"I think Noel called his car a piece of junk"

HOME, 8am, and my husband has made fresh plans to dislocate his new hip.

Keen to up the odds for dislocation after his recent near-miss on the road-bike, he’s looking forward to a stretch of mountain-biking today — jumping around the bedroom in Lycra like a flea in a box, when our eldest son, who is trying to buy his first car, phones.

He doesn’t mind what it looks like. He just wants an A to B vehicle, he says, he has no shame.

“A to B vehicles and no shame is exactly our area of expertise,” I say.

He has six car viewings lined up today, he tells me, but it’s no hassle if Dad can’t make it. Noel, his girlfriend J’s dad, has offered to help with the car viewings.

I cannot stop my face from falling.

“Noel has offered to help him with the car-viewings,” I say. My husband cannot stop his from falling either.

The thing is, whenever we think of my son’s long-term girlfriend J, we think of her heart, which is outstandingly soft. And whenever we think of my son we think of his, which is as soft as hers. But whenever we think of J’s dad Noel, we don’t quite know what to think; it’s hard to know what to make of a man who introduced himself to our son for the first time with a warm handshake and the words: “Nice to meet you. How big is your mickey?”

“Colourful,” is the word J uses to describe her dad, but she says “chancer” might be closer to it.

But my husband feels that the venture of second-hand car buying doesn’t need to be made any more colourful than it is, or have more chancers factored into it than it already has, so he pulls off his Lycra, says “tell him I’ll be up there in an hour,” unloads his mountain-bike from the back of the car and departs hastily for Cork.

I spend the day at home with my daughter who keeps surprising me in strange places — such as at the foot of my painting ladder — like a pissed-off jack in-the-box, dangling the house-phone from her hand and saying wearily, “It’s Dad again about bloody cars.”

My husband crosses the finishing line in Cork, at 8.30pm, and returns home looking like it.

“Got one,” he sighs. “Definitely the best out of six. €975 for a Nissan Micra. Boy-racer owner but his dad’s a mechanic.”

Our son is absolutely thrilled, he says, which makes two of us — my husband is too exhausted to be thrilled about anything — for I rarely get the chance to offer up the only golden nugget of car wisdom I possess.

“You can’t beat a Nissan Micra,” I pronounce with great solemnity to my husband, wishing I had more of an audience to mark this important moment.

“It’s got super-woofers, spotlights and spoilers,” my husband sighs, quite as if I haven’t spoken, “so I said get rid of all that rubbish, sort the exhaust out and we’ll give you €975. It was a very delicate negotiation. Very delicate. But we got there in the end.”

He says the owner’s dropping it round to our son’s house tomorrow morning, when he’s fixed the exhaust, after which, our son will pay the €975, job done.

“God I’m knackered,” he says, “you need the diplomacy of Richard Hass to buy a second-hand car in Cork.”

The following morning, hope springing eternal, my husband pulls on his Lycra again, when his mobile rings.

It is our son, panting.

“He’s brought the car round but the exhaust doesn’t sound any different Dad,” our son says. “Noel’s offered to come down and check it out. Sorry, gotta go.”

Both our faces fall.

“Richard Hass, you say?” I venture.

Ten minutes later, the phone rings again. It is our son, panting.

“The weirdest thing just happened, Dad,” he gasps, “Noel got behind the wheel and roared off like Stirling Moss. The owner was with him. Came back five minutes later and the two were effing and blinding each other up the road. I think Noel called his car a piece of junk...”

“So how do things stand right now?” my husband asks, pulling off his Lycra in defeat.

“I dunno Dad,” he pants, “they’re still effing and blinding up the road. But I’d say the sale is off. Sorry, gotta go.”

Five minutes pass before the phone rings.

“Definitely off,” he pants.