7:29 pm, May 11, 2011
If you see James Batchelor can you kick him for me. Thanks. He was the man behind last month’s 911 for 2011 update and looking back over the copy I can see why we’re in the state we’re in now.
‘Unusually for us, things are going quite smoothly,’ were the fateful words our young hack started his update in the magazine with. Which explains the month of despair I’ve just had to contend with.
As you’ve probably guessed, we haven’t had the best of luck. The giant, tart’s lipstick-red Citroen is still littering my drive and the wife is starting to get the hump. With the car, not me. Well actually me, because the car is still there.
We listed the car for sale on Auto Trader and started it at £10,495 (on Citroen’s advice, I hasten to add). After a week of staring at a non- ringing phone we lowered the price to £10,250. Again, the only phone call we got was from Auto Trader trying to flog me an extension to the ad.
As this is a family website I won’t repeat what I wanted to say to him. Instead I did the polite thing and pretended I’d lost phone reception and hung up.
With a week left of the advert online I decided to lower the price further to £9,995. Thankfully that did the trick. The first caller was looking for a taxi and dropped by for a test drive. Thing is, he didn’t really want a test drive at all. He poked and prodded the poor Picasso for about 40 minutes asking questions a four-year-old would think stupid.
‘So that’s the gearstick, yeah?’ Was just one of the ridiculous sentences that escaped from this man’s mouth.
‘That’s the radio, yeah? Does it play CDs.’ I refrained from answering with a remark about him struggling to get a tape into the slot, but instead replied with an affirmative. To say taxi-wannabe man was getting on my nerves would be an understatement.
‘That really is quite a bargain you’ve found – I suggest you go and buy that one’
After an hour of inane drivel he finally got around to talking money. I told him it had just been reduced from £10.5k to £10k so we wouldn’t be able to go down much more.
‘Well, I’ve seen one for £9k, would you take that?’ he asked.
‘£9k?’ I replied. ‘That really is quite a bargain you’ve found – I suggest you go and buy that one.’ Proceedings ended there.
Timewaster number two started off a bit more promising. He turned up in a tired Seat Alhambra and talked about his kids having enough room in the back, he fiddled with the seats, marvelled at the fridge, loved the fact it had cruise control and was flabbergasted at the cubby holes on top of the dash.
In fact, it was going so swimmingly I didn’t mind the fact we’d been chatting for just over an hour when he decided he wanted to take it for a spin. Some 45 minutes of copious jerky gear changes (possibly his fault, possibly the car’s), some ridiculous shuffle steering and three near- misses, we arrived back at my place.
He jumped out, shouted ‘thanks very much’ and hot-footed it to his car. The fact I’d just lost two hours of my life I’d never get back with a man who’d make Mr Bean look sane was slowly starting to sink in so I shouted after him: ‘Aren’t you going to make me an offer?’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he shouted out of a cracked window as he drove past in his Seat. As most of you know, that’s timewaster for ‘sucker’…
Now the Auto Trader advert has run out we’ve got a few options. One is to advertise it again, but the more I think about it the more a trade deal for some easier-to-shift options looks more attractive.
We’ve already got a few irons in fires and could have some movement this week. Stay tuned…
THE STORY SO FAR…
