Wednesday, 21 May 2008

Madame's "holiday": Part 2


As you know, Madame was pinged doing 183 in a 120 zone, the penalty for which is a AED1,000 fine and poor Madame has to be impounded for a week.
It was decided that, on the Sunday we moved out of Satwa, we’d take Madame down to the Place of Incarceration for her week in the joint/the Greybar Hotel/the slammer. I was going to drive the Disco for the week that she was “inside”. On Sunday morning I went to the garage at Satwa, pointed the key at Madame, pressed “Unlock” and......nothing happened. Tinkle of alarm bells in head. I opened the door manually, oh I already knew what was up but even so I got in and attempted to move the seat forward.....Colin had driven her last so the seat was so far back that it was almost in Karama.....but again, totally dead, nothing happened. Her battery was flat as a pancake, odd considering she was fine the day before.
It took a couple of days to get her going again, we had to borrow a power pack from a friend who also owns an RS6, kick start Madame and then take her to get a new battery. She ran fine, and Colin drove her down to Abu Dhabi to Citiscape, so the battery was fully charged. We decided that the following day she would go into the Pound. I confess here that, STUPIDLY, we discussed this plan in front of Madame and sure enough, the next day when Colin tried to start her........nothing happened....again! The brand new battery was flat. How did the battery go flat overnight eh? Who didn’t want to go to the Pound eh? Who was telling us “Hell no! I won’t go!”
Unfortunately for Madame her protests were in vain. Colin used the powerpack again and got enough juice into the battery to get her out to the Pound. At the Pound there was the obligatory paperwork. If you live in Dubai, this scenario will sound familiar: stand in queue at Counter X and eventually you're given piece of paper and told to go to Counter Y which is somewhere else, exit building, walk round the corner and out the back, stand in the sun, join queue at Counter Y, another man hands over another piece of paper and you're told to take it back to Counter X, walk back into first building, take the piece of paper from Counter Y back to Counter X to be given yet another piece of paper and told to park the car with the Nissan Sunnys (boo hiss). So now the Audi is parked out there and she's in the sun too as they wouldn’t allow a car cover to be put on! Poor, poor Madame!

2 comments:

  1. Hey is that a A6 or S6, V10? My baby's an A4, V6 - sweet on the roads :)

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  2. "Madame" is an RS6, 505bhp, bi-turbo V8. A beast on the highway but she's a well mannered kitten in the traffic round town. Love her!

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