I haven't had the greatest of luck, when it comes to cars. Even from a young age, things started to go wrong. Like most wee toddlers, I loved things like trains, cars and wetting my pants. On the very best days, I'd be able to sit there watching Thomas The Tank Engine whilst playing with my toy cars, in soiled underwear. But of all these things, it was cars that I liked the most. "Brum Brum" was one of my first things I was able to say as a child. Once my language skills had advanced to the levels of being able to state the colour of cars, my parents were hearing a lot of "Red Brum Brum" and "Green Brum Brum" and "Why won't he shut up".

And that's where I think it all started to go wrong.

It started with the odd slip. You know how it goes. The occasional "Blue Brum Brum", when it quite clearly was a "Yellow Brum Brum". Okay, it might not sound like much, but it grew from there.

When I was Ten years old, I was in a car accident. Now I know what you're thinking - especially anyone outside of the UK. "What? They drive at Ten Years of age? No wonder they're on the wrong damn side of the road all the God damn time, God damn it Charlene, where's my God Damn gun YEEEE HAWWW". Well, I wasn't driving, I was a pedestrian. In the loosest sense of the word "pedestrian". I was actually pegging it along the pavement on a skateboard, and swung out into the road. I don't remember anymore, but the scar on my torso reminds me that I said hello to the front of a moving Ford Transit van.

There's not much funny you can say about that! So here's a fart noise, instead: "Rassssspppp". Quite possibly similar to the one I released at the time, but certainly not limited to it.

I was in hospital for a week. I was a very brave boy, and didn't do ANY crying at all. None. Until I was informed that there was a school within the hospital, and I would have to attend. I cried a lot. I was lucky in-so-much-as the only injury I had, was a ruptured spleen - second in the league of comedy human organs, just behind the pancreas. They were able to repair the damage, and I was pretty much back to full fitness within a couple of months.

Well, apart from my skin being tight. I wonder if anyone reading this has had a large operation scar on their torso, and has found that when their skin goes tight (such as when lifting yourself up using just your arms, so you tense up) that it really hurts!? Christ, I felt like my body was going to burst, sometimes. Do let me know by sending a comment, so that I may research you.

Anyway, that was that. No more skateboards for me. Far too dangerous.

Unlike cars, which are perfectly safe. I started taking driving lessons when I was Seventeen, as you do when you're male and like Brum Brums. I was one of those kids that fully deserves to be paying over £1000 a year in insurance. A boy-racer, if you will. I've calmed down now I've aged (and learnt my damn lesson). Except on the M6, but that doesn't count.

I had a car crash when I was Twenty One. It was quite bad, but it could have been a lot worse, because I was driving a Ford Orion, and it could always have been a Lada Samara. Retrospectively, I look back and laugh at what I was doing. At the time, it wasn't so funny, but adrenaline does strange things to you. I went off the road and hit a tree. I wouldn't like to say exactly what speed I was doing when I hit it, but it was at least 35mph/56kmh and could have been as much as 50mph/80Kmh.

I remember a horrible crashing of glass and metal, but not much more than that, until I regained consciousness. I'd broken my nose on the steering wheel, and I had a strange feeling in my right leg. A kind of numb pain, and tingling. I decided I should probably get out of the car. I wasn't in any kind of panic, although I did admit the thought crossed my mind that I was bleeding from my nose and leg a fair amount, and let's hope that I get found fairly quickly with that in mind.

Once I got out of the car, I simply fell to the floor. "How strange", I thought. "What's going on here?". I decided I must have a dead leg, so pulled myself up the side of my car, and stood on one leg, waiting for my leg to start working again. To pass time I decided to start chain-swearing. "Shit, fuck, bastard, piss, cunt, wank..." it went on and on, and I was surprised by my own imagination at not repeating any words!

At some point I realised that I'd left my radio on. "Oh shit! I'm listening to Talk Sport. How utterly embarrassing, if someone realises." I managed to get back inside the remains of the car to turn it off. I think I returned another time because I'd left the wipers on, and the noise against the now-dry glass was pissing me off. Plus I had the crazy idea that I needed to save the battery on my utterly fucked ex-car. The dashboard was as far back as the back of the gearstick, so getting back in was a feat that Harry Houdini would have been proud of.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I had broken my kneecap. I was in hospital for a week. It's better than it was, now, though it'll never be as good as it was prior to the accident. I have metal in it now. To find a positive out of the ordeal (besides the fact I'm alive today) the metal is in my right knee - my accelerator foot - so it serves as a good reminder when I'm driving.

Fortunately, that's about as bad as it gets. I did have trouble with my last car, though.

I used to have an old style Rover 416, which had a habit of not wanting to start. It was a simple problem, but I'm a simple guy, especially when it comes to cars. Or cooking, mathematics, spelling, naming the colours of things... but most of all cars. Anyway, corrosion on the battery terminals is what caused the beast to not start, occasionally.

A couple of times at work, I had to bump start it (that's 'popping the clutch' if you're American!) with the reluctant help of a couple of work colleagues.

I didn't worry too much about it, because it was a second hand car. I just assumed that the battery was flat. I gave it a good thrapping up a dual carriageway, and it seemed to be all right, again. So obviously, I just continued to assume that the battery had been flat.

That is, until I went to Mike Thorpe's house in Manchester one time. He's the website editor, don't you know. After a typically fun weekend, I set off back home again. I stopped at a service station about halfway home on the M6 motorway. The little fucker wouldn't start again, when I tried to continue my journey. The little bastard was getting some power... the starter motor was working, the engine was JUST about turning over, but it was just SLIGHTLY too slow for the car to actually start and run on it's own. But because it was so close to starting, I kept trying it, but eventually the battery actually WAS flat.

I phoned my mechanic friend to ask him if there was anything I could check or do to get it going, but it wasn't anything obvious. He suggested that, as a member of the AA, I just get them to drop the car off at his house. I was about to do that, but just decided to see if there was someone I could ask to help me bump start it instead, to save pissing around waiting for the AA to get there and find me on some random car park.

Looking around, the only people I could see would probably collapse in a heap clutching their pension books. Although over the other side of the car park there was a mini-bus.

I went over to ask. They were afro-carribeans - probably Jamaicans, I thought. I'm not actually sure where they were from, because it was upon asking them to help me, that I realised they didn't speak English. "Strange," I thought. "Don't they speak a kind of English in Jamaica?". "They do on the Lilt adverts, after all" I thought. "They speak it even better in the Bounty adverts" I finally convinced myself. Anyway, my more culturally aware, less English and rather more Canadian girlfriend informs me that they speak something called "Patois" in Jamaica. (That's Jamaican to us Brits, then).

So, I was in this car park at a service station (starting to gather a moderately sized audience) explaining what exactly it was that I wanted, using my arrogant, miserable, uptight, can't be fucking arsed English. One guy, the driver of the minibus spoke some English, and gathered what I wanted.

It was mostly women in the mini-bus, but they seemed quite keen to help out, too. Jamaican women, in fairly typical female Jamaican attire. Loose shirts and such, with voluptuous breasts and bums.

My car was parked front end in, with a kerb in front, so it had to be pushed backwards. So they pushed it, and I steered it out of the space....

And then.....
....they kept on pushing it. Oh dear. Boobs jiggling over my cars bonnet, moving backwards at quite some speed, I started to get a bit worried by the approaching parked cars about two hundred yards away. Looking at the breasts jiggling, did help, but we were on a tight schedule. The male driver made some kind of hand signal, which I translated to mean something along the lines of "I suggest you jump start this vehicle whilst in reverse in as short a-time-frame as possible"

I let it get up a bit more speed... probably a bit too much... Because when I lifted the clutch above the 'bite point' the car leered and lurched like a paedophile observing a bouncy castle. Which of course sent the women practically head over tit and arse, laughing and wobbling all over in that mesmeric way that Jamaican women do. Come on, you know the way.

There were looks of concern from most directions, old men staring in amazement whilst being chastised by their more prudish wives, all while I applied the brakes rather quickly, so that I could avoid the cars approaching my rear view mirror.

And that was that!

They were just leaving, so off they went in their minibus, and I followed them down the motorway a short way. I gave them a flash of thanks (the type with the lights, not the lack of clothes type), and overtook them.

Since then, times have been a bit happier. I drive a dodgy old, small RED BRUM BRUM now. It doesn't have any power to speak of, but with the wisdom of the last few years, I like it that way. I'd also just like to say "Hurrah" to Philbo and Emma, who are both contributors to our messageboard. They recently had a car accident, but thankfully they came out of it relatively unscathed.