GazChap wrote:
Why were you stuck there for two and a half hours?!
First of all apologues for the typos. I was typing it on my phone which is never easy.
I was on the way to future Mrs Chinnys house with everything ready for our holiday departure in the morning. I stopped to get petrol. When I got back into my car the steering lock wouldn't disengage. Being a VW the steering lock can be a bastard but this time it was properly stuck.
After much fiddling I called the AA and it took them about 45 minutes to arrive. In the meantime I managed to roll the car out of the way (luckily I'd pulled up dead straight)
The AA man tried for a further 50 minutes to fix the car but it was a dead loss. The key just didn't feel right in the ignition. So he called for a tow truck that took a further 50 minutes to arrive.
But there was a further problem as I had no steering so the car couldn't go home (you need steering for our driveway). So the AA man suggested we drop the car outside a main dealer. So we dropped the car at the dealer half a mile up the road from my house. As the AA man pointed out, we could drop it outside a normal garage but if it needs new keys/chips if they need to replace the entire ignition then VW would need to do it anyway. So best drop it outside a VW garage.
So this is both a pain in the arse and expensive:
A) It's cost a hundred quid so far just to get home as I had the wrong sort of AA cover and had to "upgrade".
B) The car is now parked up outside a VW main dealer. Fuck me, it's going to be expensive.
C) I want to be in Devon by 5pm tommorrow for the holiday I worked fucking hard for.
So looks like I'll have to run down the dealer at 9am and see what can be done. In all probability I'll have to leave the car with them and get someone to collect it when done.
Meanwhile poor future Mrs Chinny will have to do all the packing, drive 40 miles in the wrong direction to get me, back to my house, then to her parents to get the bike, load the bikes onto her car (I'm *dreading* that bit) and off we go.
Lots of expense and pain in the backside all at the wrong time.
And my tea consisted of a Gingsters and a chocolate bar from the garage.
Apologies for sounding off, but if you'd just spent the best part of 3 hours on the forecourt of an Esso Garage you'd need to sound off!