Winning the Howth Head Rally

"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Nothing ventured..." was the reply.
I looked, dubiously, at the temperature gauge on the dash.
"Well, if you think it will make it..."

We were in Herself's bockity Nissan Micra Collette, an impulse-buy, "this-one-will-do" kind of thing which transaction must have gladdened the second-hand dealer's heart. Its engine wasn't properly attached, for one thing and it had a distressing tendency to emit loud "Boing!" noises when power was applied.

"Howth is a long way from home to break down," I tried.

She steered up the hill and started working the gears.

"Do you smell something?" I asked, sniffing the air.
"Hmmm?"
"Something burning?"
"It's your imagination. You worry too much."

Horns started to sound behind us. I looked around.

"Was it foggy when we started out?"

Plumes of white smoke obscured the rear view.

"I think we're on fire!"
"Nonsense! She's just burning a bit of oil."

A muffled crash and tinkling of broken glass sounded from back down the hill where an unsuspecting fellow motorist has lost his way in the smokescreen and careered off the road and into Dublin Bay. Screeching brakes sounded briefly and were cut off abruptly as we rounded another bend.

"We can probably be arrested for this, you know?"
"She'll make it."

And she did, crawling at 15 m.p.h. up the roadway to Howth Head on a hot summer day, we felt the car almost physically flop when it reached the car-park overlooking the view of the sea.

"At least it's downhill from here."

We walked across the Headland, listening to the silence of victory.