Thank you Steve

Yes, I know it’s been four months since my last post! How many Hail Mary’s do I have to say in penance? Anyway, yesterday’s escapade has propelled me into action again.

Last week’s awful weather; snow, ice, freezing rain in quick succession resulted in me being trapped by the formation of an ice rink on the road outside my house. No gritters came so I couldn’t drive and couldn’t walk the dog and of course couldn’t go to see the grandchildren on Christmas Day. On Boxing Day,  J arrived with some road salt he’d purloined from a bin somewhere and did the council’s job for them and yesterday I was able to venture out to Shrewsbury with the presents. Although, it wasn’t on the day, we made it another Christmas and I had a good time with three excited children.

As I’m not very confident driving in bad weather, I left Shrewsbury with plenty of time to drive the 46 miles and get at least nearly home before it was dark. Alas, 22 miles from home, in the middle of nowhere there was suddenly a bang and loud clanking sound from the car. Luckily, there was an entrance to some sort of drive that I could pull into to and a quick inspection revealed the source of the noise; the exhaust pipe was lying on the ground!

Got out my RAC card and rang the breakdown number, I was answered by an automated message saying they would answer my call as soon as possible. This went on and on and on until over 40 minutes had passed before I had my call answered. All information given, I was then informed that their estimated time to get to me was 1 hour 45 minutes.

Depressed, I looked around to see where I’d actually stopped. I was at the entrance to a dirt track that wound round through overgrown verges. There was a wooden sign nailed to a tree at the entrance, the writing almost indecipherable said Minton Hall. A few metres up the drive was a derelict house, all windows broken, porch falling down and front door hanging off it’s hinges, quess at one time it was a gate lodge but now it was very sad and a bit spooky.

I took the dog out and walked a way up the drive and could see a large building through the trees, but the track got more and more potholed and muddy and it was getting very dark so I had to abandon the walk before I could get really close. As I was walking back,  Steve, the RAC patrolman rang to check my exact location and said he wasn’t too far away; 15 minutes later he arrived.

I was still a bit worried because I thought they would have sent a recovery vehicle and this was just a patrol van but Steve had a quick look under the car at my exhaust pipe lying forlorn on the ground, jumped up and said “It’s just the bracket that’s gone the exhaust is OK, I’ll fashion a tie up and you’ll be fine”. True to his word, he jacked up the car, slid underneath and in 10 minutes the exhaust was sitting back where it should be.

It was totally dark by the time he’d finished and I was glad to get away from the spooky house and make my way home. All together it took me 4 hours to travel the 46 miles but much as I can praise Steve and his expertise I can’t say the same for the RAC and their answering service after it took Steve less time to reach me than it did for me to get my call answered.

During the bad weather, all the motoring companies have been giving points of advice to drivers one of which is to have a fully charged mobile phone, but they don’t say that it’s because it takes them so bloody long to answer your call!

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