Oil spillage

No, I'm not going to add to the thousands of blogwords written about the accident in the Gulf. We're talking spillage on a much smaller scale here - the oil that's been leaking out of my car since it was about a year old, the sad revelation that you can't even trust the tradespeople you think you can trust, and the unlooked for benefits that can accompany an enforced change of tradesperson.

When I first noticed I was having to top up the oil quite frequently, I mentioned it to my mechanic on my next service visit. I forgot to ask him about it when I picked the car up, and it was a couple of months before it became obvious that it was still using oil. Even so, the loss rate wasn't enough to nudge me into making a special visit to the garage so it was another year before I had the opportunity to mention it to him again. And this time, I remembered to check with him whether he'd fixed it.

"You don't have a leak," he insisted. "Modern engines do burn oil, you just need to keep it topped up."

Being among the 99% of the population who don't understand the first thing about "modern engines" I didn't question this, but carried on adding a pint of oil every 8-10 weeks from that day - probably around the start of 2006 - until earlier this year when the closure of my regular garage forced me to move to another mechanic. Closer, but slightly more expensive.

And it's only about a week ago that it occurred to me I haven't had to top up the oil since. That service was back in February and ordinarily I'd have gone through at least two pints of oil by now. So yesterday, I dipped my stick out of curiosity. The oil level was only one notch below full. In other words, there HAD been a leak after all, my original guy couldn't be arsed to fix it, but the new guy spotted it and put it right without even mentioning it to me, or charging me any extra.

A study in false economy. That first garage may have appeared cheaper, but over the years he cost me around 300 quid in replacement oil that I could easily have avoided.