At Last! At Last!

Hallelujah! At last! At last the 2CV gets through her NCT test. (Irish equivalent of the MOT) See also the 'Thorn in my Side' post from a couple of weeks back. It is a year to the day (this evening) since we set out on our long convoy with the Fiat and the 2CV and trailer, leaving Faversham behind and off on our big adventure.

We got the cars here OK but then started a whole series of ups and downs with trying to get registered in Ireland, sourcing a windscreen from the UK, failing the NCT on a wheel bearing, non-compliant tyres and play in the steering, getting all that fixed and failing the re-test on tracking.

You only get 28 days grace at the 're-test' status and we were so long getting bits we ran right up to the wire, so when we failed again I had to go back to square one, the full test at full test price. In theory the guys are not meant to take account of any 'old' passes when they start again but my guys in Castlerea seem to be a bit friendlier than that and a bit intrigued by this bizarre old French car, so they read the old sheets and maybe, just maybe, were a bit lenient. Maybe not, maybe we were 100% compliant even to the toughest tester.

I knew that the drivers side seat-belt can be a bit 'sticky' and hard to pull out if the car is at the wrong angle, and when I saw the guy struggling with it I thought I was doomed. You are tucked away in a waiting room watching your car go through - you can't go into the test area or hear anything, so you feel very helpless.

You have to wait quietly with everyone else, feeling a bit like a naughty boy sitting outside the Headmaster's office, till your man drives the car out of the other end of the 'sausage machine', walks round to the reception and comes to the window to call you and you are hoping desperately that in his hand will be the monochrome printed results sheet but ALSO the green and yellow pass sheet with it's attached windscreen-insert in his hand. When your eyes fall on the green and yellow the relief is immense. Of course, you try to be cool as you take the sheet, joking casually with him and smile sympathetically at the other people in the waiting room, accepting their "Well done!" comments but by the time I was outside and texting Liz (and the garage in Balla-D and 2CV Llew) my news, I was shaking all over. I flew home to a round of applause from Liz out of the kitchen window.

Well done Clara Bow! We got there in the end. I have celebrated by finally sticking my Irish 2CV Club (2CV na hÉireann) sticker to the boot, which I'd been holding off doing in case I jinxed anything.