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It’s official. I am to car maintenance what I am to the art of seduction – with similar results.

Perhaps that is why my first car died on route to a concert and spent a weekend lowering house prices in the posh part of Aghadowey before being put out of its misery. Perhaps it is also why my third car needed to be towed home from Bushmills, having exploded impressively in a cloud of blue smoke, and embarrassingly, in front of some ex pupils. This, just 10 minutes after I had performed a clever piece of DIY at a junk yard to “fix” that annoying radiator leak. Could this also be why my fourth car would only start following a complicated procedure involving switching on and off lights in a particular order and no small amount of prayer?

You’d think after experiences like these I’d leave any repair work to the professions – especially since, for the first time, I’d spent more buying my car (number seven I think - let’s see, the Chevette, the AX, the Colt, the Astra, the Metro, the 306 and now the Bora – yeah, seven) than I did on the stereo I put into it.

Of course I should call in the experts, but of course I don’t. I am a man; and as we all know men are born with an inherent, almost supernatural, ability to fix anything – especially if it involves using a power tool of some kind. It’s right there on the Y chromosome next to the internal sat nav and the common sense suppressant.

So, when the trim broke off the sliding cover of the ashtray in my centre console I immediately went into problem solving mode. By pushing the cover in and down I should be able to realign the trim with the cover – and if I push hard enough I should even be able to break both of them off their runners and lose them inside the console forever – oops.
Not to worry. If I loosen the screw at the bottom of the ashtray that I just spotted it’ll release the console cover and I’ll be able to reach inside. Except it was like no screw I’d ever seen before. I needed to get a new screwdriver – so I did – and it was no good. That screw loosened the cover of the gear stick unit. But look. Two more screws.
Once they were loosened I had managed to reveal the internal workings of my air conditioning control unit. A few minutes, and half a dozen screws, later it seemed like the entire electronics system of my little Volkswagen was lying in bits on the passenger seat, I had practically removed my entire dashboard, and bought three new speciality tools I didn’t even know existed before – but no ashtray cover.

In despair I gave up and began to put everything back together. This turned out to be more difficult than I had imagined it would, and required a couple more new tools, some blu tac, and another hour of hard graft. Eventually I got it all stuck back together correctly. I know it was right because I had that single left over screw that you always have when you’ve done the job right.

It was only once everything was together that I spotted the solitary screw in the wall of the footwell, the solitary screw that, when loosened, allowed the ashtray cover to fall out of the console onto the floor. It was also the solitary screw that allowed my ashtray cover (with newly reattached trim) to slide easily back into its proper place. One lousy screw!

Oh well, my hands are scraped and bleeding, I have four blisters and seven hand tools that I am never likely to use again, and part of my dash board doesn’t quite sit right – but my ashtray slides smoothly. I am man, I am happy.