This week we had to hire a car. Turning up at meetings in a 22 foot long motorhome may be different, but I would prefer to be remembered for my products. Turning up for meetings on a scooter with a 25 kilo bag of carpet samples is just, well, impossible!
In an attempt to save money I booked a Group A hire car – and was promised a Chrysler Spark or similar. I had no idea what that was, but as long as it had air conditioning and was a hatch back with folding rear seats so the aforementioned bag would go in – I didn’t really care.
As we were nearly 30 miles from the Toulouse airport depots I checked out delivery options. Apparently the major car hire companies will deliver, but only to a residential address – apparently a campsite is not residential enough, even though the owners live on site.
So on Monday we got on Kymi and went to the airport – the last 5 miles includes a mass of intersecting dual carriageways with signage to match and we hit what I thought was the end of the rush hour at 6pm. Actually it turned out to be the start and when I finally hit the road in the car, with B following on Kymi, we went straight into a traffic jam to rival the M25.
We got back at gone 8pm. I was watching B in my rearview mirror ducking down low on Kymi – to my mind desperately trying to get a bit more speed and to keep up with me as we went up and down the hills so I slowed down a bit. Turns out that in B’s mind, he was actually 16 years old again doing everything he could to get the best ever top speed out of his ride and loving every minute of it!!
When we went to collect the car, the girl at the desk happily told me she had given me an upgrade from my group A booking at no extra cost. Great! I said – what is it? A Fiat 500 convertible, she said – a premium upgrade apparently……
We went to look and it was so cute that we wanted to try it anyway. We looked at the boot and thought the big bag should fit. The registration had BZ at the beginning and RG at the end so I named it “Berzerk” as for what we had to do that week, it really was.
Horatio and the Fiat Berzerk - remember, its an upgrade....