My car got me evicted

I've bought a magic car. The naive viewer may think it looks like any other 15-year old Nissan Lucino, but this one is also a time-travelling machine.

It cost just $300. I thought I was getting a real bargain up until it leapt back in time and got four women evicted from their homes.

Please note that due to the laws of defamation, this column may not be in its original form. Please add your own swear words wherever it feels natural.

I live in a big old house which is divided into three separate units. I am a tenant in one of the units.

I woke up one Sunday morning and the three-storey letterbox had been toppled.

I emailed the landlord about the vandalism that very day.

On Thursday, I bought my magic car. I drove it home without incident.

On Friday, I caught the Intercity to Oamaru.

While on the bus I got a call from one of the other tenants saying the landlord (and for the sake of anonymity, he shall be known as Mr Lord) had called.

Mr Lord had been to inspect the capsized letterbox. Using, I imagine, some specialised forensic technique, he deduced that my car had markings on it consistent with the letterbox.

I called to say my car could not have run down the letterbox because I didn't own it at that point. Mr Lord rang the other tenants to check my timetabling.

Quite the coincidence.

My time-travelling car had gone back to the weekend to destroy a letterbox.

Just when I thought that was weird behaviour. Tuesday arrived, and so did Mr and Mrs Lord to take the letterbox away for a bit of panelbeating. Mr Lord was seatbelting himself into his car.

I asked Mr Lord to show me which dent (of several in my second-hand car) could have KO'd the mail receptacle. He pointed: "That one."

"Sorry, could you show me which one?" I said.

This was followed by another stroppy two- word answer and vague pointing motion.

After that, Mrs Lord slammed the door in my face saying: "Look he said you didn't do it, so you didn't do it."

And they sped off.

If I could figure out how my car went back in time, I'd go back to the day I signed the lease.

I would ask if they found civility confusing.

I would wonder at the additional conditions of living on this property, like being told "no candles", "no stiletto-type shoes to be worn inside", and my favourite, no "feminine hygiene products and condoms" to be flushed down the toilet.

I would request that Mr Lord write down his verbal yet empty promises to maintain the grounds, instead of waiting three months before a mower even touched a blade of grass, and I would wonder why I can look out of my window and see hip-high weeds over the path.

Our eviction letters were signed off by ". . . . . - Landlord" as though "Landlord" were some stately title when the word has now come to mean to me "odd person who finds it preferable to almost run someone down rather than have a conversation".

If there is a funny side, it is that before my car went back in time and hit a letterbox in Mr Lord's imagination, I'd never even hit a hedgehog.

I'd never had a speeding ticket, or run a red light.

However, the incident has put a hole in the space-time continuum and on a Wednesday (the day before I bought my car but four days after it travelled back in time to hit the letterbox), I pranged a work car in The Press basement.

I will miss living next door to my best friends and their children will miss having their Mrs Lady a stone's throw away.

But will I miss the freezing drafts, power bills, cracked windows and peeling paint? I doubt it.

I guess if I miss this place, I can just jump in my car and programme the time machine to yesteryear. Beck Eleven - Tenant.