OLD HABITS DIE HARD
It’s business as usual as the MG hits the road for the first time in 2022 – ie. Mike still hasn’t got his act together…
It’s fair to say that I’m a creature of habit. Every year I take time out from the deepest, darkest and most dispiriting weeks of winter to pay sporadic visits to the garage – usually at night for some reason – and stand in front of the slumbering ’F, wondering how I can possibly justify pouring yet another year’s worth of time and money into a car that sees the road for six months of the year at best. Then I admire its curves one last time before snapping the lights off and closing the door, procrastinating the ultimate decision – you know, the one that saw me selling my old MG Midget a couple of years ago – yet again.
And then every year I drive it out of the garage once spring has sprung, drop the hood and head off for that tentative first drive of the season. And it never takes more than a couple of minutes of raspy wind-in-the-hair shenanigans to re-kindle my decade-long love-affair with this cheeky little sports car. This year, naturally, was no exception. It wasn’t until February was about to become March that I could finally take advantage of a break from all of the storms, gales and white skies around my neck of the woods, head out to the garage – in broad daylight for once – drop the hood and slide behind the wheel. Or rather I couldn’t, when I discovered that the plastic screws that secure the fuse box cover below the steering column had disappeared over winter; the resulting sagging cover made the car undriveable for anyone in possession of legs. No big deal – reattaching it would be the work of but a moment, right? I mean, even I can operate a flat-blade screwdriver. Annoyingly, just finding the blasted things appeared to be to beyond me until I eventually found them hiding inexplicably under the driver’s seat. And while securing the one nearest the door was easy enough, affixing the one nearest the centre console required a level of multi-tasking and physical flexibility that a man of my age simply no longer possesses.
Needless to say, I was hot, flustered, dripping with sweat and not a little tetchy by the time I’d successfully re-attached the blasted thing… a sorry list of ‘attributes’ to which I then added ‘wearily resigned’ when turning the ignition key revealed the wilting battery that so often characterises my earlyseason classic forays. If only I had a conditioner. Oh no, wait – I do! It’s just that it’s… still in the box…
Thankfully the MG – unlike my Jaguar XJ6, which really didn’t want to rise and shine this year; more on which anon – only needed a couple of minutes’ worth of boost to get the K-series purring and with tyres and fluids all deemed good and a few gallons of eye-wateringly expensive super unleaded in the tank, it was chocks away.
My grumpiness lost its edge the first time I gave it a bootful. Then it disappeared altogether when I re-acquainted myself with the network of challenging and (usually) empty minor roads to the north of Stamford before branching off cross-country and joining the sweeping A606 towards Oakham. By this point I was grinning like a loon.
It’s easy to forget just how much I love driving this car on a miserable winter’s morning but the memories soon come flooding back on a brisk early spring afternoon like this. I’m the first to acknowledge that the MGF is very far from perfect but get it on the right road in the right conditions and I swear that I wouldn’t swap it for a Porsche Boxster let alone a Mazda MX-5 (sorry Mr Simister). It’s at moments like this – when its joie de vivre becomes so utterly compelling – that the very idea of selling it seems totally unthinkable. I mean, what could I possibly replace it with?
There are still a few things on the to-do list, mostly concerning the slightly careworn interior, whose scruffy steering wheel, ill-fitting carpets and rather tired-looking driver’s seat are letting the side down a bit at the moment and long overdue some TLC. The trouble with cars like this, though, is that you’d much rather drive them than attend to any tedious box-ticking; in truth most of these jobs have been pending for years.
They certainly weren’t bothering me as I sat there at journey’s end looking through the windscreen at the south shore of a particularly blue Rutland Water, garnished with sparkling white sailing boats and crying birds. In fact, I had to resist the urge to reach out and give the top of the dashboard a friendly pat.
It’s good to have you back, fella.