Hell on Toast

I.  Hate.  Cars.

 Last Wednesday I decided that the head gasket on my Nissan Serena had taken enough abuse (it has been at least six months since I discovered it was leaking slightly – since then I have been religiously topping up the oil and water just to keep the damn thing running).  I didn’t drive it for three days and knuckled down on Saturday to change the gasket myself, since I really can’t afford the £500-£600 I was quoted to have it done professionally (an exhorbitant fee considering that the gasket itself only costs £22).

I think that’s where things started to go wrong.  Mistakes were made.  I’m no expert, to say the least, and a complete amateur when it comes to diesel engines.  I failed to realise that the fuel injector pump pulley was under compression and would spin around once the cambelt was released and, but for the sake of a single dab of Tippex, I lost the timing on the belt.  So having gone through an eight hour process, spanning two days, of disassembling and reassembling the head I found that the damn car wouldn’t work after all that effort.

My battery was on its way out as well, so I finally had to go for broke and buy a new one for the princely sum of £81.02 (including VAT).  Now my wallet hurts as much as my arms and back.

Having replaced the battery I set about, with my wonderful, life-saving uncle (who came in half-way through and has been helping me sort out my problem), trying to sort out the timing on the fuel injector pump.  After another couple of days of doing that we came to the conclusion that the pump pulley wasn’t the only problem – the camshaft/crankshaft timing must have slipped fractionally as well, and that’s something I can’t risk feckin’ about with just in case I inadvertantly crumple my valves, pistons, cylinder head and self-esteem.  So now I have to get a new cambelt, despite the fact that there’s nothing wrong with the old one – the only benefit is that a new cambelt comes with timing marks on it (it’s a Japanese thing apparently), and so I can set the timing right by just lining up the marks on the belt with the marks on the pulleys.

So that’s my job tomorrow: to change the cambelt, and hope and pray that the bloody thing works properly after five days’ work (something which, at present, I sincerely doubt – my luck just isn’t that good).  I’m still without a car a week after I stopped driving it, and I have no guarantees that it’ll work when I’m done.  God, I’m depressed.  I’ve contemplated a voluntary nervous breakdown two or three times these past few days, and come close to an involuntary one at least twice more.  I’d take anti-depressants, but a recent report suggests that they only have a placebo effect.  In light of that I am considering taking a placebo, though I’m not sure how I’m going to convince myself that the Smarties I have bought actually have an anti-depressant effect.  Perhaps electroshock therapy is the solution – pick a bunch of let’s say blue Smarties, pop them in a medicine bottle, shock myself, lose my short-term memory (conveniently leaving myself a note to take the pills in the medicine bottle) and then take the handy chocolate-filled placebos.  I think it may work.  Of course, the electroshock therapy might erase the source of my depression, thereby eliminating the need to take the placebos in the first place.  Isn’t life ironic?  Alternatively I could try to find an external source of endorphins that will make me feel warm and cosy.  I’m told that sex releases vast scads of endorphins, though as I understand it this only works if there is a second person involved in the act, otherwise it just releases Guilt Gremlins that make you feel so gosh-darned terrible that you might end up taking your own life, which I can’t help feeling is counter-productive.  (As a backup I could try consuming copious quantities of chocolate, which apparently releases the same chemicals as sex but is much less fun, though I’ll probably just end up equally depressed but fat too.)

I tried an alternative last night, which is “Watching A Scary Movie”.  I popped on Saw III and watched it all by my little self, with no emotional support whatsoever.  I even turned off the light.  It’s pretty grim.  Entertaining, but grim.  Not really scary, unless you count wincing every time somthing gross happens as being scary.  I haven’t yet decided whether or not I shall watch Saw IV.  It seems rather surplus to requirements, in that everything from the previous films is tied up neatly in Saw III, so I can’t help feeling that it’s just an excuse to continue a successful franchise.  More to the point, the films have been getting progressively more gooey, and I’m not a big fan of films that are gory just for the sake of being gory.  If gore has a point then I’m all for it, but if it’s just there to show how Big and Clever the filmmakers are then I can do without it.

Ah well, time’s up I suppose.