Oscar the Octavia

A rather bizarre set of events happened on Thursday involving my aging and high-miling car, Oscar the Octavia. For reasons that will later become apparent I'm very thankful to God as to how it all happens but you may just see it as a series of happy coincidences.

So where do I start? Well lets get the bad bit out of the way, my Doris¹ got poorly sick Wednesday evening after eating too much fancy ice cream at the cinema. She's not used to living the high life you see; she's dead common ent eet². She was ill all evening and had Thursday and Friday off work to recover. I was on lates so was gonna pop round to before work to look after (and every so slightly patronise) her.

Two days prior I'd topped up the oil in my car but had cunningly forgotten to put the cap back on the tank. So as I set off on Thursday morning from Trent Vale to Sneyd Green, for a change of scenery I decide to go through Newcastle, my car started to make rather a worrying noise. I go down Basford Bank towards the D Road (A500) and the car suddenly turns into a traction engine, it's making a right racket. On the other side of the D Road the police are doing routine car checks and I pull over into an industrial estate to work out why my car is louder than a Stade Francais rugby top. Unsurprisingly one of them is on my tail and asking me to pull into a bay where they're carrying out the checks. They do a quick inspection and discover that my engine had been spitting oil but miraculously the oil cap was still sat on the engine (especially when you realise I'd done a 100 round mile round trip the day before) and somehow my spark plug had come loose and the cable it was attached to had frayed. The spark plug had been rattling next to the pistons hence the 'one man band falling down the stairs whilst holding a pneumatic drill' impression.

They then proceeded to tell me that until I get my car fixed they're not letting me back on the road. He'd got a fair point, the combination of oil spluttering out of the engine and a frayed cable that was sparking right next to it is not a recipe for success. So I called the RAC and within ten minutes, no exaggeration, a bloke in one of their textbook orange breakdown vans had rolled up. In less than half an hour and in the pouring rain he's got it all sorted. The police check it over and give me the all clear; I’m back off onto the road within an hour of my car’s worrying development with a much better sounding engine. The potential fireball is averted and it cost me nowt.

So Greg, how are you going to crowbar God into this story? Well, if Lisa wasn’t ill I wouldn’t have paid her a visit before work and my car would instead have made a racket on the M6 instead of in front a load of very helpful policemen who could quick diagnose my problem. Were this to happen on the M6 I’d have missed a day’s work and would have to wait a whole lot longer for recovery to kick in (probably). Also, what kind of oil cap that wasn’t screwed in would fall through the engine but not wind up on the road but instead end up easily retrievable and unblemished? The conditions I’d created could have resulted in a big ball of fire or a costly bill to fix the multitude of problems that would have arisen. Instead it was gratis and I’d lost my excuse for a day off work. On the downside it did mean I spent less time mopping the brow of my beloved but at least she’s now well on the road to full recovery … I could say my car is too but quite frankly I still need a new car fairly soon. Until the day arrives where I can afford to start paying for a new(er) car I know He’s helping to keep Oscar going.

1 She's actually called Lisa
2 It means 'isn't it'.

I should also add that the car pictured isn't mine but is the same model and colour.

You don't have to have a love of cliches to work here...

The place I work is, like most workplaces, full of in-jokes and rather cliquey and as such can be a rather intimidating experience for a newb but an absolute treat once you've been welcomed into the fold. I'll explain a little later what exactly my job entails.

There are so many Trafficlink-specific words and phrases that one of my colleagues has compiled a glossary. For me, I finally felt accepted when I got my first phrase into the hollowed text. It was an off the cuff remark I made about darts, a fondly loved 'sport' round these parts (Phil Taylor, Ted Hankey, Andy Hamilton, Adrian Lewis and Eric Bristow all have Stoke connections). You see, I love the way the darts caller says certain numbers. 180 is just hackneyed and obvious, for me the real gem is 45. The richer deeper darts caller can really roll the end of the fiiiive in forty five, that burr is a thing of beauty. A classic example can be heard here.

Now, for some reason it really tickled whoever it was I told. My impression deserved a repeat performance it would seem, and again, and again ... and again. It was soon the only the thing you'd hear of a shift at work, what fresh hell had I unleashed? It went to rather giddy heights when the whole office went out to the see the Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton. Having said that, it was one of the best evenings I had in 2008! The ITV4 (yes apparently there is an ITV4) commentary even picked up on the fact that there were louder cheers on some 45's than there were on the 100's and 120's...

So once one catchphrase is embedded in the Trafficlink conscience where do you go next? Find another glossary term to get the kids raving and that's when I heard this promo on my way to work one morning. Lo and behold we had a daily Antiques Roadshow sing-a-long for neigh on a month ... thank goodness that one's finally worn off!

And what job is it I do? Well I'm one of the voices you'd hear when the traffic and travel kicks in on your car's RDS. I do various BBC local radio stations (although rarely on Stoke) and Talksport (which is a national station).

No doubt I'll bring you a few more work anecdotes in the coming weeks, including posting some of the the poems I had to write for BBC Coventry and Warwickshire, but don't worry I've still got plenty of deep spiritual and political stuff to share as well. And anyway, even if you found this whole post deeply worrying and not even slightly entertaining I know at least five or six colleagues who will enjoy my meanderings on this occasion.