Lockdown tales: My battle with a flat car battery did not go well – Susan Morrison

Nicola said I could travel up to five miles, so I decided to responsibly visit an old pal. Mind you, I’ve never worked out how far away my friends live. Usually I judge distance by can I walk it sober? Can I walk it drunk? How much is the taxi fare?

So I figured I’d drive five miles, then do a Dom and claim I got lost following my instincts.

The car has not moved for some time. I have not driven for some time. I was worried that I had forgotten.

When I opened the driver’s door a whoosh of stale air rushed past me. I felt like Carter at Tutankhamun’s tomb when they took the final brick away and the candles guttered in the dark, only I had no golden death mask to find.

Somewhere in that car there is a carton of yoghurt well past its sell-by date.

I got in, turned the key. The engine usually starts. Instead, it made a sort of feeble ticking noise.

The battery had quite clearly gone flat. This was bad news. I’m a woman who likes to drive cars, but has no real interest in how they work.

My Technical Department was at work. That meant it fell to me. First things first, get the lid at the front open. There’s a lever. Found that. Why is there another lever to open it that you have to grope for underneath? Spiders live there. Bound to.

Lifted the lid, stared in. Men do that. I’ve seen them. Sucked my teeth and made that whistling noise. Men do that, too.

Went back and tried turning the key. Teeth sucking and whistling noise doesn’t work, then. Bit of a disappointment for a girl.

Went back in the house. My Technical Department had once cluttered the hallway with a big red box with wires sticking out of it, until I demanded to know what it was and how long it was going to be there. He explained it was a battery charger for cars and put it in the darkest bit of the hall.

I dug it out, then dragooned my daughter into coming to help. She asked me why I had locked the car. It couldn’t move. She’s very clever.

We figured out which bit was the battery, connected it up and then channelled our inner garage mechanics as I got back in, and she stared at the engine. Nothing.

Girlchild asked if we should have thrown the switch marked ON/OFF on the battery charger. I made up some guff about checking the key was in the ignition correctly and she sighed, and turned the battery charger on.

I turned the key. We got a different noise. I’d describe it as a pathetic whine, really. We both stared again into the engine bay.

This battery was as dead as my chances of winning Miss World.

About that point, the daughter noted that not only was the battery flat, so was the front tyre. Should we fix that, too, she said?

“No,” I said, stomping moodily home, “Let’s torch it.”

At least I learned how to open the lid at the front.

The litter and smoke, truth and poetry of Leith

We could push the wreck of a car to Longniddry Bents or the Musselburgh lagoons and give it a Viking funeral. Burning cars are about the only litter I haven’t seen there. Our parks, walkways and beaches are turning into middens. When this is all over, we’re going to need an army of litter pickers.

Some of it is clearly coming from bins which are being used, but overfilled. Top tip, people, if you go to a bin and it is full, don’t try to put more mess into it. It will fall out. Also, just putting litter next to a bin doesn’t create some sort of magic circle where wrappers and cans magically vanish, or even stay where they are in a mild breeze.

If the bins are full, take the rubbish home. You can usually do that by putting it in the bag you thoughtfully put the litter in before you tried to shove it into the over-flowing bin.

Some litter doesn’t make it to bins. Last week Leith Links was strewn with cans, crisp packets and, rather touchingly, a Tesco Bag for Life, left lying about like the wounded of a terrible battle.

We thanked the frontline workers who kept our services running. Let’s get practical and help those stretched services and clean up ourselves.

One more thing. I don’t care what you smoke, drink or pop to have fun but could we put a stop to smoking that sickly smelling weed in parks, playgrounds or indeed, anywhere near other people? Seriously, what a stench.

As a woman commented to me on the Links “Gie’s ye the dry boak”. Truth and poetry right there.

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