WE DO not give credit where it is due. Too often when we encounter breaches of the law, we murmur Go to Jail, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect £200. In the case of Noel Fox, of Coalisland, Co Tyrone, this is the wrong response.
Noel sells cars in Tyrone. Myself, I would have thought that in Tyrone, one would go to a great deal of trouble not to offend the buying public. They have ways of getting at secondhand cars salesmen there which tend to limit the ease with which they use the pedals. Also, getting in and out of cars is made much more difficult after your shinbones have been beaten into shinshards with baseball bats. Or concrete blocks. Each tends to incite honesty towards the car buying, public.
Courage of Convictions
But not from the car dealer Noel Fox. Noel has the courage of his convictions, which to date amount to three, and all of them for offences such as the one for which he recently appeared in Cookstown Magistrates Court. He had bought a Mercedes from England with 257,000 miles on the clock, and then supplied it to another dealer, with the odometer now only showing 36,000 miles.
From 257,000 to 36,000. Most of us would have thought that a car which has travelled nearly 20,000 miles further than the journey to the Moon could not be mistaken for a car which has done the equivalent of going to and from Dublin and Naas every day for two years. There is a difference between Clondalkin and the Sea of Tranquillity, you know, though it is not always apparent at distance.
If he had sold the car to me, I could understand how he had got away with it. The Arthur Daleys of the world do hand stands on my approach, certain that I will unquestioningly hand over my life's savings for a 1953 Hillman Minx with a rusting saucepan for an engine and a colander for a floor and a boot for a boot. The popularity of the name Kevin among the less desirable species of English teenager is probably because my generosity when over there in buying that 1969 Simca with a dustbin lid as a roof, or purchasing without quibble that 1973 Rover which in its first week drank Kuwait dry enabled an entire generation of car salesmen to buy timeshare apartments in Marbella and in dumb gratitude, they named, their sons after their great benefactor.
But Noel did not sell his iffy Merc to me. He supplied it instead to another member of the motor trade. Stand tall, Noel Fox, Oh vulpine yule, master of your profession. To have sold a car which has journeyed some 220,000 miles - the distance to the Moon - more than it had on the clock to a cretin, a nincompoop, a me, is one thing: to have managed it to one of your own is beyond words. Dammit man, it makes a fellow proud.
Moondust
Inevitably, Noel was found out: and the court case in Cookstown did not reveal how he was rumbled, alas. Possibly it was the presence of Moondust on the wheels, or maybe an asteroid strike had not been properly covered up. No doubt the presence in the boot of a baffled cosmonaut, the one the Russians had mislaid, gave the game away. Or on the other hand, perhaps it was because the Mercedes knew perfectly well how to get into earth orbit but hadn't got a clue how to find its way past Newlands Cross that the buyer began to suspect this Mere was not exactly kosher. Clever buyer.
And somewhere along the line a prosecution was initiated which ended up in Cookstown Court on Monday last. Noel Fox's solicitor, Bernadette Kelly, told the court that the offence had arisen because of carelessness on his part and there was no question of him behaving maliciously.
Oh absolutely none, I agree. And it was a mere oversight that 220,000 miles were wiped off the clock. Those little symptoms of forgetfulness, I have, them myself. So easy to mix up the distance between Dublin and Naas and the distance between Dublin and the Moon. Accordingly, for this, his third such offence, Fox - oh thou were well named - was fined £400, which comes to .18p per mile deducted from the clock.
Which it is a good deal cheaper than all those American Moonshots. Maybe the US would have been better basing their lunar operations in Cape Coalisland, with Noel Fox in command at Cookstown Control, shouting out instructions from the kiosk outside Devlin's Bar and Select Lounge, guiding the returning Merc so that it splashes down in Lough Neagh, there to be rescued by three eel fishermen called Devlin and a poitin distiller by the name of Devlin, and three friends, all of them called Devlin, in the eel fishery and Moon Merc recovery vessel, the rowing boat, Myrtle, one careful lady owner, low nautical mileage guaranteed, rowlocks reconditioned, £400 o.n.o.
Unjustified prejudice
Two questions remain - one is who is going to buy a car from Noel in future, apart from me, of course: I have options on his first dozen? But alas, other people have this wholly unjustified prejudice against cars with false mileage on the clocks. He might well have trouble finding clients. Ah well - he knows where he can find me. Question two: who prosecuted him? The RUC? After recent allegations, I thought those initials stood for Re sells Used Cars.
Maybe they'll swap duties - Noel, his lunar career never having taken off, and his car salesman career ending up in court, will be running the show at Garvaghy Road in August, while the Peelers will be standing in forecourts lovingly stroking 1968 Ford Cortinas with four gleaming bald tyres. Of course, it being Northern Ireland, they'll get everything all wrong, and within no time at all, Noel will have sold a half dozen armoured Land Rovers, (one careful lady owner, low mileage guaranteed, swear to God) to the Garvaghy Road Sinn Fein cumann, while in the car forecourt rubber bullets are flying, and the little old lady who turned up to sell her Morris Minor is on her way to Castlereagh Holding Centre, minus, her teeth.