How To Steal Your Own Car

..or at least look as if you’re stealing it. This is a companion piece to such Aquila ka Hecate classics as How To Skim Your OwnBrakes and How To Set Your Car On Fire. Maybe it should be a series – I dunno, that car gives me so much material, most of it of a comedic nature.

This morning we set out as usual before the sun but didn’t get far. At the first stop at the top of our road, the dear car stalled and wouldn’t be started again. Warren freewheeled her back to the house and pronounced the ignition buggered. On closer inspection – and after taking off the entire steering wheel and putting it back on and, after  finding 2 loose wires for which he didn’t have a place and calling the mobile auto-electrician- the problem was found to be, not the ignition as such, but rather the transponder, whose pin was sheared off in the ignition lock.

The car was now running, and I had had time to acquaint myself better with the nice camera on my Samsung SII and had wandered all over the house and garden taking candid shots of my plant companions, my animal companions and, apparently, my furniture-and-appliance companions. These can all be seen in my latest photo album on Facebook – and if they don’t bore you to death I bet you’ve read War and Peace several times, for fun.

Having dispatched the mobile auto electrician with what was probably the easiest R456 he’d ever earned, we set off to find a new ignition switch. Or rather, a used ignition switch – or any ignition switch, in fact, which would fit a 1997 Daewoo Cielo – a car long out of production and not terribly popular even in its heyday.

First we headed up to the legendary scrapyard. I say legendary because, although everyone always advises you to get those hard-to-find car parts from “a scrapyard”, in reality you can never quite pull this off. In our case it was because the biggest and most famous scrapyard in our area had given in to the pressures of being located right next to the most prolific squatter camp in North-Western Joburg and had relocated completely.

Dithering on the main road through the squatter camp in the unbearable heat, we made up our minds to head for the township of Randburg and try the spare parts dealers there. Forgetting for the moment that Randburg is the one locale in which both of us invariably lose our way, get turned around and thoroughly loose our cool, we made something of a bee line for GoldWagen Parts. Something of a bee line, because, between dodging taxis, pedestrians, hawkers and Metro Cops sleeping in the sun, our path more closely resembled that of an enraged sidewinder. And GoldWagen didn’t have the part, couldn’t say where we could get it and in fact expressed disbelief that we could purchase such an outrageous item at any spares vendor in the city.

Not to be put off, we hopped (slithered, wound) right next door to Williams Hunt – who are in theory the spares providers for the defunct Daewoo motor Corporation. Yes, they had the part. At almost R800 for a 5cm piece of metal. We looked around for an ATM-not habitually carrying around such large sums of money-and the helpful Spares bloke told us there was one in a “little shopping centre” just behind Williams Hunt. Walking distance? You bet. And, as our informant was a man on the far side of 70 if he was a day, we took him at his word. 

By now you’ll have guessed that we walked and walked, up down and around the block, without finding either the little shopping centre or the Standard Bank ATM. Getting back in the car, we drove around the same territory, whereupon we saw it almost immediately, in a square sheltering a fairly new and somewhat arriviste College. The ATM was vandalised, however, which saw us winding back up into Ferndale to a Spar Centre full of midday lunchers, where we finally drew some cash.

All this time, we were travelling around in a car with its transponder unit dangling onto the gearstick by wires, the ignition being effected by means of a long-handled screwdriver jammed into the ignition keyhole. Stopping and starting required Warren to turn the key on the end of the dangling wires and then apply the screwdriver to turn the engine over. Add to this that Warren was dressed in grubby tracksuit pants and a disreputable Pit Bull T-shirt, while I was similarly doing my Chav impression in a raggedy black floaty  skirt, purple T and black Ballerina pumps. If I were a security guard, I’d have given us the evil eye at once – and seeing us start the car with a screwdriver, I’d have drawn my firearm and detained us on the spot. Not one of them did so, however – which more or less sums up the level of involvement of the local security industry.

On the way home we stopped at our local Spar and treated ourselves to a pre-roast chicken and salad for lunch. I do believe it was only the fact that we’re fairly well-known on sight at that local store which stopped us being arrested when we opened the boot by inserting a finger into the broken boot lock, and then proceeded to drive away with a common tool in the ignition lock.

Cab Day

Funny protest signs.(H/t Echidne)

Actually, I'm not thinking of Jesus.

I'm thinking of the great taxi ride we had this morning, courtesy of Orange Cabs.
The driver was quite mad, and the wind through the open windows only increased the exhilaration of narrowly missing an oncoming car , bumping over road-works and dodging Putco buses by a hair. I know why dogs love to stick their heads out of the windows of moving vehicles. It's so much fun.

Jacob, the Mad Driver, took us to Bel Air Mall for grocery shopping, then onto PJ Adendorff's for trestles and finally he waited in the hot sun with a Coke while we bought a clutch plate and thrust bearing for the Legendary Car.

Helping us with our parcels at the gate, Jacob expressed a wish to be our driver again in the future. This life is too short to turn that sort of adventure down.

Noticing a Police van parked down our road, we found that our 2-doors-down neighbour had been burgled while we were away. Warren and I reviewed our camera footage for the hour in question - and found something strange. Just 5 minutes before the burglary car(which we had actually seen standing in the street as we left but had mistaken for the neighbour's vehicle) drove past our gate, the cameras recorded a security vehicle going the same way. The robbers took 8 and a half minutes to break in, clear the place out. stuff the loot into their car and drive off again. Our recordings show the car going back with its boot half-open.

Christmas shopping for someone, I guess. It's time, and past time, that we all just let go of our stuff.

By the way - if you're without transport for just a day in Joburg, don't go rent a car. The cab companies have come a long way since Rose's, and it works out much cheaper.

I Don't Blame Her

We're getting our enormous diesel-guzzling bakkie (trans.: SUV, truck) fixed and as she's not mobile at the moment, we had to rent a flat-bed trailer for the day in order to get her to the mechanic in Springs.

Pulling up in the road in front of our gate with a clanking, rattling length of trailer behind the car - and it was twice the length of the car at least - the noise attracted Taranis and Scylla to the front gate.

Now Scylla is fairly short-sighted - a failing I'm beginning to share with her at the age of 53  - and she didn't recognise the Legendary Car or its occupants for quite some time.

Don't ask me how you can read a dog's emotions in its eyes alone. Scylla wasn't barking or growling, her hackles weren't raised and she was just standing there, in typical PitBull-ready stance, quietly.

But both Warren and I recognised in her eyes a look we can only describe as angry.

The girl was glaring at the perceived intruders with such a look of implacable rage that, if I hadn't known and loved her for 8 years now, I would have backed away from that gate in a hurry.

And you know - given the trauma she was branded with at the hands of RSS "Security" Services 4 years ago - I don't blame her at all.

Pic: Spy Centres 1 and 2, here at Command Central.

Awaken In The Dream

Having taken a firm resolve to let the professionals fix our Legendary Car , Warren and I took it down to Safety Brake and Clutch this morning for the fitting of a new master brake cylinder.

We hiked up to the Sandwich Baron and bought a breakfast of cheese and bacon on French rolls, then walked back down to where we had left the car.

The wait was over four hours long - but damn, those people did the job properly!

While waiting I parked myself on a stone storm drain cover under a tree whose species I have yet to pin down - despite it being a pretty common planting in the new North of Joburg - and read chapters out of Tara Sanchez' The Temple of Hekate off my phone. When my eyes tired, I gazed at the people in the streets below me; coming and going and lounging around, people on foot and people behind the wheels of tons of fast-moving metal; people going to work and people hoping to find work. Human people being, in short, human people on a warm and windy Monday morning in Joburg.

I visually followed a couple of clean, neat guys who may - I thought at first - have been looking for work in this area of light industrial businesses. One was dressed in freshly laundered blue overalls, the other looked more like a pirate in his jailing jeans and bandanna. They stopped to hail a passing stranger, which was what drew my attention to them - but what kept my attention on them was my growing suspicion that they were fairly slick criminals casing various joints. I'm not sure even now why I thought this. But they must have felt my gimlet gaze upon them at some stage, for they turned around several times and looked around for the source of their discomfort.

Next I decided to play with the owner of a humongous Hummer vehicle parked in the Absa Bank lot. I waited, wondering what someone who would drive such a gas-guzzling, earth-destroying monster would look like. When he walked out of the bank and flashed his remote unlock, I saw a young-ish man in long shorts and baggy T shirt, his fish white arms and legs proclaiming him to be some kind of software programmer - just like me. I hated him on sight, of course. What did he need that much metal to be driving around in? Where was his consciousness that he apparently needed so many tons of metal alloy and large amounts of petroleum to take him to his local bank? What a tosser.

At more or less that moment, another customer of the brake centre ambled over to what I was rapidly considering to be my tree and sat down upon the stone drain cover. Much too close, I felt - but then I tend to wield a personal space about the size of a European country. I sidled away down the embankment, and then got very irritated when I had to climb past him to get to Warren when the car was ready.

I remember this flood of indignation, irritation and self righteousness. I remember thinking very clearly that all these monkeys were nothing like me. That I was so much better than them that I was practically another species, and that the reason I disliked them so much was that they were demonstrably not like me.

Uh-oh. Wetiko Disease attack.

When we start drawing out the perceived evil in everyone around us - everyone but ourselves, of course - then we are surely caught fast in the Wetiko Disease.

Those hateful ways of those people I'd just been other-ing were my own shadow, evoked and visible and appalling. It took a couple of hours before I could admit that truth to myself.

A couple of hours and a listen to Paul Levy on Red Ice Radio , talking about his new work, Dispelling Wetiko. 

Well, well, well. And are we finally ready to admit that we have a disease of insanity?

Yourself especially, Terri , as you are no different from any of those other humans out there.

This is very important for us all to remember. We are the only people to be actively crafting our suicide, and taking the rest of the living world with us. When Wetiko Disease has us pinned, we certainly do not see it, do not acknowledge it. And this is the pernicious nature of this sickness - we'll be feeling that Everything Is OK as we slide down into extinction, despite what the trees and the birds and our own domestic animal companions have been trying to tell us for the last 6000 years.

Please. Can we not awaken in the dream?

Stunning Humour

At home while Warren strips the clutch plate out of the Legendary Car, I found the image above in Neil Kramer's Facebook update this morning.

I had very little to do, other than the laundry, so I turned on the GodsDamnedTelly.

Guess what was showing?

No, go on, just guess.

Sometimes the Universe's sense of Synchromystic Humour is stunning.