My beloved car sent me a message. We do that. It a 2-way love thing. The message said: “FRONT LEFT INDICATOR BULB!!” in the warning box. Oh. That’s an issue. I remember back in the 70s on Esther Rantzen’s show (God rest her soul) about Volvos and their lights. One little sidelight bulb packing up required the entire, sealed headlamp unit replacing. Which only Volvo dealers could do and it cost about 750 quid. In 1974. Her ‘consumer affairs’ team moaned about it for weeks.

So one little bulb goes in one little Porsche and I’m thinking in the thousands. I’m thinking renting out parts of the house to get some money. Selling some of Mel’s shoe collection. And they’d need to send my car back to Stuttgart to get it done. But then I googled it. And there was a young Canadian dude, who’d never done it before, showing ME how to change the bulb. “It’s easy”!!

I bought the bulb. And it cost… £6.85. What? And no postage?? How can that be? So I watched the video again and went out to the car. To do it!! By myself!!

First thing you do is open the front hood (‘we’ have 2 hoods, don’t’cha know) and take out the little tool-kit. And in a little box, (got that), there sits the ‘headlamp removal tool’, ok, let’s just… Its gone. Not there. I have the spanners, screwdrivers and locking wheel-nut thing and all manner of wonderful stuff. And two little empty holes where the tool lives. Fuck.

25 pounds later, a new tool arrived! And I’m ready to rock’n’roll. I check the video once more and get to work!l Hah!

And it wasn’t exactly ‘easy’, but it certainly wasn’t hard. Otherwise I couldn’t have done it. Unplug, remove headlamp, blah, blah, take out bulb, replace with new one, all a bit fiddly but by no means beyond any low-level techno-spaz. And I put the headlamp back, congratulating myself and imagining fanfares, and…

I’d changed the wrong side. Front right instead of left. Changed a perfectly good bulb for the same, FFS. WHAT A TOTAL… (fill in as appropriate) I AM!!!

So I did the other one. The one I should have done. The first side took me 20 minutes. The second less than 5. Thus I told Mel, when she asked why there was another headlamp on the kitchen table, that they recommend a practice run. Phew, dodged the bullet of ridicule and humiliation there. That’s why I’m telling you. But keep it quiet or everyone’ll think I’m even more demented than they think I am now.

At least the thing works now. I am a mechanical GOD! Just not a perfect one.

Happy blinking Thursday

A xxxx