Our obnoxious Buick is now becoming a burden and so we decided to take him to the glue factory and get another motor instead. Tonight we went to a Honda dealer, armed with a car loan draft, and asked to see the Honda Fit we’d got our collective eye on.

Michele has been reading up on a lot of car-sales tactics and not only that, she knows quite a few people (including her mother) who have worked in dealerships, so we were well prepared.

Let me tell you, they tried every trick in the book, including:

• Leaving us alone for a while so that we would talk to each other – without realising that they were listening in
• Repeatedly going off to appeal to the boss for a discount and returning with “a very generous offer” that sucked
• Telling us we were robbing them…”you’re holding me up at gun point”…”you’re going to get blood on the seats” etc ad nauseam
• Telling us that “we’re already making a loss on this deal” to which I responded with a laugh

We offered to trade in our Buick, and received the response we expected “I’m being overly generous offering you $350 for it. I’ll be lucky to get $100 for it.” Really ? What a nice man you must be! Paying $250 just for our happiness!

“Well,” I replied, “it’s worth more than that isn’t it? I mean, even if I donated it to the Sally Army I’d be able to claim a grand off taxes.”

The guy agreed!

Twat.

The debate continued, and I had to keep repeating that whatever offer they gave us, we weren’t going to pay more than “$xxxx and a Buick”. But they kept trying it! Every cliché you can imagine. Eventually, to the massive disappointment of our very nice salesman, the anger of the top-boss, and the amusement of some other dude with a shockingly obvious syrup, we left.

But we left with our bank draft, our dignity, in our Buick, and with our arses intact. I’m waiting for the call to Michele’s mobile tomorrow when the boss arrives and realises that they rejected a reasonable offer to rid their premises of a donkey. I call it a donkey because it’s clearly not popular and that’s probably owing to it’s colour: it’s a sort of metallic-browny-orange. Normal people would hate it, Michele loves it, and I couldn’t give a toss.

Honestly, it was like dealing with used-car salesmen.