He even tried to sleep with her, which was a disaster

The Pajero was 10 years old last week so I went into a garage and asked a salesman what price was on the nice little Toyota Freelander with the 2009 reg.

“Twenty-one thousand,” he said.

"We buy houses in Leitrim for that money," I replied. "What would you give me on my Pajero?"

He winced, as if the sight of my beloved 4x4 offended him.

“Ah, go on,” I said, “take a look at her” – although my heart was heavy; I felt like I was betraying a loved one.

He drove the Pajero around the tarmac courtyard a few times.

“The flywheel is about to go,” he said, “and the sensors for the four-wheel drive are banjaxed. You’d hardly get €1,500 for her.”

I didn’t believe a word he said, but I was sort of relieved to be holding on to my old Pajero for another year.

It reminded me of the time I was going to take Sam, the family Labrador, to the vet. He was a beautiful dog, but one evening he disappeared and didn’t return until the following morning, with a slavering smile on his gob, like a student falling out of a nightclub after his first shared orgasm.

If we emasculated him, the dog might become more lethargic, and put on some weight, but that wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. If he ever actually caught a sheep, he might face a local firing squad in the quarry.

So I made an appointment after checking with the other two members of the family.

“Are you absolutely sure you want to have him neutered?” I asked.

“Not a bother,” they said. “Off with the balls.”

And as the day came closer, I asked more frequently, but no voice of comfort was raised. Eventually on the morning of the appointment with the vet, I phoned the receptionist at the clinic and said that I couldn’t go through with it.

“I understand,” she sighed.

I know the Pajero is not a dog, or a sentient being, but I have experienced so many emotions behind the wheel, as I wander the countryside in various states of depression or elation, that it has become a kind of psychic space where I feel secure.

Invisible weight

The General’s wife used to say that men love their cars more than their families, but nevertheless the General spent two weeks in August with the woman he so painfully divorced five years ago.

She decided to put up with him so that he could have time with the boys, who were home from England, although she endures the General in her bones like an invisible weight that stiffens her shoulders.

He even tried to sleep with her this year, which was a disaster. It was after a barbecue of rib-eye steaks when the boys had gone back to London. The garden was packed with her girlfriends and he was resting on the patio like a bull frog with his eyes and ears open to the world around him. I could see the sap rising, and a light film of libidinous sweat shimmering just below his nostrils.

“We had a good life,” he whispered to me tearfully as he pointed to where she was crossing the lawn with empty paper cups. Then he called out to her.

“Where are you going honeybunny?” I felt “honeybunny” was a bad sign and by the look on his wife’s face, so did she.

The following day I met him in a coffee shop.

“It was hideous,” he said.

“Don’t tell me you tried to get into bed with her,” I said. He looked like a guilty Labrador who has eaten all the sheep.

“She allowed me,” he pleaded. “She was all up for it. But she passed out the minute we lay down, and she took over too much of the bed, which is exactly what used to happen in the old days. All night I was lying there as uneasy as a mouse in a cat’s ear.”

“So nothing happened?” I wondered.

“Worse,” he said. “Less than nothing. I approached her at dawn, but I was on the edge of the bed, and as I turned to grasp her I fell to the floor. She laughed. My libido collapsed. And then she just looked me in the eye, smiled, and said she understood. The General wobbled like an enormous jelly as we finished our coffees.

“What did she understand?” he wondered, but I couldn’t answer him, so I drove back to Leitrim dreaming of new tyres, and how a Pajero will never let you down.