It was a cold early morning in October and I was about to learn yet another lesson about women. I had a lot of driving to do. I had 3 different offices to go to today, these were in Milton Keynes, Bristol and Basingstoke and I was starting from our home near Coventry.
The car I was running at the time was prone to being a bit temperamental so it was no surprise to find it chose today to mess me about. It would not start at all and as we lived at the bottom of a steep hill so a push start was not happening. I had to call in the ‘A-TEAM’. If any of you have ever had a wife give you a tow start I think you may sympathise with how this story is going to go!
The two cars were roped together and the kids strapped into the lead car. Jo was given a clear idea of what was needed, slowly get up the hill and then open it up a little on the main road. Once I was running she could pull over and un-hook – done. This was where I foolishly made my mistake. I forgot to agree a stop signal.
We got to the main road and Jo put the radio on, cranked it right up and threw her foot down. Before we left the village the old Renault choked into life and I started flashing my lights. Jo took this to mean that we weren’t going fast enough and so took it up another gear. By this point I was going a little yellow and so I started waving frantically. Jo waved back to let me know that she understood and slammed the car into 4th. By now we were past the point where I thought I’d trust my brakes to work in time if Jo stopped. I was light flashing, waving, blasting the horn and screaming like a mad man. For 3 miles this 60 MPH nightmare went on, I’d given up trying to stop her and had turned off the ignition to save petrol. Hopefully Jo would take me all the way to Bristol.
Eventually Jo saw a place to stop and towed me into place. Her questioning look as she asked how long this was going to take will stay with me forever.
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