Features

Back to Library >
ti icon

Features

The Mechanic’s Tale

1 year ago

Writer:

Andrew English | Journalist

Date:

6 September 2024

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales was written between 1397 and 1400 and 700 years later is a much favoured text for GCSE students with many allegorical chapters. The Wife Of Bath’s Tale is a bawdy romp, the Knight’s Tale speaks of ethics and courtly love, the Manciple’s Tale even has a talking crow, but I’ll vouchsafe none has a set of Snap-on wrenches, a banter-filled workshop and a vibrator under the seat…

Let me suggest The Mechanic’s Tale as a suitable inclusion in a rebooted Chaucerian text. For this is a noble calling indeed and, as with most, criminally under-valued until it all goes wrong.

‘The phone calls all begin: “You’ve got to help me!”,’ says Jason Ellis, proprietor of Northfields, a family-run general service workshop in Stamford, Lincolnshire. ‘And I think, oh boy, this is going to be good…’

Get full access to The Intercooler for four weeks for just £1, with no commitment!

Four weeks for £1

Why sign up for four weeks?

  • Read this article right away
  • Get full access to The Intercooler's daily articles
  • Access the entire archive of 1500 stories and more than two million words
  • Listen to The Intercooler's weekly podcast ad-free
  • Get the subscriber-only midweek podcast, Ask The Intercooler
  • Listen to our daily stories as mini podcasts
  • No commitment, no subscription. Just full access for four weeks

Already subscribed? Click here to log in.

ti icon

Library

Let loose in a 911

My very first memory of the Porsche 911 arrived with a loud bang. Then a strange silence followed by a lot of shouting. I was, I think, five years old...

Almost Great: Smart ForTwo

Many of Ti’s readers (and a few of our writers) are too young to remember the Eighties in any detail. Shoulder-pads were wide, Crockett’s white Testarossa in Miami Vice...

Power dressing

Exactly what constituted de rigueur attire in the early days of motoring? And where should you put that revolver? Andrew English reveals all

The real Pedro Rodriguez

Sometimes fate turns on the thinnest of threads. In this case an engine that was not even on a car, but a dynamometer. Its intended recipient was a BRM P167 sports car...

Flat-out in the Rimac Nevera

You'd be forgiven for being confused by the recent rush of electric hypercars, or being unenthused by a breed of car whose crazy power and price seem unusable and unattainable...

When worlds collide

When engineers want one thing, marketeers another, rubbish usually results. James Mills takes you through some of the more egregious outcomes