and it is twenty plus miles in either direction to find any help now...

Don said...

Knights in Shining Armour are few and far between these days. This guy that pushed you off to the side is a great guy (at least in this case!), glad he helped you out.

Yep, with a text message like that, I'd be calling pretty quickly too!

Glad hubby and the soon to be retired mechanic came and helped you out! Does the mechanic have a son keeping the business, or is it time to start looking for a new mechanic?

Don
http://exposeyourblog.com

Anji said...

Lucy: The Renault 5 is about 18 years old now. we were taking it to the garage to have a service before handing it over to Olivier. We bought a Grand Modus.com recently and love it.

Suz; isn't it strange how everything goes wrong at the same time. Thank goodness for kind young men!

Caroline: Everyone seems to be retiring. I've just found a really good hairdresser and guess what...?

Don: The retired garage man is a manager for Renault. We are cultivating the rest of the staff. They are all very friendly, there is a good atmosphere there, I hope it continues.