Avignon - Car Nonsense

Just give me a reason
Just a little bit's enough
Just a second we're not broken, just bent
And we can learn to love again.
It's in the stars
It's been written in the scars on our hearts
That we're not broken, just bent
And we can learn to love again.

With the strength of emotion linking Peggy (the Peugeot's SatNav system) to Joye and me... it was inevitable that we would have our ups and downs. Of late, Peggy has been acting strangely... like she didn't get a thrill from sharing our drives. The first signs of strain was when we left the mountains... and Peggy started to refuse to show us altitude readings... why would she do that to us? We may have spoken harshly to her a couple of times when she started giving silly directions... like "turn right" when we were in the middle of a bridge. That was water under the bridge as far as we were concerned.... but she seemed to take it to heart. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now recognise her strange behaviour as symptomatic of much deeper issues. Well, things can to a head in the last couple of days... here we were in Avignon... but Peggy insisted that we were in Arles (50 klms away). We sang her favourite song hoping this would 'snap' her out of her malaise...

Just give me a reason
Just a little bit's enough
Just a second we're not broken, just bent
And we can learn to love again.

... but conditions only got worse. She started saying "zone not mapped" when we were on major highways. It was a terribly hard decision for us... but we decided she needed professional help... and took her to see a specialist.

Peggy pulled a few stunts... when the specialist looked at her in Triage... everything was perfect... no troubles to fix. We felt embarrassed. To be doubly certain, the specialist took her onto the road... and there she broke down... made a spectacle of herself.

Back in the car yard, the specialist decided there was no other course than a full lobotomy... he wiped his hands... pulled open the hood... Joye and I held our breath... as he reached right under the engine... right up to his armpits... and pressed the reset switch. Our specialist had a range of other specialists on his mobile phone as he went through the settings. We wondered what personality change Peggy would display after her ordeal... you could cut the tension with a knife.

The specialist sprang from the car... gave us the big ' thumbs up' and shouted "OK"... that was the extent of his English. We ran to him... called him "Mr Magic"... shook his hand... there may have been a shoulder hug in there as well.

With great tenderness and trepidation... we glided Peggy out onto the road... the first thing we noticed was that she was showing the altitude... next she said...." At the round-about, take the first exit". It was music to our ears... our old Peggy had thrown off her depression and was now part of the team again.

No more would we sing about "not broken; just bent". Today, the only song to pass our lips was Amazing Grace! Dear old Peggy.