Fix it again tomorrow

That's generally because I just drop it off at the garage, such is the regularity of things going wrong on it.

They say Fiat stands for fix it again tomorrow', well I hate to say it, but they' might right.

The car (I don't have a name for it, sorry) and I have an uneasy relationship. An abusive one, you might say. I probably don't treat it that well, and in return, it goes on strike. Mechanical, rather than industrial action, you might say.

The trouble started the way long-running feuds often start. Something went wrong and we both blamed each other.

What went wrong was that whilst parked, my car rolled backwards down a rather steep hill in Barnard Castle, narrowly missing a host of other parked cars, but failing to miss a two foot tall wooden post. The scar is still visible today.

When a nearby resident told me my car "had rolled down the hill and was on the Demesnes (a large grassy area in Barnard Castle)", I had the terrible image of the Punto, half in the Tees, with a trail of destruction behind it.

So, who was to blame? I put the hand brake on, but didn't leave it in gear. The hand brake failed - so it must be the Punto's fault. But then again the hand brake was checked and deemed healthy. But if I didn't apply the hand brake, the car would have rolled immediately, such was the gradient of the hill.

Anyway, that's in the past, and I'm not sour about it. Honest. Here's a brief summary of my other run-ins with the car. I'm prepared to be the mature one here and admit that some were my fault. Though most were the car's.

September '06 - window wiper stops, mid-wipe, in pouring rain. I have to Sellotape it back together, which works, but not very well. I pay over £100 to replace what looks like a worn-down washer.

October '06 - Youths' smash wing mirror on car. I blame the car for having mirrors that stick out too much, thus attracting little hooligans.

November '06 - An on-loan Franz Ferdinand CD, is swallowed by the CD player, never to be seen again. I know this isn't the car's doing, but I'm sure it had a whisper in the radio's ear.

March '07 - The bonnet stops opening. Then the oil light comes on. I drive around Barnard Castle pleading with garages to see my car on that day.

May '07 - I run out of petrol, purely because the car didn't give me enough warning (apart from that light that came on a day or so before). If anyone saw a black Punto parked on the Grange Road roundabout in Darlington one Saturday in mid-May, that was me.

June '07 - I lock myself out of the Punto. I try to break in using gardening tools to wedge the door open and wire to open the catch. I don't come close to opening it, but manage to remove a remarkable amount of paintwork.

July '07 - My exhaust makes funny noises, like a low-flying jet.

July '07 - I run out of petrol again. Thankfully I'm very near to a petrol station, so manage to get it onto the forecourt with the final puff. I'll take the blame for that one.

September '07 - The bonnet stops opening again. Just to annoy me.

September '07 - Yesterday evening, on the way back from a very successful trip from Ikea, my exhaust fell off on the Spennymoor bypass. It will be fixed this week, but in the meantime my car sounds like a Mclaren F1, but still handles like a photocopier balanced on a skateboard. People are staring.

I'm thinking about declaring a cease-fire. I've vacuumed the inside of the car (which was frankly disgusting). I've even installed one of those smelly trees. So now, I'm hoping, that once the exhaust is re-fitted, the car will return the favour by not breaking down on me, at least for a few months. Then we can live together in perfect happiness. (Until I can afford to get rid of the heap of scrap).