A rear view mirror is not something you think about much when you drive a car, well not
until it drops off mid-journey that is & then you feel half blind, paranoid that Mad Max is
driving up fast behind you & will ram you off the road without you even knowing. When I
bought my MG it had some 1980s black plastic abomination of a rear view mirror but I did
not think about it as I drove the car around. Perhaps that is not strictly true as whoever
fitted it had out it at the top of the windscreen so when I was in the drivers seat all I could
see was the yard of road directly behind my rear bumper (it is all about angles being in a
low car a high mirror is like being an Ford Fiesta at the Monaco Grand Prix, pointless &
rather dangerous).
The mirror had been expertly attached with one of those white double sticky sided foam
squares. Ultimately the glue gave up the ghost & suddenly I had a mirror in my lap
instead of attached to my windscreen. I was in the middle of the English countryside so
there was no where I could just pop to & get a replacement so having pulled into a lay-by
& checking I could not reattach it I carried on to my destination with great caution.
Since then I have tried a number of different solutions all of which have ended up in my
lap at one stage or another but normally quicker than a politician can u-turn (& that is
fast). My last solution was a temporary one whilst I tried to get a genuine MG mirror from
one of the specialist garages. It was an £8- suction jobby from a nationwide car care
chain. The mechanism to create the suction broke after the first time I used it & then I
found the mirror liked my crotch as much as an eager dog instead of sticking to the
windscreen so I could see behind me. I ended up using masking tape to stick it to the
windscreen until I could get a real mirror.
I found an MG specialist company on eBay & bought a chrome rear view mirror for an
MG. when it arrived I could tell within seconds that it might be for an MG but it was not for
my MG. it seemed to fit onto some sort of metal rod, which my car certainly did not have
anywhere on or in its body. I emailed them to ask if it would fit an MGB GT, presuming it
was okay for a Roadster but not my hard top. I heard nothing. I emailed again & got a
single line reply saying it was the wrong part. I emailed again to ask if they had one for
my car so we could swap. They did not reply. I emailed again & they said they did not. I
was not hugely impressed with their communications or their attitude so I erased them
from my address book & sent the part back giving them a bad review for communication
on eBay.
However, a miracle happened. With winter approaching I was researching winter
proofing my dearly beloved ( it gets down to -15 here apparently) when I came across a
coolant that was not water based & therefore would not freeze, it also had other
properties that would help prolong the life of the engine so I checked for a local dealer &
there was one in a village about 10 miles away. I hopped into the MG & headed off to
talk to them & guess what they had lots of MG parts in stock ( this really should not have
been a surprise as they were a classic car specialty garage, MG’s in particular. I chatted
to the very helpful mechanic who answered the bell & I decided that I would really like an
MG A mirror, which was chrome & screwed into the dashboard rather than the MGB GT
original that was an early version of the ugly black plastic one that dropped off at the
beginning of this entry. The added beauty of this was not just aesthetic but that it would
be at the right height for my almost horizontal driving position. You can see the result in
the picture at the top of this entry next to the ugly black plastic phone holder, which I use
as my GPS device so I have not escaped ugly black plastic things completely. It sounds
silly but I am very proud of this mirror, not only does it look beautiful but it also enhances
the overall feel of the car, now if I could only work out how to turn my phone into a heads-
up display so that I could project the GPS info onto my windscreen it would be perfect.
Back to Objective C programming for me then.
