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Took the car in for its MOT this morning, praying that I had done enough to pass by putting a bit of tape over the crack in the headlight cover. Catie had caught the front of the car reversing out of our narrow driveway (made narrower by the gate having been broken in the storm) and done an amazing amount of damage for such a minor prang. I can't talk, all my car accidents have been at under 5mph and I caught the gatepost in the other car on the same day.
The men said they'd ring me when they were done, but they didn't and I mooched around town for a couple of hours before walking back to see what was going on. They had written my phone number down wrong. It turned out that the tape on the headlight was not enough - the accident had basically taken out the whole headlight, which was stuck in the downward position and not roadworthy. And the even worse news was that the garage had been in touch with VW who said they had the part on order, but it wasn't yet available and they had no idea when it would be. With under two weeks left before the car needs an MOT and taxing and with Christmas falling into that fortnight, this was pretty bad news.
Times of anxiety have got much worse for me in recent months and this one tipped me off the scale. I feel powerless to do anything and humiliated by my impotence and annoyed that I am going to be wasting loads of time on something like this. Usually I feel like this even when I objectively know that I will be able to call someone to come out to fix things, but this time there was an additional time limit on everything and enough obstacles to make everything feel hopeless. What happens if you can't fix your car in time for your MOT? Do you just have to keep it off the road (which I can do, but it will make it difficult to charge my other car)? And then how do you get it to the garage for the MOT when you don't have it taxed? (I think you're OK as long as you're on your way to the garage, but it's still stressful. And I don't know because I am not a proper man and only want a car so I can use it for transport, not so I can understand how it works.
The mechanic suggested I source a second hand headlight on the internet and then fit it myself, which over estimated my manly abilities by 100%. Even if I could find one there was no way I was going to be able to remove the old headlight and put in a new one, but that problem was far down the road. I went online to see if I could find a second hand headlight and there were loads on ebay, some of them only about £25. But they were for a previous version of the Sharan. I thought it was only Apple that kept changing connectors and stuff every time a new version came out.
I also needed to make sure that I got the headlight for the right side of the car, by which I mean the correct side. But which side is right and which side is left? From the perspective of someone in the car or looking at the car. I came close to ordering a headlight for the wrong car and the wrong side of the car.
In the end, I thought I had found one, on a website that asked for the car reg so hopefully found a part that worked but it said it was for "right hand traffic" and I am not sure what that means. For traffic that passes on the right or for traffic that is driving on the right. I hesitated in buying it, even though I can return it if it's not right (in both senses). But a friend recommended a mechanic who might be able to help. Even he didn't know what right hand traffic meant.
So maybe that will sort it and maybe I'll be able to drive my car in 2025. Or I could just set it on fire and be done with it. It's not so much the issue that worries me, but my reaction to stuff like this, which gets more extreme each time and which makes me concerned that I might be one of those comedians who have a mental condition that they have to do a show about. Only physical conditions for me.
I am not only older than Richard Wilson when he started playing Victor Meldrew, I have turned into Victor Meldrew. And no, I don't believe it.
In this heightened state of annoyance I ended up talking to a psychiatrist. Not for this problem directly, but because I was interviewing Dr Benji Waterhouse for my book podcast. I told him that I definitely wasn't mentally ill and he pointed out that that's what mentally ill patients tend to say. So do non-mentally ill ones though. So it's not an acid test. There's more than that to being a psychiatrist.
That might be my last job of 2024 though. Unless I record a Twitch of Fun for Christmas or do some more snooker or another stone clear. Not that any of those can be classed as jobs.
Anyway my stress levels went down a little bit, but not entirely and I realised that I need to try and get things in perspective or one day my tired little heart is going to go pop. It's how I want to go, full of anger, impotence and humiliation, extreme pain and just as my life ebbs away, incontinence. It's tricky to have a noble death, but there can hardly be a less noble one than your heart exploding because you can't identify, let alone repair, a headlight.
