Security

In the course of yesterday's battery emergency, I learned about a new security feature on our Ford car. It seems that when you change the battery, the car clock, which in this car is mixed up in a confusing way with the car radio, loses its electricity supply for the duration and resets itself when the electricity supply is resumed.

At which point, if you happen to notice that the date and time have been reset to the date and time of manufacture or sale or something and try to correct it, you get a message about codes. I didn't have a clue what this was all about, but the helpful man at the garage did. Between us we recovered the car's user manual from the depths of the glove compartment - not that we keep any gloves there - and typed the code which somebody had written into the box provided at the beginning of the manual into the car radio.

Message about codes disappears and after a bit of fiddling about I was able to reset the time and date.

For a while I puzzled about the point of this particular security feature. If I was a bad person who had stolen this car - a bit unlikely considering the state it is in - and who cared about the date and time shown on the radio - all I would have to do is fish the manual out of the glove compartment and do the business. While if I was a good person who sold the car, as like as not the manual would go missing. So what would the new owner do? While if I was a good person who was changing his battery, why add in this extra step? So, all in all, why bother at all with a security code?

Then it dawned on me that one was not supposed to keep the user manual in the car, where it might, just occasionally, come in handy. You were supposed to keep it in a safe place at home. Then when you wanted it, you had to get home. You had to remember where that safe place was. And so on and so forth.

Maybe when we get around to getting a new car, the engineers will have got around to including a small battery with the clock which keeps it ticking over while the battery is changed. Something that the engineers who built our central heating control unit thought of many years ago.

PS1: BH and I are each responsible for one of the two dents in the back bumper, tributes to the absence of the rear view radar that you get in a proper car. And one is a memento of capturing a Wellingtonia on the outskirts of Ashstead. But at least with one each we can't moan about them. And given that the back bumper is plastic (or perhaps fibre glass), no pressing need to repair it.

PS 2: I might also say that the combination of the Civil Service Insurance Society, Green Flag, the National Rescue Group and Epsom Autos served us well. National Rescue had a man with a van at our door within an hour and a half of our call to Green Flag. The man got the car started in minutes using a hand held contraption about the same size as a packet of Rich Tea biscuits. While Epsom Autos had replaced the worn out battery by the close of play.