Little Kenny...

I have taken little Kenny Kembara to the Exhaust hospital.  You may remember that not so long ago he went it to have the back end of the exhaust replaced and just recently he seemed to have adopted a rather throaty purr and become a little heavy on the juice so I reckoned that maybe there was something amiss with the front end of the exhaust.  As I was down the Mesoghi Avenue yesterday I thought it would be wise to call into the Nice Man at Stelco which is situated next door to Mum's long-time hairdresser Des.

With Easter coming up I wasn't entirely sure when I would be passing again to see it open so Carpe Diem and all that I swung by to see.

The Nice Man was dealing with another car but unlike what has happened to me before when pulling up at a UK garage he did not adopt the 'avoid all eye contact until I have finished what I am doing' stance, instead he gave his hands a cursory wipe on his t-shirt and moseyed on over to ask me how he could help.

He remembered changing said back bit and I explained about the throaty purr so he asked me to get out of the car and then it got extremely technical - he started the engine, stuck his hand over the tail-pipe, took a quick look under the car and gave me his considered opinion that it was not a big problem, only a little hole and if I cared to wait he would fix it.  I decided I should stay for all the reasons above but prayed the repair wouldn't be too expensive as I only had a limited amount of cash on me.

His side-kick, a man of indeterminate age who looks about 75 but is probably, in reality only in his 50s wandered over.  He looks to be a man on the edge living on copious amounts of strong unfiltered cigarettes and equally copious amounts of skerto (strong black Cyprus coffee without sugar) and diplos (doubles) at that.  He offered me a rather scruffy chair, a skerto and one of his fags.  I accepted the first but declined the other two.

The Nice Man (name currently unknown) finished the job in hand and then whipped Kenny up onto the ramp.  He refused a fag from the side-kick for which I was very grateful, gave the underside of the car the once over, tapped various elements of the exhaust and then lit his welding thing, shirked wearing anything remotely protective and proceeded to weld which took about 30 seconds, a minute at the most.

Job done he lowered the ramp, reversed Kenny off and wished me Kalo Pascha (Happy Easter) and told me there was nothing to pay - Kalo Pascha indeed.  I did just mention to him that I thought the car still sounded a bit 'throaty' but he told me that it was only HER noise, I cannot believe that he failed to notice that Kenny is most definitely my boy!