The Go Kart

This is something I wrote years ago.

When I was little, my Dad got a job for a construction company working out in Saudi Arabia.  He went to live there when I was five, and a few months later the rest of the family went out there to stay with him.  I ended up living overseas for four years in total, and it made a big impact on my life in a lot of ways.  I developed a morbid fear of flying and I developed a wider understanding of the different cultures of the world.  I also did some very stupid things because there isn’t a lot to do when you’re a small child and you’re living in a country like Saudi.

We lived on a compound, which was just a village with a big concrete wall right the way around and a gate with guards at the front.  Apart from visits to the shops and the odd trip out to the desert, my life was lived inside those four walls.  We lived in two different compounds over the years.  The first one was in the south of the country, on an airbase called Khamis Mushayt.  Literally that translates as Thursday Market, so well done, you just learnt your first Arabic.  Later we moved further north to Riyadh, the capital city, but most of the insane events happened in Khamis.  This story happened there.

In order to give all the kids something to do with their lives apart from going to look for snakes and scorpions, the teachers at the little school in the compound started after school projects.  One of these was to divide us into teams and build go karts, which we would then race.  

It nearly started badly.  On the way to school that morning, I found a shiny metal thing in the sandy path.  I had no idea what it was, but I picked it up and liked the weight of it and the feel of machined grooves around the pointed tip. I put it in my pocket, and took it home at the end of the day.  Then we went back to the school all excited to be building go karts.  When we got there though, everyone was looking glum.  The teacher sadly announced that we couldn’t build anything because he had lost the chuck bit for the drill and couldn’t use it.  I had no idea what a chuck bit was but something sparked in my mind, so I asked him what it looked like.  He described the exact thing I had found in the sand that morning.  Excitedly I told him I had found it and I ran all the way home and all the way back to return the chuck to him.  He was delighted and I was a miniature hero for two minutes.  We could build the go karts.

We split into teams of four to build the go kart.  There were maybe forty of us, so that made for 10 go karts.  The teachers bought the materials.  The go karts were made out of wood with old pram and bicycle wheels, and plastic school chairs for seats.  Our go kart was built out of heavy sheets of plywood.  It had a flat floor with a plastic seat bolted to it, and a lap seat belt.  It had high wooden sides so that when you sat in it you could see nothing out either side.  Sticking out the front was a plank of wood, which ended in a T shape.  This was fixed with a central bolt, and rope was fixed to either side.  In this way it could be steered.  Two small wheels on either end of the T and two big bicycle wheels at the back completed the machine.  It took a few days to build, and when it was done it looked like a wooden armoured car.

When everyone had built their karts, we wheeled them up to the top of a hill for a race.  On the way we noticed the tiny flaw in the design of our go-kart.  It took two of us pulling it just to move the thing.  We had added so much wood to it that we had literally built a wooden tank.  Needless to say, when the race started, the older, wiser children in their lightweight, flimsy designs rocketed away and our behemoth crawled along barely picking up momentum.

My dreams of piloting a mass of angry wood and rope at barely controllable speeds were shattered.  I had had a vision of hurtling along with the passing world a mere blur, but instead we were humiliated.  Downcast, we dragged our creation home, and it was dumped unceremoniously outside the house and left to blister away under the relentless sun.

My dreams of speed did not die though.  I continued to think through where we had gone wrong.  Looking back, I suppose the simple line of reasoning must have come from being a small child, but instead of going for the obvious and lightening the go-kart to make it faster, I decided what it really needed was a steeper hill to work with.

In the very centre of the compound there was a huge artificial hill.  When the compound had been built, all the waste and spoil had been dumped in the middle.  This formed the big hill, and right at the top they built a house, with a narrow footpath leading up to it.  In a moment of inspiration, I realised that this path would be the perfect launch pad to unlock the true potential of the go kart.

With a lot of persuasion, I got my brother and sister to revive the beast and drag it to the centre of the compound.  I was the most enthusiastic out of the three, because it was my idea and I was going to be the driver.  It took a lot of effort to get it to the big hill, and then a lot of pain and struggle to inch it up to the top of the hill.  The hill was steep – virtually a pyramid of earth and sand.  It was covered in rocks and thorn bushes, broken only by the narrow path leading up to the house at the top.  I don’t know who lived there; I have a feeling it might have been empty, but it was hard to tell from the outside.  All the houses looked the same; single storey prefabricated structures with whitewashed walls, corrugated iron roofs and air conditioning units bolted onto the side.  If anyone was there they never came out to watch the climb or the ensuing carnage.

Eventually we got the go-kart to the top, turned it around and pointed down the hill.  I got in, strapped myself into the seat and looked at the long slope ahead of me.  My brother and sister stood on either side at the back, ready to push me off.  It was at this point that I began to have doubts about what I was about to do.  At the bottom of the hill was a road running along perpendicular to the path, then a kerb, and then a brick wall surrounding the garden of the house on the opposite side of the road.

Now bear in mind that I was no more than six at the time.  I didn’t know anything about potential and kinetic energy, friction, acceleration or any of the other forces I was about to experience.  What I did become suddenly and acutely aware of was the major design flaw in the go kart.

It had no brakes.

My young and inexperienced mind was telling me that there was no way in the world that the go kart was going to stop before smashing straight into the brick wall at the bottom of the hill with me strapped helplessly onboard.  At that moment I changed my mind.  I didn’t want to drive the go kart down the hill anymore.  I wanted to get out and walk home.  I tried to explain this to my brother and sister.  I tried to say ‘I don’t think this is a good idea’, but all I was able to get out was ‘I…’ before they gave a big heave and pushed the go kart from the top of the hill and down the slope.

I don’t remember thinking ‘Oh God, I’m going to die’.  I don’t even remember swearing a lot which I’m pretty sure I would do if this happened to me now.  What I did was try to think my way out of my impending death.  I figured that if I could steer the go kart gently to the left, I could turn it as it went down the hill and by the time I got to the bottom I would be running along the main road, safe and sound.  This decision only took a couple of seconds to make, but by this time I was halfway down the hill and hanging on for dear life as the weight of the previously unmovable go kart now helped to accelerate it like a rocket.  It was now or never.

I pulled on the left hand rope and the kart turned gently to the left.  So far, so good, until the left front wheel left the tarmac path and ran onto the sunbaked earth.  Immediately it dug in and wrenched the whole front of the go kart to the side.  The go kart jacknifed half way down the slope and veered completely out of control before starting to roll and then tumble down the hill with me inside.  I still remember it now.  I don’t know how many times it turned over; it felt like forever but it can only have been two or three.  What I do know that as it rolled it must have hit every rock and thorn bush in the way.

I mentioned earlier that the go kart was built like a tank and that this was a problem.  Well, I’m pretty sure the fact that it was so strong, the fact it was high-sided and most importantly the fact that I was wearing a seatbelt saved me from serious injury.  What it didn’t prevent was me getting ripped and scratched and battered by the rocks and thorns and everything else I encountered on the way down.  Eventually it reached the bottom and stopped rolling, landing back on its wheels in a cloud of dust.  I immediately unbuckled the seatbelt, jumped out and ran home screaming, covered in blood.  My brother and sister just stood at the top of the hill watching me run away.  

The go kart was eventually wheeled home, battered but unbroken, a bit like me.  It was left in the garden and eventually rotted away, never to be taken out again.  It was the end of its short but illustrious career, and the beginning of my attempts to either injure of kill myself in more and more ludicrous and inventive ways.

Reflection

My dad died of leukemia when he was 51.  That was in 2000.  Twelve years ago, when I was 25.  Which makes me old now, and if I'm following in family footsteps, it means I have got around 14 years of life left.

Yes I know I should be writing the numbers but it's late, so I'm not.

The reason I mention this is not for some maudlin reason.  I was cleaning my bathroom and nearly knocked over a mirror, and it brought a memory back to my mind that I'd forgotten or buried away or whatever else happens to memories.

My dad broke a mirror once.  I was in the room and he was really upset, because he thought that it would bring him seven years bad luck.  Naturally I mocked him immensely for believing such a crock of shit, but during this evening's near miss with the mirror, it got me thinking.

When did my dad break that mirror?  Was it within seven years of his death?  It's possible, but it might have been many years before then.  My memory is terrible so I really couldn't say.  But let's just say that it was in the seven year range.  Is it possible that the mirror break and the death were somehow related?  If that's true (it isn't) then how does it work?

Do you get seven years of continuous bad luck?

Do you get more bad luck over a seven year period than would occur naturally on a statistical basis?  If so, how much more?  5%?  10%?  50%?

Do you live bad luck free for a seven year period, at the end of which something really bad happens to you at the end of the period (in this case, death)?

Am I just driveling?

Is anyone reading this?

Echo...

Family (not very )drama(tic)

I don't think I have ever published the following little bit of writing.  It's probably the most personal thing i have ever written.  When I finish rewriting Infinite Diamond, I will probably tackle this story as my next project.

It doesn't have a title at the moment.  I'm calling it Brotherly Love as a working title, just so I can keep track of it, but I doubt that will survive as the title.  Mainly because I don't like it.

And when I say it's personal, I don't mean deeply painful or anything.  I mean the lead character in this story is pretty much me.  In another life, I could be this person.  It's a shame he's such an arse.

So anyway, this is a very small tease of the story.  You get a feel for the style and perspective.  I let my brother read it, since it's based on him as well as me.  He liked it.  It's told from his point of view, and he ends up with this utter imbecile of a brother living with him, driving him slowly to despair...

The usual crowd were there, and we all greeted each other warmly. We got on well and everyone was really nice. Dave kept quiet, which surprised me. I suppose I should have been suspicious but at the time I thought maybe he was just shy around groups of people or maybe, just maybe, he was actually in an environment where he would he would behave himself.

He actually seemed introverted. He didn’t push himself to be introduced and although he attracted a few curious glances from the class I didn’t push him forward, partly out of consideration for him but mainly out of dread.

Geoff, who led the class, came breezing through the door, all chirpy and excited as usual. He was an English teacher and somewhat excitable. There seemed to be fireworks going off in his head all the time, if you know what I mean. He never looked anything but scruffy and always wore the same olive green tweed jacket.

“Evening, evening,” he said to the class. He sounded as enthusiastic as ever; I think he genuinely enjoyed running the course. “How is everyone tonight?” We murmured our replies back as he sat on his desk, crossing his legs and clasping his hands on his knee.

“So class, the theme for today was revenge. Who wants to go first and tell us what they have got?”

Dave stood up instantly. I inwardly shuddered. Oh God please no, I thought.

“Ah…” said Geoff, leaping forward and proffering a hand out to Dave. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“We haven’t,” Dave said in his usual dry tone. “I’m Martin’s brother.”

“Oh, excellent, excellent,” Geoff beamed. “How lovely. I didn’t realise Martin had a brother...” He left a pause, waiting for Dave to offer his name. Dave smiled.

“Gunter,” he said. A flicker of surprise ran over Geoff’s face, but he quickly replaced it with a broad smile.

“Welcome to the group, Gunter,” he said warmly. “I’m guessing you don’t have anything prepared...”

“Oh, no, I do,” Dave answered. “Martin told me about it so I came up with something.” That was an utter lie. I had deliberately said nothing about what we had been asked to do precisely to avoid this sort of thing. It seemed to have made no difference.

“That’s wonderful,” Geoff said, clearly excited to have such an enthusiastic new member in his group. “Would you like to tell us what you have?”

“Sure, replied Dave. “My story is about a child seeking revenge on the father who sexually abuses him.” Geoff nodded in appreciation.

“A powerful subject matter, he said. “ What made you choose that?”

“I dunno,” Dave answered. “I thought it was funny.”

“Funny?” Geoff asked, his chirpiness dipping down a level. “You wrote it as a comedy?”

“Yeah, there’s not enough paedophile based comedy out there if you ask me.”

“Most people don’t find it that funny, Gunter,” Geoff remarked. The warmth had evaporated from his voice. I could feel everyone in the room looking between me and Dave with disapproving glares. I stared intently at the end of my pen wishing the moment would end.

“I like to see the positives in every situation,” Dave carried on blithely.

“Right…” Geoff said, looking to me. “Martin, why don’t you tell us what you have?”

“Don’t you want to know what happens?” Dave asked bluntly.

“I’m not sure it’s something we need to share right now,” Geoff answered slightly tersely. Dave completely ignored him and started to talk, obviously enjoying the attention. He looked around as he talked, making sure he took in everyone’s reaction.

“The boy has been abused for years, as long as he can remember. He’s living a nightmare; he can’t remember the last night he slept through the night without the fear of waking as his dad sneaks into his room to slip him his pork sword.” A communal intake of breath sounded around the room. I couldn’t look but I knew everyone was appalled. I closed my eyes, feeling my face burn. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me up. Instant death would have been welcome at that moment, but it steadfastly refused to put in an appearance.

“Okay, thanks Gunter,” Geoff said, trying to stop him but Dave ploughed on regardless.

“Then one day, he snaps and shoots his dad dead with a pistol.” There was silence from the group for a moment, the Maggie, a middle aged bank clerk, raises her hand.

“Where did he get the gun from?” she asked Dave. Don’t bloody encourage him! I screamed at her in my head, but it was too late. Dave was clearly on a roll.

“eBay,” he replied, happy at getting a reaction.

“Oh, Jesus,” I breathed.

“Thank you, Gunter, it’s certainly creative,” Geoff said, bravely trying to stop him. Once again it went over Dave’s head.

“I came up with a couple of titles,” he continued, looking at Geoff. Geoff paused. I knew he was deciding if it was worth asking.

“What are they?” he said warily, after a few seconds. He had obviously decided that it would be easier to see the moment through and get it over with.

“The first one was ‘The Face in the Mirror’”, Dave said. After a second’s consideration I sensed a ripple of consent around the room. The group seemed to think that that was actually quite a good title. Dave picked up on this and continued. “It refers to the times when he would be in the bathroom and he could see his dad in the mirror watching him and lusting after him, and the fear that would induce.”

“Okay, that’s not a bad title really,” Geoff said, echoing the sentiment around the room.

“I prefer the other one myself,” Dave said. Like a fool, Geoff asked “And what is that one?”

“‘Daddy Kept Fucking Me So I Shot Him’”

“Why?” I said to Dave angrily as we walked down the steps of the library. “What makes do this stuff?” Dave laughed to himself.

“Did you see their faces?” he said, ignoring my question. “I wish I’d had a camera.”

“Dave, they were appalled. I was appalled. I can’t believe I agreed to take you. I must be the first person to ever be thrown out of a creative writing class.”

“Second,” Dave pointed out. “Gunter was the first.”

Waffles

So I have now experienced my first American Easter.  It wasn't really much of an event really.  We went to church and then went home.  That was about it.  There were no eggs, no cards, no Easter dress.  It wasn't for a lack of trying or anything, more a clash of work schedules that prevented any more excitement.  Wifey did go out the day after and buy a ton of chocolate on the cheap, which I spent most of Easter Monday eating.  I've felt sick since.

I say Easter Monday, but that's a bit of a meaningless term here.  Nobody has Easter Monday off.  Nobody has Good Friday off.  I never really got that name.  What's so good about it?  Some guy gets nailed to a tree and dies.  That's not much fun for anyone, is it?  What's so good about it?  Maybe it should have been called Pretty Shit Friday, followed by Downer Saturday and then Hey Guys, Guess What? Sunday.  At least that would have been in keeping with the gist of the story.

Another reason for the non-Easter event was that over the weekend my aunt and uncle got back from England having visited my friends over there.  It turns out there was a bit of a falling out over an escaped penis and now nobody is talking to anybody.  Not really my fault but I have lost one of the last people in England that I regularly communicated with over this whole debacle.  I can't really understand why.  Actually I can, but I can't really go into details about it, in case his wife ever reads this and I drop him in it. Or is that saying too much anyway?  Oops.

I think the whole getting blocked/cut off thing stems more from a guilty conscience on someone's part rather than a penis attack.  It's a bit sad that I get treated like a piece of shit though when I've done nothing wrong.  I'm no angel by any stretch of the imagination but I like to think that I take marriage seriously and I don't go looking to make trouble for myself by being disrespectful.  That took a bit of getting used to, being a married man and not being able to chat and flirt like I would have done before.  Maybe some people can switch that off overnight but not me.  It took a good few months to make that adjustment, much to the annoyance of my wife.  I'm glad she's got more patience than me.

It makes me sad when I lose people out of my life.  Fair enough, if they die then there's not a lot you can do about that.  But when you lose people over stupid dumb shit that really isn't worth getting upset about, it's just frustrating.  Life is too short to go throwing away connections and relationships too easily.

I was going to write something about religion but I seem to have gone off waffling into some stream of consciousness.  I do apologize if you've made it this far and were expecting something interesting to happen.  It isn't going to.  This is what they call the proverbial anti-climax.  Nothing to see here, folks.  Move along. These aren't the droids you're looking for etc.

A smug and ill placed sense of self satisfaction...

Since moving to America, I've not really worked.  This wasn't really through choice at first - it took me a long time to get a green card, but since I got that late last year I've applied to a lot of companies and gotten nowhere.  I seem to be stuck in a middle ground, either over qualified to do entry level jobs or under qualified to do the stuff I know I can do.  So life has been rather frustrating and demoralizing of late.  I know eventually I'll land something but I'm having to try different things to make money.

One of those things is photography.  I'm just starting out as a professional photographer.  Photography is something I've done for a number of years, but I've really fallen by the wayside with it since moving to America.  My camera sat dormant for a long time, until I got the opportunity to get into wedding photography.  Last weekend, I shot my first wedding as a second photographer, assisting the guy who shot my wedding.

He's very good.

I'm not.

I'm really not, and that's just not false modesty.  I found it incredibly difficult.  I shot a lot of photos and most of them were crap, both from a technical and compositional point of view.  I was really disappointed, but I also learnt a lot from being so bad, about what to do and what not to do, if that makes sense.  I know that if I get another go, which I should, that I will be much much better next time around.  Most of the stuff I got that I was pleased with were the detail or incidental shots, but then as a second shooter I suppose that's what I was there for.  I reckon I got about a 30-35% hit rate, which is okay but I want to get 45%.

Most of the stuff I've shot previously has been still life or outdoors.  This was indoors in low light and I really struggled to catch things, especially when everything is happening so spontaneously.  I got better as the event went on, and it's kind of telling that my best shots all clumped around the end of the day.

In addition to this, I also drew my first money this week from selling microstock photos, which are just photos you sell the rights for online.  Seventy dollars from shooting still life shots.  I need to get into that more and sell some more of those.

As well as this, I've done a lot of writing.  In fact, right before I started writing this I reached 70,001 words to finish the first complete draft of my third novel.  There's a long way to take it before it's really completed, but I'm pretty pleased with it thus far.

Now for the tricky part.  In the next few weeks I'm going to put together some packages, consisting of a cover letter, a synopsis and three chapters of each of the stories I've written.  I'm then going to submit these to agents, publishers and maybe magazines to see if I can do something with my writing.

I really don't know how this will turn out.  It's pretty nerve-wracking even thinking about it.  Most likely, I will fall flat on my face and get nowhere, but I've reached the point where I don't want to see the chance of actually doing something worthwhile with my life slip by because I didn't have enough self belief.  If I'm able to move to America and marry a gorgeous blonde, how hard can it be to get a book published?

That's what I want to find out this year.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanksgiving and all that

This is Thanksgiving season in America.  I say season because Americans really like to string their holidays out.  Thanksgiving seems to kick off right off the back of Halloween, even though it's not until November 26th.  Halloween starts sometime in mid-September.  Christmas is going to be interesting.

I had my first experience of a family Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, which was very nice.  It's always good when a family gets together for a positive reason.  In my experience, my family only ever got together because somebody had managed to die.  Still, with my family being mostly Irish, this means that family gatherings have marginally cheaper bar bills than they otherwise would have done.

It wasn't the gathering that put me in a bad mood yesterday, it was the preceding events.  You see, everyone had been asked to bring a dish and be there for 5pm.  Sounds reasonable.  So we decided we would make green bean casserole, which is to all intents and purposes a load of green beans shoved into some cream of mushroom soup.  Not the most challenging of dishes to prepare.

As usual, I was left with the task of cooking, which I happily did (I don't mind cooking).  I did however miss out one semi-important step in the cooking process - I was supposed to cook the beans first, but instead I threw them into the mix in their frozen state.  This brought about howls of derision from wifey, along with the instruction that we had to leave early.  Okay, so I can cope with a bit of a cooking mishap and salvage most things, but as I am sadly lacking in psychic powers there was no way I was to know we were supposed to be there early when nobody on the face of the planet had mentioned this to me.  The combination of wife's wails of doom and her inopportune deadline rescheduling irritated me greatly to the point where I suggested that she go ahead, alone, while I tried to rescue the food.  She took me up on my offer following a brief exchange that included lines such as "Why don't you go back to England?" (I paraphrase but you get the gist of how loving the exchange was).  So there I found myself, wifeyless and trying to sort out the dinner and in a bad mood.

I discovered that all I had to do was to cook the food a bit longer and it would be fine.  So, no big deal and I could still be there for 5pm as originally planned.  This was okay, until I realized that I would be taking the casserole dish straight from the oven and had no way to carry it.  A few texts to wifey later and I had a solution that involved balancing said casserole dish on my car seat on some pot holders.

You can see where this is going.

At 4.50 I set off with the steaming hot casserole dish sat next to me in the car, full of perfect green bean casserole that I felt rightly proud of.  It was a dish suitable for a grand entrance to my first Thanksgiving dinner.

Now to get to the main road, I need to drive along a bumpy, uneven gravel track.  You'd think if the casserole was going to make a bid for freedom, it would have done it there and then, but it hung bravely on until I reached the main road and made a left turn.  Not a fast left turn, just a regular one, but that was enough to overbalance the casserole and send it on a magical journey over my car seat and onto the floor, like a tidal wave of fresh donkey vomit.  The casserole had survived all of a minute in my car.

You know those moments in life where everything just stops and you sit there and think 'This is not happening to me'?  Well, this was definitely one of those moments.  I pulled over and just stared at the steamy, drooling puddle that was dripping onto the floor while the casserole dish leant drunkenly to one side, lined with the remnants of the casserole.

I couldn't think of anything to say to make myself feel better, so I just said what I was thinking, which was: "For fuck's sake." Then I turned the car around and drove back.

I spent the next forty minutes cleaning out my car and washing away bits of bean and onion, held together with lumps of cream of mushroom soup from my car and then pot holders.  I was in a foul mood and texted wifey to say I'd had an accident and wouldn't be making it.  This resulted in a barrage of calls and texts from my family demanding I turn up, which I eventually did, carrying the remains of the casserole in a tupperware dish.  I'm sure half of them thought I was making up excuses to not go.  Well, for those half, try crawling around on your hands and knees scraping up warm casserole off your car and then tell me you're in the mood to go party.  And no, I didn't scrape the remains back up off the floor, tempting as though that was.

When I arrived, my uncle (he is technically my uncle, even though we are the same age) opened the door and said the magical words "Do you want a beer?"  It's amazing what cold, cheap beer can do to you.  That and the company of a good family.

I have another family dinner on Thursday.  This time I hope there is no carnage or car decoration because I don't think I could handle that again.  I can however cope with more beer.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Pipe dreams

When I moved to America, I had to buy a car.  In England, I drove a Citroen C1, which I named Benji.  I bought Benji for a couple of reasons.  He was cheap - to buy, run and insure - and also the C1 was the least depreciating car in the UK market at the time.

I owned Benji for three years, and in that time I put about 13,000 miles on him.  That's nothing.  When I took him for his first MOT on his third birthday, the mechanic turned the ignition on to read the mileage, burst out laughing and said 'I don't think you're going to have any problems, mate.'

Benji went to live with my brother when I moved here.  That car was like new - it even had new tires fitted to it, so he really did get a great little car that replaced his dying Nissan Micra.

So I had to replace Benji.  There's no real equivalent to Benji in America.  They have Smart cars here, but they are a novelty and given how Americans drive, I wouldn't put my life in one of those things.  HGVs and trucks are not restricted here.  I got overtaken by a cement mixer doing eighty miles an hour once.  Imagine that hitting a Smart car.  Splat.  So no, that wasn't an option.

I did a bit of hunting around for a second hand car.  It had to be second hand because I didn't have the budget for a new car and I didn't have a driving license, ID or credit, so no dealership would come near me.  Using Craigslist, I started looking around at local cars.  Craigslist is useful in that it puts you in contact with a lot of sellers, but it's also full of some supreme bullshitters.  I went to look at an old Mercedes E class that was described as being in 'immaculate condition'.  It wasn't, it was a piece of shit and it had clearly been hit in the side at some point, despite the owner denying it had ever been in an accident.  I walked away from that one.

I looked around at a few Ford Focuses, because they're exactly the same as in England and I've driven them and I liked them.  The only ones I found though were really tatty and didn't appeal to me at all.

Then my future father in law suggested 'a fun car' (his words).  He had been helping out a colleague at word with their MX-5 and had test driven it and told me it was a lot of fun.  We looked around and found one that looked really good, so we went to look at it.

I should point out here that in all my car hunting, not once did I talk to an American.   All the people selling cars were foreign.  The guy I bought my car off in the end was Russian.  I don't know if that was all just coincidental or what but it did strike me as strange.

The MX-5, or Miata as Americans call them, was in great condition.  It was twelve years old and had 111,000 miles on the clock, but we test drove it and it seemed fine.  All the electrical systems worked and it drove okay.  So after a little haggling, I bought it for $5,150, and owned an American car.

Since I've owned it, I've sort of fallen in love with it.  I've never driven anything that handles or feels like it.  It feels alive.  That said, it's given me some headaches.  The driver's side electric window broke, which I replaced after a lot of hard work.  The gear change wasn't great, but I read up and took the shifter out and cleaned and replaced parts and it seems to be doing better.  I'd never done anything to a car before this one.  Now I can change oil, spark plugs, filters, rotate tires, and do minor repairs to a gearbox.  That's nothing but for me it's an achievement.  It's also given me a bug.  You see, for all the fun of the Miata, it's underpowered.  It could go faster and be more exciting, it really could.  And having done a lot of reading, it seems that for a not impossible budget, you can modify these cars endlessly to turn them into supercharged racers.  I would kind of like to do that.

What I'd like to do is get another, sensible car, like a Ford or a Kia or something to commute in and turn the Miata into a project car.  Then I would add a roll bar, race seats, new wheels and tires, new suspension, a new clutch, radiator and flywheel and then a supercharger.  I reckon I could do all that for around $10,000 dollars.  Yes that's a lot, but $15,000 dollars for a truly exciting sports car sounds like a decent deal to me.

I'd also lighten it, taking out as much excess weight as possible, and adding carbon fibre panels if I could.  All this would be with the aim of making it even more thrilling to drive.  But in spite of all that, I'd do it carefully, so that any modifications could be easily removed and returned to the original settings.  I wouldn't want to completely bastardize an already beautifully handling car.

Now this may all remain a pipe dream, since it will cost time and money and buying a new house, which I'm in the process of doing, tends to eat into those things.  But having now discovered that I can work on, fix and improve a car with my own hands, it's given me a bug.  I don't know if I'm going to be able to shake it off.

Oh, and my Miata doesn't have a name yet.  I kind of think it's a girl rather than a boy, but I can't think of a decent name for her.  Maybe I will find some inspiration soon.