Breaking down leads to scenic tour of Dundee’s landmarks

By roddy phillips

Published:

I DON’T think my wife has ever had a car towed by a recovery vehicle before, which is probably why she got into the back of our car when the breakdown bloke told us to “jump in”.

I hovered outside our car struggling to hold the door open while my wife tried to coax me in. As she pulled on the seatbelt she looked like she was strapping herself in for an amusement park thrill ride – one that only goes up.

“Come on,” she shouted, rubbing her hands, “it’s freezing.”

I knew it was freezing. We’d waited over an hour for the breakdown vehicle to arrive.

“Fine day for it,” the breakdown bloke declared when he arrived.

It certainly was a lovely day for breaking down on the outskirts of Dundee. Our weakened brave smiles must have spoken volumes, so he continued being chirpy to such a degree it was hard to keep up with him.

Something must happen to your brain when you break down while hurtling down a hill on a dual carriageway. There was a roundabout in the way, which I duly went round about without any gears and, incredibly, probably through a mixture of inertia and sheer willpower, continued going until we ground to a halt at the entrance to a stables and bike-hire centre.

“Well that might come in handy,” quipped my wife as we stopped just a few feet from the sign.

There’s always that vain hope that the car will behave itself after it has had a little rest, so we waited a couple of minutes. But it had gone into a deep sulk. Soon it would be time to start swearing a lot and phoning for help. First though, we had to find out where we were and, with no street signs, we decided to go in separate directions.

It was a suburban street – completely deserted. My wife disappeared into the distance and after about five minutes we both met people who lived on the street but couldn’t remember its name. The bloke I spoke to pointed to a woman leaving her house.

“That’s one of my neighbours,” he said, “she might know.”

I was beginning to think we’d stumbled on some witness protection scheme but thankfully the woman had memorised the name of the street she lived on – probably in case she got lost.

After an hour the bikes and the horses were beginning to look rather feasible as a back-up to our car-rental or train plan. Every other plan about meeting people, delivering stuff and shopping had long been abandoned. We did however, have our lunch sitting tantalisingly on the back seat.

“If we get really desperate, we’ll break into it,” said my wife as we both eyed up the bag in a slightly desperate manner.

Our resolve was just about to break when the cheery recovery vehicle driver turned up.

“We’ll have our lunch once he’s fixed it. How’s that?” said my wife.

“I think that might be next week some time,” I replied gloomily.

A few minutes later I was being proved right. My wife was sitting in the back of our car like an astronaut pitched backwards ready for take-off.

“I don’t think we can sit in the car while it’s being towed,” I said.

“Nonsense,” declared my wife, “you see people doing it all the time.”

“Really?” I asked, “maybe in silent films.”

My wife sighed and said if I was nervous I could always run along behind the car.

I was considering the viability of this option when the recovery bloke appeared and asked what the problem was.

“Sorry about this, but my husband won’t get into the car,” shouted my wife.

I looked at the bloke and thought I’d let him deal with it.

The back of the recovery vehicle was surprisingly spacious and comfortable, at least until we started moving. I’ve never been on the back of a camel – but I imagine it would be a smoother ride.

We were being taken to the nearest car-hire company, which was only a few miles away through the city. On the way we got a very informative tour of the local landmarks. The recovery bloke was very knowledgeable so we sat back and listened as he told us about the new developments that had sprung up as if from nowhere, mostly student accommodation, but there were interesting little historical nuggets to be had, mainly of a personal nature.

Possibly thinking of her lunch, which she was now clutching, my wife was particularly taken by the Dundee Pie Shop.

“This is wonderful,” she enthused and, since we couldn’t find a car-hire company that could hire us a car, we enjoyed even more wonderful local sights, ending up back at the garage feeling distinctly scrambled.

Basically we had travelled almost 100 miles to have our lunch in a newly disinfected portable waiting room with a convector heater on full blast burning our ankles. It was hard to contain our excitement.

Sadly it had to come to an end, so I phoned a taxi to take us to the station and was told there were no trains going our way and the last bus had already left.

“Looks like you’re stranded pal!” said the man from the taxi company.

As it turned out, we weren’t. The wonderful garage called in another driver and took us home with our car.

I dozed a lot of the way and woke up staring out the back window of the recovery vehicle at the grinning front grille of my car. For a moment I thought it was odd that I had forgotten to put my lights on considering it was dark.

“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves here,” I said, but my wife was reading.

When the driver was forced to break suddenly I thought our car was going to come straight through the window at us like some demented shark. I worried about this scenario for a few minutes before dozing off again and dreaming I was in a mobile pie shop.