Cabriolet

I took my car in for a service, today. The garage was kind enough to provide a courtesy car, as they have done in the past. Usually, the car they lend me is slightly nicer than my own car, possibly because they want me to think about buying a better car but, to be fair, possibly because they’re just trying to be nice to me.

Today, though, they lent me a convertible.

I must say I felt slightly uncomfortable driving the car out of the garage and back to the office. It’s never occurred to me to buy a car with a soft top and now I found myself feeling self-conscious as I drove along. Worse, later in the day, I had to park the car in Kirkby Lonsdale, where I live, and I was slightly anxious that someone might see me.

After my meeting, Dan came down to meet me and I explained that I needed to take the courtesy car back to the garage and pick up my own car and asked if he’d like to come with me. He said he would and his eyes lit up when he saw the convertible. As soon as we were inside, he found the button that would put the roof down and looked at me with his eyebrows raised.

“Go on, then.”

I have to say the engineering and mechanics that have gone into the process of folding back the hood into its storage space at the back are very impressive and less than a minute later we found ourselves sat under the open sky. As you can imagine, I immediately became even more self-conscious!

I didn’t fancy driving along a main road with the roof down, so we did the first part of our journey along the country lanes, stopping so Dan could take a “selfie”, which is when I took this shot of him. I’m glad he was with me; if he hadn’t wanted to play with the roof, I never would have had the experience or seen that amazing engineering at work.