little red hatchback

This morning on the way to work, I turned off the radio in a fit of raging lefty disgust.

It was a big mistake, that's for sure.

It allowed me to hear some new badsounds in the hatchback. My infamous little red hatchback. My fifteen-year-old, beat-up, messy hatchback, that has lived long and survived much - a new engine, two radiators, multiple minor accidents and at least one 3000km road trip.

Yes, we have indeed spent more money keeping this car on the road than we ever did on actually buying it (a meagre $2000). But it keeps going, this one does, despite the cruellest predictions of my father.

The sounds I heard this morning, however, were certainly not healthy. They sounded like metal. Like a low groan, a rumble of scraping steel, deep down in the wheels.

It was the wheel bearings.

Not just one, but all four.

And when I dropped off the hatchback this afternoon, and the mechanic wiped his oily mechanic's brow with the back of his hand and spat twice, powerfully, on the concrete beside him, he said to me: Look, this one's gonna cost you about a quarter of an IVF cycle.

Well, he didn't really. But that's what I heard.