Not being a particularly car-mechanicky chap, my idea of fixing cars is to wait until one of the wheels falls off and then take it to the local repair shop. But, happily my housemate loves to tinker with cars and from time to time buys an old wreck, parks it in my backyard, fills my backyard with tools, ignores it all for about three months and then makes the car roadworthy and sells it. Good on him.

Over the weekend he and I replaced the clutch on the Ford which was oddly satisfying. I can sort of see what he finds so enjoyable about it: mostly it's how good you feel when you finally stop — much like jogging…

The task involves a great deal of lying underneath the body of the car on my brickwork which is now blanketed with oil mixed liberally with the dirt. Your hands and forearms are black with grease. The only conversations you have either are about socket wrenches or are just incoherent strings of F- and C-words.

Replacing a clutch involves removing in a particular order a number of parts that are all placed in awkward positions, buying a new clutch from a wrecker's (wreckers' are great fun, by the way — like those R-rated adult shops except with old radiators instead of crotchless knickers), putting it where the old one was and then bolting everything back on. As you would expect.

We were half-way through the last step when one of the bolts sheared off as we were tightening something.

Once again I have a car abandoned indefinitely in my back yard.

¶ 1:25 pm