Got a few thumbs-up on the way to Port's Thatcham Classic bash at the weekend, four up in the Triumph and driving very slowly so the rest of the family couldn't hear the screaming diff. Mind you, they had already passed their verdict on it. In my wife's case, about six years previously.
Her opinion was set during an early date when I was driving her back to Forest Hill one Sunday evening and, after we hit that always-dreadful Dulwich pinchpoint on the South Circular, she started noticing all the steam coming from behind the dash and misting up the inside of the screen. It was just a leaking heater matrix, but…
Actually, it had already disgraced itself before then. The first night I ever stayed over at hers, in fact. Because we already shared a lot of mutual friends (among them a couple of Exs, and that raises the spectre of "shared" in a sense I really don't mean), we were meant to be a secret when we started seeing each other.
So she was none too pleased when, not only did the Triumph fail to start (flat battery due to a sheered alternator bracket) in the morning, but I then called one of those friends – the most indiscreet human being ever born, but someone who happened to live close by – to come and give me a jump start. Being the news editor on a national daily paper, he sussed pretty quickly why I was so far away from my home and so close to hers.
