I hung around late at the office tonight. By the time I left it fell to me to lock up, drop the car park barrier and set the alarm. As I shut down my PC I thought how it’d be nice if I could think of more interesting stuff to write about on my blog. MISTAKE NUMBER ONE.
I locked up and headed out into the carpark. There’s a bit of a rigmarole to go through here, as you have to get your car out of the carpark, then go back in, find the barrier control, put the barrier down, lock up, set the alarm, then leave.
The car wouldn’t start. Pants. I could take the spitfire but I’d just today got it dry enough to cover it up and I’d, well, covered it up, and it had begun to rain. So I resigned myself to bump-starting the fiat. A couple of laps of the carpark later, and it’s running. Right, thinks I, I have to lock up. Aha! Thinks I, I don’t want to stop the engine in case it won’t start again! Now me being cunninger than your average really uncunning person, my keys are on clever doofers that allow me to separate car keys, office keys and house keys easily. So I left the car keys in the ignition and made my exit. As I got out the car, I heard a repeated thunking from the central locking. “hehe” thinks I, that stupid central locking! Just because the beam of wood I put in the back is slightly too long and is resting on the passenger side’s lock control, the stupid central locking has to operate! What a stupid car! And I shut the door. MISTAKE THE LAST.
Well. I fancy myself as a bit of an expert car thief, after all I watched starsky and hutch, and countless other ’70s cop shows in which you sorta waved a breadknife at the door and you were in… I was slightly disappointed that I wouldn’t get the chance to hotwire it - a procedure involving pulling out some loose wires from behind the steering column and waving them at each other until you get a spark - on account of the engine already being on.
well, I couldn’t find a bread knife so I decided a shatterproof ruler would have to do and, well, it didn’t… so I moved on the the old ’screwdriver in the locks’ trick. This is not as braindead as it sounds, on account of the passenger lock already having been smacked to bits. It was, however a non-starter as I discovered the ONLY solid part of any fiat I’ve ever known is the lock.
Meanwhile it’s getting darker and the FIAT is patiently ticking over.
In the end I popped into the office for a couple of screwdrivers and took the rear window out. It took a while I can tell you. If you want to pinch a FIAT you could do it this way but you want to make sure you’ve got a good 20 minutes without interruptions. About halfway through the job, the security people must have glanced at the cameras because a rather loud alarm went off. I tried to put on my best indignant “do you MIND?” look but I’m not sure I was convincing as I’d already dropped the screwdrivers.
They didn’t bother to try and stop me “stealing” the car though.
A short drive home followed by, as Haynes would have it, “Refitting is the [arduous, messy and painful] reverse of removal [only with gravity and entropy working against you this time]” and I’m at home less than 2 hours after setting out!
It’s a 10 minute drive.