women and cars
The Mazda MX5, Eunos Roadster or Miata, if you are an American, is as tough as nails. On top it looks pretty and hasn't dated much since it's introduction in 1989. The shape was shamelessly borrowed from the 60s Lotus Élan, simple and still fresh. Many, myself included feel that the 1998 restyle actually took from the purity of the original.
Look under one and its all girders, well bolted together, with all the mechanical and suspending bits attached in a confidence inspiring way. If you have one and have never looked at it's bottom, do - now or maybe finish up here first. Get down to your local garage and get it on a ramp for a while and take a walk underneath.
Monday lunchtime, outside a shop in Cork City, with a borrowed drill and a 5mm bit, I drilled about 30 holes in mine. 'He's finally lost the plot', I hear you say, or maybe he just wants to take the prettiness off the car.
Got my new album - the first 100 of the first 1,000 anyway (I couldn't fit more in the boot (trunk)). Been having trouble with my women lately - that's the first line from 'Connie Lingers' a track from my unfinished second album - read the journals.Troubles come in threes, sixes or ninety-nines - depending on the weather (still unseasonably good)
The first doorstep copy of 'Odds & Sods' was bought by a lovely woman, who's door I knocked at, revisiting the housing estate, in Dundrum, where I'd sold my first doorstep copy of 'Losers & Sinners' all those years ago. Coincidentally I lived in the same estate from Sept. '69 for eighteen months. Were you even born then?
After talking for a while and singing a couple of songs, over a cup of tea, she gave me a copy of a book she'd written some years ago - The Love Crucible. From the bit I've read, it's quite a book and should eventually help me sort out my tattered and torn love life.
Tuesday, I left Dublin - heading for Winkles in Kinvara - the songwriters night and worked, en route, in Loughrea and made my first sale there to a man of the cloth. As they say 'it could happen to a Bishop - which in fact, he turned out to be. Clonfert and a gentleman.
At about seven, my gearlever became a bit stubborn and became increasingly so over the next hour. The clutch pedal had 'gone soft' meaning either my cable was gone, my pressure plate (I know this from previous experience) was f*cked or my hydraulics were b*llixed.
When your clutch is slipping, at worst, you are sitting in you car in gear with the engine revving but you ain't goin'nowhere. I don't want to get technical (this is supposed to be a music site), but just imagine driving a car, with a clutch pedal that you don't use. Yes? Now you've got the picture. It's not fun but it can be done. Here's how; to start - put the car in first OR reverse with the engine off. Look both ways and all around and if there's no one within half a mile, turn the key and hop till the engine has caught - being ready to switch off in emergencies. If it's forward you want to go, better get thinking about moving up a gear or several. Gear changing is tricky and, as I said, I don't want to get technical here so suffice it to say that it's a question of matching engine speed to car speed and knowing what gear you are in.
I had a Triumph Spitfire years and years ago and while it wasn't very old when I bought it, something fell off most weeks and, eventually, only the absolute essentials got replaced and I actually drove it in this fashion for a year or so - the fact that nobody else could drive it sort of added to it's charm. When I was studying violin making, about ten years later, my elderly Citroen went down the same road.Reversing should only be done in emergencies and right turns onto major roads handled with extreme caution.
I got to winkles in this fashion, played at the songwriter night and gave a friend - Ricko Donovan - a lift back to Lisdoonvarna, where I would stay the night. I warned Ricko that he was taking his life in his hands. We took the coast road from Ballyvaughan in order to avoid 'corkscrew hill'. Open two-seaters are not the ideal cars for falling off mountains in. We only had to stop and start once on the entire journey - done mostly in fourth gear.
Instead of the four to five hundred euro I was expecting to have to find, the problem was sorted - temporarily - by a mechanic Ricko knew, with a few ccs of hydraulic fluid. It must be leaking somewhere but it doesn't seem to need anymore a week later.
Left Ricko's and the car is pulling to the left. The front nearside tyre is not quite flat. After it was repaired, I worked the day in Clare and dropped a copy of 'Odds & Sods' into Darragh McConnell, son of Cormac and nephew of Mickey, who wrote 'Only the Rivers Run Free'.
Cars running great and gets me back to the cottage in the middle of nowhere - the first time I've been there in a while.
Maybe you're still wondering then, why drill all the holes in the car? (I know that that's a questionable question mark but it is my site!)
I'll explain, eventually. After a good weeks work, lots of songs sung and copies of both albums going well, I headed up to the Old Mill in Newbridge on Saturday, where Barbara Dunne was playing a gig - with a string quartet. I missed the gig, all but the last three songs. Why? That's where the 'having trouble with my women lately' comes in. How so? Mind your own f*cking business or wait for the songs. I'm sure it'll all get written down eventually.
Saturday was a weird night - probably something to do with the moon being in cahoots with Mars, which has been hanging around a lot lately - unlike Madonna who must have found something new to pursue. Sunday was a gorgeous day and I hung around the mill till about twelve drinking good coffee and enjoying good company.
One guy there is working on special effects for the film that's being shot down the road at Ballymore Eustace - King Arthur. He told tales of people collapsing from smoke inhalation when the valley was filled with black battle smoke, generated by a diesel burner and of extras doing the battle scenes, after minimal training. One guy losing an eye and another getting his head staved in a bit and all for 75 euro per hour. Life was tough in those days. I'm glad I turned down the audition.
I went to look at the site though. Couldn't get near it and contented myself with a lunch at the Ballymore Inn. They do a great pizza.
Heading back, cross country, over the Curragh of Kildare, pleased to be avoiding the Cork - Kilkenny hurling final traffic, the weather was particularly un-Irish. I stopped to sit on the grass and have a look at the Sunday paper for an hour or so - no rush. Nice weather for a t-shirt and some lighter trousers and I'd loads of clean stuff in the car.
Not a soul in sight - done. Thirty seconds after throwing the old stuff in the boot, I knew I'd left the keys in the pocket and, of course id closed the lid! Somewhere in the country I had a spare key - maybe even in the boot!
Oh yes! When I renewed my insurance last, I enquired about these 'extra benefits' that I was paying lots of extra money for. Roadside assistance! They'd even given me a sticker, with a phone number on it and wasn't it on my windscreen.
In due course, Herbie - honestly that was his name - came to the rescue. Not as I'd imagined though with a bunch of skeleton keys, but with a full on rescue vehicle and not a clue as to how to get in to my trunk.
So here we are, sitting in Donnelly's hollow in the Curragh, sun is shining, doors, windows and roof all open or nice little roadster, rescue truck behind and two grown men scratching heads.
Imagine a mouse's airbed, complete with a puffer bulb to inflate it. Herbie had one and slipped it between the back panel and the lid of the boot. The widening crack wasn't nearly enough to insert fingers to find unlocking cable or rod. There are two strong bulkheads, sandwiching a petrol tank, between the open interior and the closed boot so no way in there. Any other day of the week, transporting the car to the nearest locksmith would have been the solution. Herbie phoned a buddy from the AA, he shed no further light on matters.
How would a twelve year old expert - and there are a lot of them - get in, I wondered. Herbie thought they'd do a lot of damage first. I suggested that we may have to do some damage, at this point as I had to get going. I then had to give a waiver to his head office and the first and least damaging thing to try was the old 'screwdriver in the lock' routine - didn't work.
Not quite soon enough, but just before things got really drastic - and we are talking crowbars here - I got the idea about fishing out the clothes and keys. I mean, they had to be on top of everything else, and yes, Herbie did have a piece of wire and another mouse thing to widen the gap a bit more.
My rainbow sweater was the first escapee - albeit with a few new holes - then an attempt by my full briefcase. This was followed by a bra - not mine, honest - and finally the trousers. Yes the keys were in the pocket. Brilliant!
Would the lock still work after the screwdriver? Let's try. Key breaks in lock.
Amazingly, within an hour of this, Herbie returns with a new key - cut from the two halves of the old one and I'm on the road - just in time for the Cork - Kilkenny final traffic, with my cork flag flying at half-mast.
Monday morning, even with the new key, the boot won't open. Small as it may be, a good chunk of my life is in it - briefcase, phone charger, writings, Cds etc. and so to a locksmith in Cork city.
He tries everything to no avail and as the lock, recessed to begin with and pushed further in by the screwdriver, is too far in, he can't cut off the top to remove the barrel. I suggest cutting a hole in the back panel - it is only plastic and was damaged by an anonymous 4 x 4 tow hitch about 8 months ago. The only alternative would be ripping off the lid with a crowbar.
Michael couldn't bring himself to do the damage and as it was lunchtime I suggested he went to eat and left me alone for an hour with his drill. So that's why I, outside his shop, drilled about 30 holes - in a square pattern, about the size of a Cd jewel case.
I can now open and close the trunk, with a small penknife - so can anybody else so I won't be carrying my millions in there and it's not a very pretty sight. I am looking for a replacement panel for less than the 500 euro I've been quoted - for a used one - so if you have one of these in your back yard (and I got the laptop) let me know. If you happen to see me driving along, with a Velcro attached sign, advertising the website then you'll know it's covering a multitude of sins.
If I happen to have a black eye or broken nose - then that'll be another story and, like I said, 'mind your own f*cking business.
