I can't fill it in because I've never owned 5 cars. However, it did make me think back to the first car I ever owned.
Goldie.
Yeah I know it's really lame when girl's name their cars but Goldie was, erm, 'gold' so it wasn't really up their with people who call their cars stuff like 'Mr Bojangles' or 'Princess Peewee'.
Actually the log-book described the car as 'beige' but not many 17 year olds wanted to be associated with a beige automobile so the car was solid 'gold' to me.
Anyway, Goldie was a Renault 5. A very very old one.
When I went away to Uni, Goldie stayed behind (I don't think it would have actually made it up the motorway).
When I came back for Christmas, a nest of mice had made a home around the 'faux' leather gear-lever padding and things went downhill from there (I'm not sure things can ever go 'up' once you've had mice in your gearbox).
After a while Goldie stopped working completely. A rat was found under the bonnet (I'm surprised they didn't find the bloody Loch Ness Monster in the petrol tank) but no other cause could be found so Goldie went to the garage (well to one of my dad's mates) for further investigations.
He found that Goldie had been shot.
There was a bullet hole through some vital part of the engine.
Excuse my languge but 'What. The. F***?'.
I'm hoping that it was shot accidentally during a rabbit shoot or something (it was parked in a very rural field miles from anywhere) and not that somebody was actually trying to assisinate me. But I guess I'll never know? Well unless I spot a masked assasin peeping through my rose bushes which, I'd like to think, is unlikely.
Anyway, Goldie was mended and returned and my dad decided to sell it before any other animals could eat parts of it, so off it went to a rural village garage to stand on their 'For Sale' forecourt.
And that was the end of that.
Or so I thought.
It turned out the guy who owned the garage was in some kind of a feud with another local car salesman and Goldie was firebombed.
Yes firebombed.
My poor old beige Renault 5, first car I ever owned, car I used to sleep in in the car park of 'NightOwls Discotech' so I could still drink and not pay a taxi, my first taste of freedom - exploded in a ball of flame and made it into the local press.
At the time I felt strangely moved and saddened by this but now it just seems like just part of the wider picture of oddball insanity which seems to follow me around.
R.I.P Goldie. It could have been worse. I could have thrown you down a railway embankment....
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