If my little brain had managed to think even for one microsecond second before saying this I would not have spoken.
Joe who was taking a drink as I said it spluttered through his beer half choking. He looked at me with an expression of pained disbelief, not at the simple statement, which was in fact true, but at the fact that I should use this as a reason for not buying a bicycle.
I said I was sorry. I was clutching at straws.
The car in our lives was not, by a long way, one of the most successful enterprises that our little group had got ourselves into. The fact is, everyone who was involved in the episode made a special point of not mentioning the car except in the dark places behind closed doors.
As often is the case with really big blunders it seemed a good idea at the time.
Four of us, me, Joe, Tub and Sprag, had been talking about buying some sort of transport and had managed to scrape together the small amount of money needed for us to think about it seriously. We were still at the thinking about it stage, when we found ourselves at this rather good party celebrating Spottys birthday.
At about two-o-clock in the morning Tom said he knew this chap whose brother had a friend who had a car he wanted to sell dead cheap. This sounded just like the sort of car we wanted.
I must say I was a little surprised, even then, that he was ready to do a deal at such an hour, but this friends mate insisted, so we all went round to his place. Why wait until morning, after all it could be gone by then, we all agreed that we could not miss a chance like this.
So in the early hours of the morning and in high spirits we pushed the beautiful gleaming limousine round to my flat. Pushing due to a certain lack of petrol in the car and a certain lack sober of drivers among us, it had been a very good party.
Tired out we finally got the sparkling limousine to the courtyard outside my flat and stood looking at it gleam in the moonlight. We agreed to meet in the morning to polish it, take it for a spin and show it off to all our friends.
I do not know quite what happened to it during the night but in the cold sober head thumping following morning, late in the cold sober head thumping following morning, we all gathered in the courtyard. Somehow the gleaming limousine we had purchased the previous evening had turned into a very dilapidated Austin seven.
It's a wonder, looking back on the event, that it had not turned back into a pumpkin.
Sprags dad who was a car mechanic came to have a look at. When he had stopped laughing, it turned out that if we all pooled together the money we had left, we couldn't afford to give the engine a decent burial, let alone make it road worthy and run it.
So from that day on, it stayed in the garage underneath Joes flat, as a reminder not to buy another one.
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