Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Renault, no, no

I have so far resisted regaling you with the tales of car-related woe that have occupied the last ten days. It started, as these things always do, with a funny sound and the car chugging to a stop in the middle of a rainstorm.

Two breakdown lorries, several hefty cheques, and reiterated protestations of disbelief from a Renault mechanic later, it all came to a head yesterday with the announcement that the car needs a new engine. This is a bit of a blow, to say the least, as it only has 110000 km on the clock.

Since ten days ago I've been biking it back and forward to work, so it turns out that the old adage is true: achetez Renault, vous roulerez à vélo.

And to top it all, this evening, P. pointed out that in telephone conversations with mechanics, I'd been inadvertently talking about the engine being deculotté (having its pants pulled down) instead of déculassé. I'm past caring.

3 comments:

BeefKing said...

You might want to consider getting a Lada. Sure, it'll break too, but at least when it does, you can fix it using your hands, a hammer and some duct tape.

spentrails said...

You have my sympathy. Those European brands can rack up the bills. Makes me relatively glad to have public transport, windy platforms, delays and all.

Lucy said...

They don't rack up as much as any non-French brands here though...
I hate doing car vocab in French, it's two removes of linguistic uncertainty rather than just one for me. Didn't anyone laugh about your bare-bottomed car?
Did you hear about those parents of a new baby whose name was Renault, and they wanted to call her Megane? apparently the rules have been relaxed and no one can stop them now.
Bad luck, anyway Leslee, and I hope things pick up soon. Happy Christmas.

Confinement

Being confined indoors most of the day, just the four of us, is reminding me of the days when my children were wee and most of our weekends ...