At last, the scales tip in the right direction

I’VE had an interesting history with cars. I’ve never had car envy because I never really cared what kind of a car I had. A bit like the O’Donovan brothers. An A to B job.

My first car was a Renault 4 with the gear stick up high. In the beginning I couldn’t get it beyond first gear so had to keep stopping and starting to move at all. It took me ages to get anywhere.

For alliterative reasons I christened it Randy and bought stick-on letters to put on the bonnet. When I returned from Dublin to my parents’ house I was told in no uncertain terms to get it out of the drive and well away from the house. I drove that car for years and the floor rotted away and the dog had to sit on the floor to stop stuff falling out.

Ever since, I have had jalopies. Decrepit rusting pieces of crap. And when the electrics started to go on my last car it was serendipity that a friend of mine, who is au fait with my dire pecuniary circumstances, rang me out of the blue and offered me his old car.

So after a feeble attempt to sell the electrically challenged one online and after equally feeble offers from lunatics, I brought it to be dismantled. “It’s €60 a ton,” the nice man told me “and most cars weigh a ton”.

He told me to put it on the weighbridge, wait for the green light and come back to him for the money. I inquired as to whether I should get out of the car for the weighing and he assured me I was OK. And when I returned he handed me €78.

Now by my reckoning that’s an overpayment of one third of a ton. Which translates as my weight. Which goes to show that on certain occasions it does pay to be overweight. Literally.