Philip Norton

Go a bit of a shock the other day when I got a letter through saying that I hadn’t paid the tax on the Fiesta and was therefore liable for a fine. Well I wasn’t going to have any of this as far as I was concerned the car is a cube of scrap. So I wrote off to the DVLA and the Glasgow DVLA fine action office just letting them know that the car was no more.

After a pensive wait I got a letter through today letting me know that, on this occasion, they were not going to take any more action.

Good news at last!

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I got a call yesterday from the Police saying that they needed a witness statement. I asked why they would need such a thing and they said it was because they had caught the guy (apparently he is just a kid) who stole the Fiesta!

She said that I should have been informed when he was arrested in April and was very apologetic. I said that I didn’t mind as there was nothing I could do about the news anyway. She then said “no wonder everyone has such little confidence in the Police” to which I said “I don’t think lowly of the police at all”. Which is true, I don’t. I have the utmost respect for the Police and the Law that it is there to enforce.

So this afternoon a Police officer came over to our house to take a statement. It was basically a formality.

So what of the person who stole my car? Well he apparently has 8 separate convictions for motor theft, of which he has admitted to 6. His prints where all over the inside of the car so he really is utterly without thought.

Talking to the police man today about the crime brought it all back and now I’m nervous again. I keep looking out of the window at the Octavia just to make sure it is there. I do this about 15 times a day usually (only since the Fiesta was stolen) but now I’m doing it 15 times an hour. I just can’t settle. I wonder if I ever will? Damn that little crap to stole my car!

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I thought I would do a little update on the status of the stolen Fiesta, especially after we got a letter about it yesterday.

A couple of weeks ago we had a call from an engineer, who said that the car was unrepairable, and then told me how much he thought our car was worth, which was £250. I thought this was ok, not what I was expecting, but at least a little bit. However, I found out that this was minus any excess we had on the policy. So as our excess is £200 we would only be seeing £50! It isn’t even enough to get another policy, let alone buy a new car. I phoned up a guy at Privilege, but after 10 minutes of trying to get him to give me more money for it I gave up.

The other day I got another letter. Actually for some reason Privilege seem to find the need to send me two letters for everything I do, which I find a little odd. Especially as they send the letters on different days. This means that we get a letter, Mandy spends her afternoon trying to sort it out, and then two days later we get another letter, so Mandy spends another afternoon trying to get them to understand her a second time. The really irritating thing is that they have sent us 3 renewal notices, despite the fact that they know for certain that it is in a scrap yard.

So we got another letter that had a cheque enclosed. See if you can work out what they meant from the following quote.

    Policy Excess: £200
    We write to advise you that your vehicle is beyond economical repair.
    Your vehicle has been inspected by an Independent Engineer, and the market value
    has been assessed at the figure of £00050.00.
    The Policy Excess will be deducted from this figure.
    If you disagree with the Engineer's valuation, please contact us as soon as
    possible.  You may still bank the cheque, as this will not prejudice your position.
    Should we not hear from you within the next fourteen days, arrangements will
    be made to dispose of the vehicle.
    A cheque for £00250.00 will be forwarded to you under a separate cover.

Don’t worry, it took me several attempts! From this it looks like we have a cheque for £250 and that we have to give back £50 of this, or is it that we have to pay them £250 and then… oh never mind.

Apparently the woman who typed this got the numbers mixed up, which doesn’t make sense as the numbers look like they where computer generated from a database or something. But when Mandy phoned her up she had to use a calculator to work out the complicated maths involved here.

All in all the only thing this has taught me is that if your car is worth less than £1000 then there is no point going for fully comprehensive insurance. Oh, and that insurance companies are only there to rip you off. I won’t be going for Privilege in the future, but I don’t know if any other insurance company will be any different. Are they all con artists?

What really, really annoys me about Privilege, in fact this whole thing, is that even though none of this was our fault, because Mandy has made a claim she has lost her 5 years of no claims bonus. There doesn’t exist in the English language a phrase or description, lacking corse language, that gets anywhere near identifying the idiot who stole my car.

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On the way into work today I had just about the closest thing I have had to an accident with another car.

I was in Macclesfield and was just driving along a very straight road with no turns when I noticed this guy in a white van indicating to turn right on the other side of the road. I had no idea where he was meant to be going to I just continued on. The thing is so did he. I was only when I got level with him that I realised that he was trying to get to these two large billboards on the other side of the road. He just turned in while my car was level with his and only just missed me. I actually winced, expecting his little van hit my car. It was only down to luck that he didn’t and I saw in my rear view mirror that he mounted the curb on my side of the road.

How impatient can you get? I can’t really swear on this blog (I would like to keep it clean), but that guy is a rumba rumba snort rip do wally wally ding dong foonar dingbat wibble monster! And I would say it again!

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I walked out to my car yesterday morning and saw this…

Someone had stolen the Fiesta!

My initial thought was “Did we take the car somewhere last night?”, but then it clicked that it really had been stolen.Who in the world would steal a 1.1 Fiesta with about an much “GO” as an anorexic hamster during the day? Only a yoghurt.

I called Mandy and she started ringing people as I left for work, there really wasn’t anything I could do.

At about 11:00 that day Mandy gave me a ring and said that the police had found the car, but it was in a ditch. The odd thing here was that it was little more than 1 mile from our house. Who would steal a poor performing car and drive it for 1 mile before either dumping it or crashing it into a ditch. Only a yoghurt.

They probably wouldn’t have got much further considering that the car had almost no petrol in it at all. I can’t believe this is happening. We had only just repaired the thing as it broke down about a month ago. We were also trying really hard to get all the money together to pay for the tax and insurance.

I didn’t know how much damage had been done until this morning when we went to the impound lot to see the car and retrieve anything that was in the car. We really didn’t expect anything to be there but nothing was taken. Not even the CD player. Who would take a slow car, with not much petrol, about a mile down the road, drive it into a ditch and not even take a Blink182 greatest hits CD? Who? Only a yoghurt.

Anyway, looking at the damage on the car we can see that it will probably be an insurance write off. There is a lot of damage to the front driver side bumper, which isn’t quite clear in any of the pictures below, but it would take more than the car is worth to fix. There was also a lot of damage to the passenger side door which Mr. Yoghurt bent back to gain entry to MY car. Here are some pictures from the impound lot (it was clean on Thursday night).

Front passenger side notice the mud on the wheel.

Back passenger side. The tyre here was flat and you can just see the damage to the door that was caused on entry.

Close up of damage to door.

Back driver side. Did Mr. Yoghurt drive it through a field or something?

Front passenger side. Damage to bumper can be seen, but not clearly.

Close up of underside driver side front. More detail on damage to bumper. There was also a lot of damage to the stearing column where Mr. Yoghurt managed to start the car. Apparently all you have to do is get the back of the lock off and just twist a screwdriver in it. I wish he had died in the crash.

Once we had been to see the Fiesta we had to go into Crewe police station and have our fingerprints taken. This was just to eliminate us from their enquiries, but I really didn’t mind doing it. Actually it was quite interesting and now my fingerprints are on record. Many people are afraid of what they see as a “big brother society”, but I welcome it. My philosophy is that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to be afraid of. If you break the law then you have to pay for it and with a society completely under surveillance there would be little crime, and even then the people doing it would probably be caught.

So we won’t be getting the Fiesta back. The car I learnt to drive in is gone. I would be upset if we had sold it, but this has got me really down. I am now utterly paranoid and keep going to have a look to see if the Octavia is still there. It’s driving me crazy.

So we won’t be getting the Fiesta back. The car I learnt to drive in is gone. I would be upset if we had sold it, but this has got me really down. I am now utterly paranoid and keep going to have a look to see if the Octavia is still there. It’s driving me crazy.

Mandy is going to start going into town on the bus and see how it goes, but from her initial research she said that it would cost £3 each way. This cannot be right, but the only way we are able to actually find out is if she just gets on the bus.

What is the point? I work every hour that I have to better myself and earn money for my family and then some fool comes along and throws yet another spanner in the works. Sometimes I feel that everything I do is for nothing. But I suppose it doesn’t count for anything really, cosmically speaking.

All I know is that I am a better person than the idiot who stole my car. Not just a little bit, but at least a googol better. That’s 1 to the power of 100, or 1×10¹⁰⁰.

Tags: Car by Philip Norton
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This morning I had a bit of De Ja Vu when I noticed that the back wheel on the Octavia was almost flat. So on the offchance I drove it to the nearest QuikFit garage, which just happened to be open. It turned out that the puncture we had replaced yesterday was only one of two. So the guy just pached up the second and it was all fine! Bit of a pain though.

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I was about to get into the car this morning to go and pick Mandy up from her parents house in Aberystwyth when I noticed that the Octavia had a puncture on the front passenger side. Then I looked at the back wheel on the same side and saw that it wasn´t flat, but it had a slow puncture in it.

So after phoing my Dad to see what I should do I set about changing it, although I had to move the car onto the pavement as my driveway is quite steep. However, once I had started to change the front wheel the back wheel was totally flat. Two flat tires on the same side! I must have driven through something nasty.

So anyway, what I did was get my Dad to give me and the front wheel a lift to a garage where we got the tire repaired, took this wheel back to the car and swapped it for the back wheel. We then drove into the garage in my car and got the back tire repaired. Actually, the back tire had a 2 inch screw stuck in it and it was too close to the wall to be able to repair it. So the guy at the garage sold me a spare tire that had been repaired for the cost of the repair. This was a bargain as the tire was almost new.

I finally started off to Aber at about 4PM and as It has been snowing for the past few days so I was a bit apprehensive about travelling as I thought I might get stuck in the snow, but it went well. Although there was quite a bit of snow around Shrewsbury.

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Mandy was driving the Fiesta back from shopping today when it conked out on her. Luckily it had stopped by a garage (the same one where I got the MOT for the Skoda) so they got it started again and drove it in for a look.

After a quick check they said that the battery had died, so they put one on order and sent her on her way. I’m not surprised by this as the battery is now around 15 years old and I was almost expecting it to fail at some point. I’m just glad it was nothing serious or expensive.

Mandy wasn’t too happy about the car stopping though, she is still trying to get over the flooding from yesterday.

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The Octavia is due for it’s MOT today so I took it into a garage in town yesterday to get it tested. For once I actually put a car in for it’s MOT BEFORE the certificate expired.

It mostly passed, the only thing that failed was the back passenger side wheel bearning, which will cost me £140! I feel a part exchange deal coming on…

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Well I got the Octavia back this morning, although to get it fixed cost me £430! Basically the alternator had broken, and a couple of the belts needed fixing, these are important because the battery wasn’t charging while it was driving.

The car has done over 120,000 miles and I think it might start falling apart soon. This is strike one basically, we can’t afford to keep paying these enormous repair bills. Two more bills like this and I will have to sell it.

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