My first car … Doug Segal
MY FIRST car was an ancient Morris Marina that a friend gave to me. He had stored a leaky car battery under the seat, and the mystery of why his trouser cuffs always had holes in them was revealed to me shortly after, as the battery acid ate its way through every pair of jeans I owned in a week. His car donation genuinely was “ragged-trousered philanthropy”.
The Marina and I weren’t exactly man and machine in perfect harmony – I was 19, skint and knew nothing of car maintenance. I used it to get to the rail station to commute to work and once came home late at night to find a stranger sitting in it rifling through the cassettes in my glovebox. After I chased him off I discovered he’d stolen nothing. Few rejections sting as much as owning a car and music collection not even a thief wants.
The Marina – sensing, I think, that I was never going to lovingly restore her – stopped working about a month after that on the way to the station. I just got out and walked the rest of the way.
On my return, she was gone. As she had never cost me anything, I never reported her stolen. If the thief was able to nurse her back to health, maybe they deserved each other. I’d still like my cassettes back though. «
Doug Segal’s comedy mind-reading show How To Read Minds And Influence People is at the Gilded Balloon Teviot, 2-27 August, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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Weather for Edinburgh
Wednesday 19 June 2013
Today
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Temperature: 9 C to 18 C
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