Have Duct Tape, Will Travel
Over the weekend there was a three-day fiesta in our village.
It was great; just how village fiestas should be, with processions and singing and dancing, loads of fireworks, several bands, and games for children and adults. It went very well and I will probably post some more pictures from the fiesta here soon.
(Fiesta: childrens’ bicycle race)
However, true to ‘no me lo puedo creer’ tradition, one of the results of the fiesta was not good for us.
On Monday morning my husband was due to take our little ’scavenger’ to the vets for her final check up after her ‘pincharo’ (she has recovered very well, by the way). However, they never made there. My husband took her down to our car, which had been parked in a street at the bottom of the village (to make room for extra cars for the fiesta), but was horrified to find that the car was quite badly damaged. Someone had driven their car into the back of ours, smashing in the left-hand rear side, slashing a back tyre, shattering the back lights, badly denting the bumper, and generally leaving the rear bodywork in poor shape. So forceful had been the impact that our car was now resting on top of a street sign that had originally been in front of it. Of course, the driver had left no note to say who he was.
Just then a neighbour came along. She told us that she had seen the accident and had tried to take the car’s number, but had not had a pen or paper on her. She gave us a good description though, along with her thoughts on the driver (obviously drunk after leaving the fiesta, she said), together with hand signals of a certain nature. We could only agree, together with the comment made by one of the other villagers (a few of whom had appeared by now), who called the driver a ‘puta madre’. Couldn’t agree more!
At that point, all the pent up frustration that we have felt over the last few months with ‘house trials’, errant builders, and general lack of progress came out. I just felt like curling up and crying and my husband felt like simply giving up.
But giving up isn’t an option. So, after clearing up the mess from the roadside (bits of glass, bits paintwork, bits of car …), we sat down and decided what to do.
First things first, we had to inform the police, in this instance the ‘Guardia Civil’ as they deal with traffic matters. There had been an accident, plus there was damage to a traffic sign. So my husband phoned them.
After struggling to explain in a mixture of halting Spanish and English to an operator whose English was good but not perfect, my husband was then told that he needed to phone the local police because of the damage to the road sign. So he went through the whole business again with a local operator (whose English was exceptional I have to say) and was then told that he would have to go into the City to pick up a copy of his ‘Denuncia’. But not right then as we didn’t have a driveable car ……
The next people to call were, of course, the insurers. We have fully comprehensive cover so we expected some help from them in repairing the damage. However, it appears that our car insurance policy is only valid for damage cover to third parties, or to our vehicle if we can give them all details of the other car and driver. But we couldn’t. We didn’t have a name, or a licence plate number, just a description of the car. So no money would be forthcoming from them. Nevertheless, the woman on the end of the line said that they would be willing to help pay for the damage to the road sign. Well, that was okay then, wasn’t it ….?
In the meantime, we still had an undriveable car. But my husband had by this time decided that he would not be thwarted by all this. He changed the damaged wheel, took off the remaining pieces of the back light housing plus whatever bits of car were just hanging on by a thread, forced the boot lid shut as best he could, and, hoping for the best, started the car up.
It went. Thank goodness!
However, it was totally illegal: only one set of brake lights and rear lights and no spare wheel. So he drove carefully to the next village in the hope of finding a new tyre.
As luck would have it, not only did he manage to get a new tyre at a reasonable price, but he also found a scrap yard where he bought a new light housing for the back lights. Bolstered a little by this, he was on his way back home when he passed a breakdown yard. Still on a ‘grua’ and waiting to be dealt with was a car matching the description of the one which had crashed into ours. It was a write off. The front had completely caved in, the headlights were smashed and the front window on the passenger side had a nasty crack, right where a passenger’s head would have hit if they were not wearing a seat belt. How they ever got the car away from there without someone noticing goodness knows, not to mention the fact that the passenger at least must have been hurt.
The trouble was, we couldn’t prove that this was the same car and I’m sure the driver was not going to own up. We could, I suppose, take matters further, if only to get some insurance money to repair the car, but we are strangers here and although most of the other villagers say that what the other driver did was disgusting, others in the village probably know who it was and are keeping quiet.
Basically, we don’t want to make waves without real proof.
So there we were, with a damaged car and no money to pay for repairs. The purchase of the new tyre and second-hand light fitment had taken most of our spare cash. What could we do?
Duct tape. That was the answer! Out of the few spare Euros we had left my husband purchased two big rolls of duct tape. He bolted odd protuding pieces of the bodywork down with a piece of bridging material he found in his toolbox, fitted the new lights (with some difficulty as the housing was completely out of shape) and then we set about ‘repairing’ the car with duct tape.
We now have a dark blue car with a shimmering silver-grey left rear end. Close inspection will show that this is a facade, as the actual rear bodywork is stoved in, and what appears to be a nicely-curved outline (matching the other side quite well) is carefully-applied duct tape. If they ponder on this, they may agree that at least the body is still waterproof (the duct tape is very thick), but they may wonder why we chose such a conspicuous colour clash.
Because nowhere here seems to sell dark duct tape!
But at least we have a workeable car again.
I wonder what it would be like living here if everything went well? Guess I’ll probably never find out ……
(via No me lo puedo creer!)
1 year ago