Slap Pending

Every fucking Monday morning I have to take on the persona of Prof Pat Pending. Why? Because my very-soon-to-be ex-wife has invariably used my car over the previous weekend and turned it into the Convert-a-Car!






This morning was no different. I got into the car I lovingly call The Wardrobe (see photo for explanation) at 7am, in good time to get to work. To begin with I thought I had shrunk dramatically in the night as I couldn't reach either the steering wheel or pedals and then it dawned on me that I was almost sitting in the back owing to the fact that VSTB EW had rammed the seat back as far as it would go. Now, Mrs P is not a particularly tall woman. In fact she measures little more than 5ft from snout to hoofs. No, she doesn't adjust the seat to drive. She blasts it back as far as it will go each time she gets out of the car. Why, you may well ask? I don't fucking know, is the retort.
After I managed to get the seat back to somewhere near where I could operate the controls I made the mistake of firing up the engine. At that point a wall of sound almost sent me and the driver's seat back to where we had come from. It was the full-volume screaming of some mega-death-thrash-garage-shitemeister and not only did it wake up the neighbours four doors down it began to make my ears bleed. I dived for the volume and hastily turned it down, discovering as I did so that VSTB EW had retuned my beloved Radio 4 to some wankety-wank-wank station no doubt broadcast from some drug addict's tower block flat in Small Town.
Out of curiosity I began flicking around my pre-set channels to see if Radio 2, Radio 3, Five Live, the oldies station, the local BBC programme and a few others I happen to like in the morning were still where they should be. Not only could I not find them, I discovered that every single available station had been retuned to some unheard of Shite FM-style operation which belted out the works of others who were through suffering for their music and had decided it was now our turn.
I then tried to hook my mobile phone up to the charger normally plugged into the cigarette lighter socket but, guess what? The charger was not there (I found it later in the day on the back seat). Mrs P's charger was, however, plugged in and so I ripped it out and, feeling the need for something to stop me going on a gun rampage, I reached for a fag and then felt around in the handbrake well for the cigarette lighter (for that is where I keep it when it's not in use). That too was missing and after a frantic search I found it under the passenger seat!
Having reassembled what I recognised as my car I then drove off but there was still a bit of work for old Pat to do. Firstly, I glanced in my wing mirrors to find that they gave excellent views of both front doors having also been adjusted by the diminutive Mrs P. Secondly, I then discovered that there was fuck all petrol in the car, despite the fact that the tank had been half-full when I last used it on Saturday morning.
My efforts to put the Convert-a-Car back to my liking took about 15 minutes - 15 minutes which took me out of the realms of "a drive through heavy traffic into work" and into "a crawl through the Tokyo rush-hour which makes you late for work".
No, I love my Wardrobe and I like it as it is. Its spells as the Convert-a-Car and mine as Prof Pat can go to Grantham.