How to fix a Saab and your self-esteem

Front bearings a bit rumbly,

so I thought I’d take a look

at YouTube, see if I could save

a dollar, since I have the tools.

They’re a service item these ones,

always need replacing at a

100k or thereabouts, and running

with them rattly spoils the

silence, just like driving with

a limp, and no one likes to

take to the tarmac with a limp.

Anyway, this fellow on the Tube

who made it all seem easy

looked just like that chap on

Bakeoff, clean and neat

and calm, and filled with

worth and pride and I thought

‘Yes, I’ll have a bit of that’,

and went down to the shed

to fetch whatever I might need

plus cloths, a rug to kneel

on, spanners, oil and stuff. I’d

lain awake all night and planned

the order of affairs, how

first you take the wheel off,

then the brake, (you have to

hang it on the shock absorber

so the little pipe won’t kink),

then the disc, and then the

bearing should drop out all

by itself. You pop the new one

in and Bob’s Your Uncle, so to speak.

Four hours in and all I’d moved

was one small bolt. I’d been

and bought the special tool,

and barked my fingers on a

bloody nut, and with the rain

I cursed the curse of making bad decisions,

the endless silly digging to

escape the holes I’d dug myself,

a lifetime’s misadventure and

the effort to escape it, and God

and Luck and all the bloody that.

Then home I came in some distress.

My wife, who sees all this with

different eyes, said ‘Why not find

a pro to do it? And I’ll sub you for the

cost,’ and she hugged me. And I did.

One thing I got right then.