I’ve not been blogging this cause frankly, I just want to forget about it. The last few days have been hell.
Thursday
P’s boss (Quentin) offers a loan of £1000 to buy a new car with. Fantastic! Details would be sorted on Friday.
Friday
Quentin tells P he can’t have the cash. We have to go out and find a car at the weekend and let him know on Monday. Then he will get his accountant (Barry) to drive over and buy the car. Our hopes are dashed of having a car at the weekend and of visiting my mum on Mothering Sunday. At this point I am quite annoyed and ask P to tell Quentin to stick the offer up his arse on Monday. It all seems far too (needlessly) complicated to me. P says we have no choice as we need a car.
Saturday
We get up first thing and head over to a local dealer selling cheap cars. After spending 2 hours looking around the lot, we decide on a pleasant Rover Metro for £995. Perfect. The dealer is even happy to take our car in as p/x for £50. He tells us to come back after 45mins with our car and he’ll stick a sold sticker on the Metro straight away. We arrive back about an hour later. He’d sold the Metro to someone else.
We head home, severely pissed off. I stop at the local Sainsbury’s and grab the auto trader and ad trader magazines. By now it’s 2pm and I have only a few hours to visit dealerships (they don’t open on Sundays). All the dealer ads in the paper are too expensive or too far away. I go through all the UK classifieds sites and still no luck.
I look through the paper again, and something catches my eye. A Fiat Punto going for £1150 ono. It’s modern, had several new parts fitted recently and seems an excellent buy. The guy isn’t home until 6pm, so I kind of forget about it until later that evening. Amazingly, it’s still there! My heart starts racing and I excitedly rush to Parker’s website for more info. Yes, it’s a fantastic buy! Beautiful car! Although the guy lives in Norwich, we arrange to meet at 11am on Sunday for a look. Then we phone Dom and harass him into giving us a lift up there in the morning for £20.
Sunday
It’s beautiful. The car is perfect. It’s red, 5-door with electric windows and central locking. I have fallen in love. The guy agrees to accept £1000 if paid in cash and will happily hold it ’til Monday. I spend all afternoon in blissful happiness. This is the car I want to learn to drive in.
Monday
I go to work at 5am. P eventually phones me at 10:30am. It’s bad news. The boss has said a flat no to the Punto. Why? A million stupid reasons! 1) it needs to be local, 2) it has to be from a dealer with a long guarantee, 3) it must have a full service history, 4) Quentin doesn’t like Fiats, he would prefer it if we bought a Ford!
I cannot possibly believe what I’m hearing! How dare this nasty little man decide what car we should have. Although he’s lending us the money, we’re damn well having to pay it back WITH INTEREST! Why should we have to pay for something we don’t want? It’s absolutely ridiculous!
In the evening, we bought a car off a mate for £150. It’s an old Vauxhall Astra. I’m going to save my money and buy a Punto myself.
I am heartbroken. I really wanted that car.