An Epic Tale of a Stressful Weekend

I spent the last weekend of the post-exam break on a journey to London to visit Whitney's obscenely rich family. We set off from the flat early on Saturday morning through the thickest fog that I've ever seen, eventually finding the long stay cark park by virtually crashing into it. We squeezed into one of the thinnest spaces in the world and caught the courtesy bus to the airport.

I had a nagging thought while approaching the airport, and mentioned to Whitney that I thought that I'd left my lights on. Together, though, we decided that we hadn't seen that they were on when we had got the luggage out, and that we'd find the car in a perfectly operable state when we came back.

More on that story later.

After the short plane journey, we arrived at the hotel, which had the scratchiest bed in the world, but it had been paid for by Whitney's grandmother so we couldn't complain. All plans of having a rest were cancelled when her aunt phoned, saying that they were ready to meet us at her flat.

Tired, we packed up our clothes for the evening and stumbled out onto the street to find a taxi. I hadn't realised quite how exorbitantly expensive the London cabs were, but the driver was nice enough. After overshooting the turning into the street we were aiming for by some fifty metres, he happily stuck the car into reverse and belted backwards at top speed.

It was at this point that I saved someone's life. My habit of looking over my shoulder during reversing and lane changing even when I'm not driving has been inherited from my driving instructor, and it came in useful this time because there was a woman crossing the road oblivious to the large car boot hurtling towards her. If it hadn't been for my panicked shouting, she would certainly have been run over. Fortunately he slammed on the brakes in response to my entirely masculine screaming, made some meaningless comment about excess baggage and let us out across the road from the flat. I didn't tip him, thinking that ability to drive was more worthy of extra money than talkativity.

The dinner was one of the most pretentious of my life, and was held in a magnificent ex-belfry from which you could look down and see the other two layers of the restaurant. I can't remember most of the details of the menu, but it went something like this:

Starter
Crispy Triangles or Fish Arranged in a Tower

Main Course
Really Expensive Meat with Unconventional Salad or More Fish on Geometrically Improbable Plates

Dessert
Port-Soaked Pears with Minty Superyoghurt, Covered in Plants

I felt rather ill for most of the next day, my digestive system trying to cope with food that it had previously thought was better suited as decoration. We met up with Whitney's grandmother again along with another of her aunts, and visited a watercolour exhibition. I have to say that quite a lot of the featured paintings exemplified what I dislike about the art world, such as one particular artist whose works were invariably a collection of stripes cut out and pasted at various angles, entitled "Untitled #94" and priced in excess of three thousand pounds.

Lunch came next, and was marginally less overwhelming than dinner had been, though my stomach was still disagreeing. After parting with Whitney's relatives, having been made even more ill by catching a glimpse of the total cost of lunch on the bill even though I wasn't paying for it, we went down to Harrods.

I hadn't ever seen the place before and had been prepared for it to be an extremely large department store, but I was completely shocked by the levels of excess inside it. The saying that you can buy an elephant at Harrods is certainly true, as the elephant was there in the form of a lifesize stuffed animal, among a collection of four-figure-priced others.

The only place at which we actually bought anything was at Krispy Kreme, the only one in Britain. Whitney felt it was important to show me it, and it has indeed shattered my previous conception that Tesco has the best doughnuts in the world. The trouble is that a dozen of them cost more than twice than two dozen would have had we bought them anywhere in America, but such is the exorbitance of Harrods.

It was then time for the journey back up, and more public transport than anyone could reasonably be expected to cope with. Between periods of sleeping I took the chance to look in the arcade in Stansted Airport, and was pleased to see that I still held the top score for Easy mode on Euromix 2. gr33bo's positions are also intact. Sadly it seems that the machine past the security point has been removed. Once again I was stopped at security, even though the only change I had made to my bag was the large amount of doughnuts contained therein, and I had doubts as to their sharpness.

We caught the bus from Edinburgh Airport out to the long stay car park again, only to find that the long stay car park had completely changed shape and size when we arrived back. The phenomenon was explained by the bus driver, who said that there were actually two identically named car parks and getting on the right bus was largely a matter of luck, so he took the five or so of us remaining to the other park.

And we walked up to the car again, put the luggage in, opened it up, and completely failed to start it.

I didn't know exactly what the symptoms of a dead battery were - I had expected a slight struggle followed by a dying engine, but it grumpily refused to do anything at all, having had its headlights and foglamp shining uselessly for the entire weekend. Whitney and I meandered through a maze of fences to a building with "Customer Services" written on the side.

As we approached, it emerged that the sign actually said "This is not Customer Services", which must surely have been the result of a bored sign painter. Directions to the real building were provided on it, and after some more walking through the labyrinth we arrived and asked for a set of jump-leads. The attendant obliged, even though he was on his break. He knew exactly which car it was, as he and his colleagues had been watching the lights dim over the past thirty-six hours with considerable amusement.

I had never seen jump leads being connected before, and watching them was a useful guide on how to go about it. After turning his engine on and connecting the batteries together, I turned the key and the car spluttered into life. As he disconnected the leads we offered him either crisps or doughnuts as a reward, but he politely refused as he climbed back into the van.

Then I did something that would shame me to anyone who knows anything about cars anywhere. If cars were computers, this action would be equivalent only to downloading Gator or BonziBuddy. ™. I leaned over and switched the engine off.

"You need to keep it running," Whitney informed me, but the warning had come slightly too late and the engine was refusing to start again. I frantically waved at the attendant, but he evidently misinterpreted the signal somewhat, as he cheerily waved back and drove off.

I had to make a run for it, and I think my performance was impressive. Taking off with the speed of a gazelle and the grace of a giraffe, I chased the van across the car park, and after a distinctly unimpressive five metres or so I attracted his attention to come back and perform the routine again. Which he did happily, with no sign of his opinion of my idiocy being outwardly visible.

Finally, we made it out of that car park, after driving down to the pay station, remembering not to shut the engine off, and driving very carefully out. I can hardly remember the last time I stalled the car, but knowing that your engine will probably die permanently if you get your biting point wrong is very worrying indeed.

The only thing wrong with the car now is that the radio is asking for a code. A quick look in the car's manual reveals that I haven't been provided with one at all, so I have been forced to either drive in silence or sing. Hopefully a call to the customer service line will go some way to correcting the problem.

If you keep a journal, there are times in dire situations when you can console yourself with the way that at least the story will make a good entry. I think it's safe to say that all this was one of them.