Too many to remember...
...but:

There was the Green Renault 5 that wouldn't go in first gear - Green, until my 'friend' helpfully painted it in black tar. In hot weather you could peel bloody great strips off of it. There was the MkI Calalier that you had to start by pressing a door-bell on the steering column. Many a colleague thought it was funny moving it about in the carpark at lunchtimes so that I couldn't find it after work! Bastards.

Then, of course, there was the Ford Cortina MkIII (with the square headlights). Clutch slipped like a bastard and the steering had a mind of it's own. That poor car met it's maker on a a long straight road coming out of Canterbury in the snow. It simply couldn't make it up the incline without the clutch slipping so badly it started to roll backwards.
As I managed to pull it off the road and into a lay-by, realisation dawned on me that perhaps this was this car's last journey. *I calmly got out, walked to the passengers side, opened the door, carefully removed the glovebox (with my cassettes in it), and gently tapped the door with my foot - which went straight through the bodywork and into the car itself.

Now, this in itself wouldn't have been such a bad thing, however, the reason I was travelling back from Canterbury was because at the time I was seeing a girl who lived close to the Uni - as she was attending the uni in the daytime. I say seeing, but in hindsight it appears that I was her taxi driver - instead of money, I would receive wholly unsatisfying sex and painful blowjobs as payment.
Anyway, we'd have a bloody great big row, and me, being around 17 years old, decided to act like it and teach her a lesson by taking my TV, Video player, Tape Deck etc.... that I was lending her all the time she was living away from home, and put it in the car. The fact that after I put it in the old 'tincorner, I then had to push-start the thing - on my own - I could hardly go back and knock on the door and ask for a hand could I? - should have given me a hint of things to come.

So, there I was, stranded on a dark, long road in the snow (did I mention it was snowing - '89 or 90 I think, probably the biggest snowfall for bloody years), with a broken car incapable of getting me home, one TV, one video player, one tape deck and one bloody mammoth Jumbo acoustic guitar!
I piled it up in order of size and trotted off happily into the moonlight**
This being the days before mobile phones, I seemed to remember a phone box around 2-3 miles of where I was, so I headed in that direction. OF course, you know what's coming. It wouldn't work at all when I got to it - nothing, no dial tone nothing. By this time, my bloody arms felt like they were about to drop off and my legs weren't feeling much better.
Eventually after about another 2 miles, and what felt like 2 days of trekking though the Artic, I could hear a high pitched whining of, what I could clearly recognise as a Datsun Sunny (yes, I actually was THAT geeky - I could tell a Ford Fiesta 1.1 from 2 miles away).
I didn't really give it much thought, however, shortly after this, sure enough a Datsun Sunny comes round the corner, and in it was Daz, my mate from School.
He pulls up and says, "Wanna lift?"
Did I want a lift???!! Christ yes!

I asked him what he was doing along that road - as it was quite some distance from both our houses, and he calmly replied, "Coming to pick you up."

Apparently, and this was verified by his mother at a later date, he had fallen asleep after getting home from college, but woke up around 8pm with a nagging feeling that something was wrong. Eventually, something told him that the something wrong had something to do with me and became so nagging that he had to get up and do something about it. He'd driven to my house to find nobody in, and then drove aimlessly about looking for me or my car, until he happened to simply drive up alongside me.

Bear in mind, this was not a road he had any reason to believe I was on. He told me that at each corner he'd say to himself "This is stupid. I'll just go to the next bend and if I don't see him I'm turning around and going home." - He'd get to that bend, then say the same thing again, and so on and on.

This wasn't the only time this would happen. Shortly afterwards I remember waking up in the middle of the night, and seeing as I was a 'secret smoker' in those days, I crept out of my parents house at around 3am and went for a walk (read: fag). Sitting on top of the phone box at the end of my road was Daz. I said "What you doing up there at this time of night?", "Waiting for you." was the calm reply as he toked on his roll-up.

Bloody weird - especially as neither of us believe in any of the paranormal shite, but there you have it.





* may have been extremely angry instead of calm.
** again, see above.
(dchurch bah, Thu 22 Apr 2010, 19:18, 3 replies)

That warmed my heart - a friend is a friend, but a good friend is priceless

( BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Thu 22 Apr 2010, 19:27, closed)

I'll say...
...and he ended up marrying my sister - they're divorced now, some 20 years later, but we still meet up. Had a beer (or three) with him last night.
(dchurch bah, Thu 22 Apr 2010, 19:38, closed)

that guy was so gay for you.
And which side of Canterbury? Fox Hill from Sturry?
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Sun 25 Apr 2010, 19:36, closed)