Exhaust[ed]

I took the car into the garage to get the exhaust sorted yesterday afternoon. I'd spent the morning ringing around garages in and near Newbury to get quotes which varied from an astonishing £76.90 down to a mere £30.88; needless to say I went for the £30.88 option. It was a bundle of laughs trying to find this place. They advertise as being in Thatcham, on the A339. I looked at my map book and the A339 doesn't go anywhere near Thatcham. Odd. I asked him where I was going and he gave me some directions.

However, as I don't drive around Newbury much I'm still not particularly familiar with the roads. When I got onto what I thought was the A339, the road signs all said A34. Hmmm. I drove for a while on this road thinking "it'll say the A339 any second, it has to", but it didn't. Eventually I gave up and drove back to the flat to get Liz's A-Z of Newbury. Had a look in there and I was right: It was the A339. Odd. I drove down it again. Sure enough all the way along it the road signs clearly state that the driver is on the A34, and that it will lead them to some B-road or other, but no mention of the A339. Until you get about 6 miles out of Newbury, that is, when suddenly there is a small roundabout which is signposted correctly.

Then when I found the garage, which is in Headley (nowhere near Thatcham) I missed the turning I needed. Then I couldn't find anywhere to turn, so I had to drive several miles out of Headley. Eventually I found a pub with a car-park that I could turn the car around in, then drove back.

The exhaust was fitted really quickly and it was a friendly service, although it cost me £35 in the end because they had to replace the big clip that holds the rear box onto the mid-section. That was fair enough though, when I was under there I could see it was rusted to death. I paid, the bloke in the garage explained that a 2 year warranty with them really is a 2 year warranty (er, glad to hear it!) and then I was off.

Strangely enough the car sounds a lot quieter with a silencer on it. No more scaring old ladies at the lights... No more pretending to be in an F1 racing car on the motorway... No more risking being pulled over by the police...

In other news

Google are trying to take over the world. They've just introduced a new service that allows you to search the titles, subtitles and programme information of a number of (probably American) TV Stations. Plus they've announced an interest in VoIP technology and want to create their own Skype-like service. BT are quaking in their boots over this apparently. Google are beginning to make me feel uncomfortable now, they're slowly taking over the whole world.