Yearly routine

It was time for a yearly service and an MOT test for the car, inevitably an expensive day, and I guess I can be thankful that quality of car manufacturing and reliability has improved so much since I started driving, that the servicing part at least comes round only once a year.
Mind you, I do not drive nearly as many miles over a year as I did at one time, and I am not sure that when I first set out on a motoring trail many years ago, that you could count on reliability in the same way.
Two cars I owned would invariably come to a standstill whenever it rained; then there was another which soon developed the automobile equivalent of measles — little pinpricks of rust appearing all over the body like a rash. The current car, a  British made Toyota has proved itself more than reliable and it’s the third one which I have had in my life.
Certainly, I have had plenty of experience with cars, both those I have owned and the many hundreds of others I have driven in the course of duty. Of those I have owned, my favourite was possibly an Alfa Romeo, or was it a simple Mini, bought for £200 and resold after more than a year for the same money. Or was it the plush Lancia — although maybe not as that was the one which developed measles.
My Toyota was returned today with a clean bill of health, and required only brake disks and needed only brake disks and pads replacing. OK, a pair of new tyres at the front will be on the wish list before too long, but I regard that as routine and not a distress replacement.
A stranger came up in a car park the other day and asked if I was happy with my car, explaining that he had just bought one.

With hand on heart I had to tell him it was the most reliable car I had owned.  That doesn’t mean to say that I won’t flinch at the bill for servicing and MOT. But then I do every year!