But more particularly they are all manual transmission with a gear stick. Luckily I still remember how to drive one of those.
Interestingly, as was pointed out to me by a very enthusiastic DIY salesman the other day, the manual gear shift nowadays also serves as an anti-theft device because your run-of-the-mill opportunist car thief doesn't know how to drive a manual vehicle.
Go figure. Maybe getting rid of the old things you know work well isn't such a good idea after all.
Anyway, it got me thinking about a similar anti-theft device Mrs P invented not that long ago.
Somehow the planet had sped around the sun real quick and before I knew it I was celebrating another birthday. My beloved decided the occasion called for a cake.
Now regular followers of my scribblings will know the hotter resident of our humble abode - I mean Mrs P but the fact you thought for a millisecond it might have been me is gratifying - has a health issue which means only certain foods are allowed within our four walls.
Thus out came some, er, shall we say "less than traditional" ingredients, including coconut oil.
Long story short the oil mixed with something it shouldn't have and the end result was a cake that looked magnificent from the outside but tasted like an old used sock rolled in a cow pat.
Naturally on the big day the Boomerang Child, her fiance Builder Boy, and myself assured Mrs P it was "delicious", as you do, then fell about laughing as she spat out her own taste test.
Luckily, as in most families I'm sure, there is one who will wolf down anything regardless. In our case it's Builder Boy and he finished his piece and happily accepted the offer to take the rest home so he could have a treat with his lunch for the following few days.
Two days later the Boomerang Child rang in a state. Their home had been burgled.
They'd arrived home from work to find the back door open. A quick check of the house found nothing missing or untoward except for a strange state of affairs in the kitchen.
The fridge door was wide open and on the bench was Mrs P's cake with a huge bite taken out of it.
Next to it, opened, was a bottle of homemade garden fertiliser "juice" they have been working on for their vege patch. It is coloured orange mainly because of the carrot peelings. But it also contains seaweed and other icky bits.
They'd left it to brew in that cool, dark spot at the bottom of the cupboard next to the fridge.
I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to what happened but I think it is fair to say this was a crime that left a particularly bad taste in the mouth.
• Kevin Page is a teller of tall tales with a firm belief too much serious news gives you frown lines. Feel free to share stories to kevin.page@nzme.co.nz .
