How To Be a Secret Agent

This is an attempt at yet another educational blog post, thinly veiling the fact that I'm just telling you what I did today. This post contains not one but two educational guides, please read both, they come as a bizarre sort of spots-and-strips double act.

Today I have achieved many things - enough to be broken into multiple separate educational blog posts - a series, if you will and elaborated upon at length until you've either learned a little something or gone off me altogether.  However, today is to be closely followed by Tomorrow, another jam-packed, funwork-filled monster of a day, and this morning started not nearly long enough after the end of the creature that was Yesterday. The result of this is that today will be jammed in to one small jumbled blog post, like gymnasts in a phone box.

If my day we're a phonebox, and things were people... 

This is therefore a number of different How To.. guides , but you have to imagine them all in a certain tall, red, communicative box.

Guide #1 How To Fix A Small, Old South-Korean Car. Again. 

In my last post, Boys and Girls, we learned how to change a lightbulb whilst retaining a very tiny shred of self-respect and having an uplifting spiritual experience. Today we scored to more things of the List of Things That Are Buggered In This Car.
This first of these is that the fan belt was loose. And getting looser. Driving at low enough speeds to negotiate junctions and stuff is automatically accompanied by a high-pitched blood-curdling squeak. You're all picturing killer mice now, aren't you. Thanks, that's me sleeping with the light on. Using headlights further complicated matters. EEEEEEK! Yesterday we drove to a town 2 hours away with every seatbelt in use. Drove there in daylight, using none of the things that require battery. Once on the open road we cautiously attempted radio. Driving back - less simple. Colder, wetter, and dark. Headlights needed = EEEEEK. Poor residents. I'm loathe to identify the town in question in case someone who lives there reads this, thinks "It was YOU!" and feeds me magnetic cake before giving me a large (spiky) knife as a belated birthday present.

He wasn't happy, put it that way. The root of the problem was a bolt that had lost half of itself (probably in an all-night poker game that didn't go to plan) and therefore left the alternator and the belt hanging on in there on a single bolt. A Man drew me a picture and it all made sense. He said (in so many words) "this is what's wrong, you need a more Manly Mechanical Man to fix it." And I listened carefully to the big words he used.

#1 Break car. Done.

#2 Find time to get to a Manly Mechanical Man. Thankfully we have the benefit of hindsight to assist at the juncture. Driving a car that's old enough to have qualifications means you've probably needed to get stuff fixed before. We now know that the natural environment for the magical fixey people is a garage.

#3 Dispense with telephone sophistication. Get out of bed too early, exchange jammies for clothing (see previous post for guidelines on this matter and get in the car. At this point it helps to have an amenable Flatmate around with the keys to the Hire Car that was needed for yesterday's adventure.

#4 Drive to the garage, arrive unannounced. Park car on double-yellows. Remove embarrassing or useful objects from the car. I do not wish to be judged for my taste in golf umbrellas. Wander in to garage.

#5 Address Mechanic by name (usually Colin, Dave or Steve - a guess may be worth it here) and explain that you brought it down to see if he could take a look at it. Repeat the big words heard earlier praying you get them in the right order and don't come across as insufficiently knowledgeable.

#6 Hand over keys, and mobile number. Ignore the classy artwork in the office. Silently (momentarily) marvel on quite what people will put on a calendar these days, and all the different uses of silicon.

#7 Cadge a lift home and pray it doesn't cost too much. #8 Await phonecall and collect later.

#9 When collecting, say "While you're free, there's another thing. Won't take more than ten seconds." And pop the bonnet. At this point the Man will complain that nothing takes only ten seconds. Point to the rattly big, prod it to demonstrate the annoying rattle and say, "This thing does this, it's a pain in the arse". The Man grunts, reaches over, pulls off the whole rattly thing and throws it in a skip. Over his head. Backwards. Job's a good 'un. No more rattle. Still don't know what the ex-rattly bit did, and whether it was akin to an Appendix or more crucial than that. We'll find out!

In short, he's healthy again to the tune of half an hour's labour costs. Nice one Mr Mechanic Man.

Guide #2 How to be a Secret Agent (psst, don't tell anyone)

16:45 Arrive home from Car fixing experience. Stop to send a text. Recieve text asking for Train Station Taxi Service.

16:50 Collect passenger and head for station, taking clever corner-cuts to avoid traffic lights. 16:55 passenger declares "Crap, I've forgotten a Small Crucial Thing. Whatever shall we do?" TRAIN LEAVES at 17:30!

17:00 Due to proximity at time of Passenger Memory Catchup, deliver Passenger to Train Station. Engage full Secret Agent Mode.

17:06 Get out of the Station Again, due to being screwed by a Traffic Light with anger issues, probably as a direct result of not being hugged enough as a mini traffic light. Drive to Flatmate's workplace. Possibly stretch small sections of speed limit. Listen to Classical music on the radio to cancel this out. Cobbles, side streets, traffic-avoiding zig-zags all earn Secret Agent Points. Collisions, injuries, accidental deaths all lose points.

17:15 Park without paying outside Flatmate's workplace. Run! Enter Flatmate's office, explain quickly (not at all out of breath from running. You are young and fit.) that you are Flatmate's Flatmate, and that Flatmate may be a Numpty and has forgotten Small Crucial Item. Collect Small Crucial Item, and stow in pocket. RUN!

17:17 Drive, dammit drive. One-way Streets, forward thinking. When faced with an uncooperative traffic lights, think pantomime-style "Oh no you (bloody-well) won't" thoughts. This actually works and has been proven, with science and stuff, like. Curse town planners. Curse the fact you're driving in a city where to get from a place very near the station to the actual station you have to traverse 17 sides of a square, each corner with a traffic light. Whisper Hallelujahs when all 17 lights (ok, 4) miraculously stay green.

17:29 Enter multi-story Carp-Ark (sorry, wrong story) car park, take tickets. Drive round looking for space, watching out for the fish (sorry, there I go again). Park, remember to take the keys with you. Overlook the fact one door is still open.

17:30 Run. Run some more. Phone Flatmate whilst running.

17:31:39 (exactly) Arrive at wrong side of ticket barriers, train is still on platform, doors closing with Flatmate aboard. Wave Small Crucial Object at Men in High Vis, quickly explain importance of completing Secret Agent delivery to Flatmate on train. Use flattery, high concentration flattery at that due to the obvious time constraints. Blag your way through the barriers.

Run, using phone to locate Flatmate. Deliver Small Crucial Object. Award Secret Agent Points for a job well done. Go to Sainsbury's to buy groceries to fool any passers by witnessing the scene with the running that you are in fact not a Certified Nutter but a normal citizen and neither are you World's Greatest Secret Agent.

This was a long post. I hope you have learned something. Or been amused. Both is aiming too high.