Yes you bought the car ... but we're not giving it to you!!!

These things happen for a reason.  Both Mandy and I were searching Ebay for a suitable entry for the rally.  Whatever car we got would be Mandy's runabout car after the event and so it was her call to buy a car she would want to keep.

She pinged me emails throughout the days with links to various 'character' cars and mentioning a BMW estate that looked like a bargain at £800.  She was thinking of offering £600.

Late that day, after a few glasses of Pinot, I was on Ebay and thought it wouldn't do any harm to put in a crazy offer of £400 on the BMW.  I didn't think any more about it.

I was unaware that Mandy had given up the idea of the BMW and bought a furry orange carpeted Peugeot 205 for the princely sum of £236.63 - which apparently looked just like Rupert, Mandy's cat!  As exactly as a furry orange car can resemble a furry orange cat.

At about the same time I received an email telling me I'd won the BMW.  We were the proud owners of not one, but two cars!

However ... when I rang to discuss picking up my BMW and foolishly mentioned the adventure that we were about to embark upon, the owner recoiled in horror at the prospect of our journey and proceeded to try and talk me out of the deal.  "Possibly not safe ... an MOT is the bare minimum you know", "definitely should not be leaving the UK".  Basically did not want to sell us the car.

Never mind, we had Mandy's 'Rupert' car.  The owner rang to let Mandy know he was just putting it on the trailer to bring it to her as it wouldn't start ... "Just a new distributor ... about £50 off Ebay".  Not wanting to be picky Mandy pointed out that she really needed the car to be running.  He decided he didn't have the time to do it and so wouldn't not be selling her the car.

Well at least we had each managed to not buy a car in the space of two days.   So now we just have to find a car that once we have bought, the owner will actually part with.  How hard can that possibly be?