When Your Car Might Explode
I recall a recall and a craze
Hello again,
I wrote this piece and then read it in a livestream here on substack, so if you want to see and/or hear me read it, it’s here:
Some words in the English language, perhaps because they're rarely encountered in everyday life, have a chilling effect. Shrapnel is one such word, and I encountered it in a letter I received the other day.
The encounter began badly. This is not a circular, the envelope announced in red ink.
‘What makes you think I'd assumed it was?’ I wanted to say. I hardly ever feel the need to predict the contents of an envelope addressed to me, and why would I waste all that mental energy when the solution to the mystery is at hand?
I tore the envelope open, and discovered that my car, a Citroën C3, was part of a product recall campaign.
As far as I recall, I haven't been affected by one of these campaigns before.
There were the clacker balls when I was a child. At least, that's what we all called them. The toy, comprising two plastic balls joined by a cord, could be made to bounce against each other with a loud report, and if you were quick, you could make them collide both below and above your hand.
That was it. But we didn't have computer games, and televised adverts assured us that there wasn't such fun to be had by any other means. Just think of the satisfaction we would get from those balls whacking against each other. There was very little skill involved, but other kids could see us doing it, and that was the important thing. Because of this playground power, the toy became a craze.
Crazes were a significant feature of my childhood. Small plastic toys, many of them cheap and easily bought with pocket money from one of the small corner shops in our little town, would appear on the scene and draw admiring crowds.
To be the first with a toy was a wonderful thing. To be a trendsetter, to start a craze, elevated a person to a legendary status. Come to think of it, nothing much has changed. Teenagers hunt in packs for the latest music, videos, gadgets, computer games, books, comics, fashions and so on. Adults are no better.
The online world and so-called social media has accelerated the race to acquire, to fit in with the tribe.
Aside: I don't know who coined the term social media, but boy, were they wrong? Antisocial media would be closer to the mark.
The rat race has always been with us, ever since one ancestor turned up to the hunting party brandishing a new weapon.
‘Oh, this?’ he said casually. ‘It's a kind of rock you can split apart, and it's pretty sharp. I cut myself six times when I was making this, but gosh, it was worth it.‘
A chorus of awed murmurs ran around the group. ‘What do you call it?’ somebody piped up.
The inventor shrugged modestly and said, ‘I name this deadly weapon in honour of my best friend.‘
‘What, Fred?’
‘No, his family name, obviously. I mean, what are you, Neanderthals?’
‘Cool it, Barney,’ a few people muttered. ‘No need to get bigheaded.‘
But their wise words were lost in the clamour of the crowd.
‘Where did you find these special rocks?’
‘How did you make it?‘
‘Is it hard to do?‘
‘Show us, Barney. Show us now. We've gotta have it!‘
*Curtain falls*
The power of the craze got us this far, and it still has its uses. At its best, it drives progress; at its worst, it leads to landfill.
We've also developed the slightly more sophisticated craze of going without. Oh, you've quit smoking? You've given up booze? You've turned your back on junk food?
The list goes on, and I can attest to that, believe me. I only have caffeine left, and although there are times when I wonder about even that, I refuse to give it up.
It's as if the dopamine-craving part of my mind cries, ‘For the love of God, leave me something.’
Back to the clackers.
We tended to hold the toy at chest height or even slightly higher, so when we'd mastered the art of whacking the balls together above your hand, the two solid lumps of hard plastic would smack against each other right in front of our eyes. It was only a matter of time before, somewhere in the world, the balls fractured in an explosive fashion, sending shards of plastic into a child's face.
And so it proved. Many of us saw the TV reports, possibly on one of those consumer programmes that were popular at the time, and the percussive clackers were put away.
These sorts of cheap novelty items have all but disappeared. They pop up now and then, and may continue to do so, but apps and online games have largely replaced them, welding kids to their phones night and day.
The corner shops have gone, though. Occasionally I'll come across a house that might well have been a shop. The large windows give it away. We live in one, and I'm sitting right now in the very same space where customers queued to buy their supplies. We pulled up the carpet a few years back, and sanded the floor, but I only sanded it lightly. I didn't want to obliterate the marks that show where the counter stood. And also, worryingly, where there had clearly been a small fire on the floor as if someone had dropped a lit oil lamp.
Aside: Keen readers of The Devonshire Mysteries will know that Dan Corrigan lives in The Old Shop. Now you know why.
Back to the present day, and there I was with a product recall letter in my hand. It tells me that the airbags in my car have been known to corrode over time, so that when they deploy, they do so with more force than required. Somewhere in their mechanism, a metal container ruptures, and this is where the word shrapnel comes into play.
The shrapnel, it seems, is thrown into the passenger compartment. I shouldn't drive the car, but I must take it to an authorised dealer who will replace the airbags free of charge.
‘I should bloody well think so,‘ I muttered, and phoned the nearest dealership, which is in Exeter. The appointment was made, and a couple of weeks later, I drove very, very carefully to Exeter.
I'm a cautious and careful driver, but even so, I undertook the journey with some trepidation, fearing every moment might be my last.
Thankfully, the whole affair passed off without incident. In a showroom bristling with enormous electric cars that seem built to tackle the unpaved roads of the Serengeti, but which, in all likelihood will only be used to pootle to the supermarket or to drop the kids off at school, I handed over my keys.
A couple of hours later, I returned to the showroom and waited by the service counter where I was studiously ignored for some time. By now, they had the measure of me, and they knew I wasn't going to give them a penny, never mind hand over the small fortune required to drive away in one of their gleaming, van-sized cars.
Still, it was poor service, and after a while it got under my skin. I didn’t want to be there. I had other things to do, and the fact that I’d had this inconvenience was Citroen’s fault. An apology would’ve been in order, but I wasn’t even going to get a polite greeting.
‘Hey,‘ I wanted to say in a loud voice, startling the other customers and sweeping my arm toward the ranks of new cars, ‘I was wondering, do all these cars explode too, or is it just mine?‘
But I didn't say anything at all. I waited quietly and thanked the man when he finally acknowledged my existence and handed back the keys.
The drive home, I'm pleased to report, was entirely shrapnel free.
Look after each other and take care,
Mikey
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How nerve wracking! Glad it was resolved. Car dealerships are the same worldwide it seems. Unless you’re there to “BUY” you’re basically a nuisance to them and easily ignored. Been there and done that.