tuesday afternoon, i trot off in "mabel", my ex-military pinz to pick my daughter up from school, later than usual as she had been on a trip.
the school is located at the top of a very steep hill and as i hit the T-junction everything cuts out. very bad place to stall, mabel not having the best hand brake ever!
am just about to re-start her when i realise there is smoke coming out of the front grille with a really nasty rubber on fire smell.
being a "calm in a panic" type of girl, i freewheel backwards down the hill for a few metres to park her up safey, making sure the back tyre is up against the curb, so she doesnt roll away, start ringing 999, while grabbing the fire extinguisher out of the cab.
meanwhile kids are poaring out of the school pointing phones at mabel for all theyre worth!
fire extinguisher in one hand phone in the other, i'm yelling at the kids to "run for their lives" which most of them did
fire extinguisher empty! mabel really starts with the HUGE flames
enter, my daughter, floods of tears, thought i was still inside the cab. as i calm her down she yells "look mum" and as i turn to see what she (and the crowd) are pointing at, i see mabel U-turning and starting off down the big hill!!!!!!!!
i left her in gear so was most suprised to see her drifting off down the road and still have no idea how the damn thing defied gravity!
fortunately she hits an illegally parked ford KA, which then hit a nissan which then hit.......(you get the picture), more or less stopping her sailing off down said hugely steep hill and hitting the fire crew head on!!! causing grillions of ££'s of damage.
anyway!, enter fire crew, who battle in vain to put mabel out, tape the road off for safety, cant understand why they cant put the fire out :/
at this point i flag one of them down and he says "does it run on petrol?" yes i say but she's running on LPG at the moment. aaah!! he says. another fire truck is called for with FOAM, it turns up, they have no foam!
finally the fire is out and the fire crew spend the next twent mins cooling the gas bottle down.
at this point i start trying to find out who owns what car and how much its going to cost me!!!
have called nigel at pinzmiester to come and take us home, MASSIVE thanks to nigel at this point for being a complete superman
ok, so enter old lady (owner of the KA), who realises immediately that she is the owner of a mashed to death KA that she had parked illegally! first words out of her mouth (before she feints) are "those double yellow lines were not there when i parked earlier, they must have been covered in leaves!)
yeah right!
anyway, fire out, details exchanged, nigel arrived, the firemen start to undo the pinz/car sandwich.
front car....zero damage (phew)
middle car...small scratch (double phew)
KA car...oh dear, rear hatch gone, rear light gone.
pinzmabel....sniff.....RIP, canvass a mess, engine cover completely gone, heater bed springs everywhere, dread to think what needs replacing
nigelpinzsupermiester, tows us off home, that in its self was one of the hairyest drives i ever had in my LIFE!!
on the up-side, my husbands hat and nigels umbrella survived!!
anyway, it's been 2 days now and nobody has called to ask me to pay for any damage :/ so fingers crossed it doesnt all cost me the earth.
and thank God nobody was hurt!
arrived home looking a little like wile e coyote after one of those huge explosions
thanks for letting me rant here!!
max
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