The Paint Job

In all of the events of the previous eighteen months I had kept quiet to the family, well not to my own, but I had not said anything to my wifes family about the strange goings on at the house. There had been a couple of times where I had thrown her out and she would find refuge at her fathers house, 100 yards away from our own.

However, she never told him why and anger grew in the family, directed at me.

The day that her sister came down to see me about my bad, bad, behaviour, (reported via the wife) I was outside in the late afternoon Summer heat, hand painting the Maxi with RePaint (A hand brushed enamel, bought from the local Halfords for three pounds a can).

Symbolically I suppose one could say it represented a new lease of life for both me and the car. In reality it kept me well out of the house and away from the stranger who was my wife.

It was that day as I happily daubed that brown gunk all over the Maxi's fine sandpapered lines that her father and sister confronted me and demanded to know the reason why the marriage was on the rocks.

It was while I was mentally debating if there were any brush marks on the drivers side wing that I informed them about the fireman and subsequent incidents of the previous months.

The tone of the day changed quite dramatically from that instant, at last the relatives that blamed me finally realised what was going on, I was happy for that reason and one other, the Maxi would be finished before dusk, very few flies would die that night on its tacky surface.

Bliss! I knew in my heart that my emotional relationship with this car would outlast that of my wife.

I had no idea.