Chris and Leyla

are across in the UK at the moment, and Doug and I took the opportunity to head up to Aberdeen in the the Trøll this weekend to spend some quality time with Chris before their departure for Oz. We picked him up and headed out into the sticks towards his mate Brian's farm. On the way, the car seemed a bit reluctant to shift into 2^nd gear, but it still worked after a fashion and I forgot about it when we arrived at the farm in the midst of the hills and dales near Banchory.

The farm was excellent. I'm not an fundamentally outdoors type but I still compulsively want to buy myself a place in the country whenever I see or stay somewhere like this. The scenery was gently windswept and rugged as opposed to the bare rocks and ground-hugging heather of the Highlands, and the farm itself was set in nine acres of land variously populated with horses, goats, pigs and hens.

Below the farmhouse was a static caravan (or for you American types, a trailer) for visitors. We settled in for an evening of pseudo White Russians (ah, nostalgia) and badly-played bass guitar in a cut-price version of the typical rock star country retreat. The next day we were shown around the farm while bandying some city-folk banter with Brian.

"We had a bonfire here last year. It was really windy, and I could hear the trees crackling as sparks were blown into them. I was a bit worried they'd catch fire."
"Would that kill them, do you think?"
"What, being burned to the ground?"
"Point taken."

We left on Sunday afternoon, dropped off Chris on Sunday with a promise to meet up in Edinburgh on Wednesday, and headed towards Glasgow. After filling up with petrol on the outskirts of Aberdeen, 2^nd gear abruptly stopped working. It happened without any crunching, grinding or other mechanical drama: I clutched, put the gearstick into 2^nd, declutched and remained in 3^rd.

Bugger.

Shortly later, 1^st stopped working. Clutch, stick to 1^st, declutch. End up in 3^rd. It seems the Saab is doomed to develop exactly the same faults as the death-trap 924.

There ensued a three-hour journey very much like a Formula 1 race I once saw where Michael Schumacher was stuck in 3^rd gear, in that we drove far too fast and tried to avoid coming to a complete halt at all costs lest the clutch disintegrate. The glamour factor was admittedly slightly lower. We pulled into Doug's car park after alternately crawling and caning through the Cathedral quarter, piled out of the stricken Saab, hailed a taxi and arrived at the TM practice a full hour late.

All in all, a slightly more stressful Sunday than I had been anticipating.

Epilogue: after a bit of research, it looks likely that a single part of the gearshift linkage has broken. There's a rubber block designed to shear off in a crash so that the transmission can slide under the car instead of through the occupant's legs and apparently it can perish, leading to, for want of a better term, a shafted gearchange. So, one £15 rubber block that can cripple an entire car has been duly ordered and I'll be back under the damn thing again this weekend.