I know your pain Spencey – the car-hunting journey which begins brimful of hope but comes to a crushing halt in the dead end of disappointment.
If you’re on Twitter and a follower of footie-fanatical, flame-haired Courier columnist colleague Jim Spence, this week’s offering might strike a chord.
With the league season recently drawing to a close, the pitch-side warrior found himself heading for the Blue Toon and, canny lad that he is, oor Jim planned on killing two north east birds with one stone by bagging a bargain set of wheels.
Sadly, it was a Doric disaster.
Not only had a popular citizen passed, but also gone was the motor famously said to have been offered by his widow in our P&J sister paper to get maximum bang from her buck in the death notice advert.
You may have missed the ad, but it read simply: “Peter Reid fae Peterheid is deid. Volvo for sale.”
I believe I chanced upon one of Peter’s north-east chums between Dundee and Forfar last week.
And, I’d hazard a guess they may even have been on an unsuccessful shoe shopping trip before I met them heading up Powrie Brae.
I know this because they struggled to get comfortable in a new pair of brogues as a result of not knowing their left from their right.
Otherwise, why would they have sat in the outside lane of a quiet dual carriageway for the entire journey between Dundee and Forfar?
The answer lies in the average speed cameras which have transformed driver behaviour between Dundee and Stonehaven for the better, and of which I am already on record in this column as being very much a supporter.
But no matter how law-abiding you are on the cruise control button of 70mph, the rules of the road don’t allow you to stay in the outside lane of an empty dual carriageway for almost 15 solid miles.
That could have been avoided if they’d got left and right sorted out in the shoe shop and just inquired of the assistant: “Fit fit fits fit fit?”
And they weren’t even driving deid Reid’s Volvo.
