Margaret’s. It had been coughing and stalling for a few weeks, scarily sluggish passing on an uphill grade, corroding gangrenously at the points and in need of nightly transfusion from the recharger. But this time it quit dead. I’d pulled out around an empty farm truck to find myself facing an articulated lorry lumbering over the rise. There was time to get back but not through, which ought to have been evident to the farmer; it was not. He leaned on his brakes, which meant I had to slam mine, pump at them and snake back behind his swinging tailgate. I overshot and stalled on the grass verge, and the mini wouldn’t start again. “The battery’s dead,” Jill opined. “It can’t be. We’ve been on the road for twenty miles, and that recharges it, see? It’s more likely to go dead when it’s been sitting.” “We’re out of gas?” “Filled it yesterday.” I pumped, choked and revved, let it sit in case I’d flooded it, then pumped and revved again until the battery ran down like a record player and came finally round to Jill’s first opinion.
