“The Ballykillduff Banger“

There once was a man in Ballykillduff named Jimmy McGroggan, though most folks just called him “Mad Jimmy” — not because he was dangerous, but because he once tried to heat his house with a toaster and a kettle wired together using the spring from a clothes peg. He wasn’t mad, just inventive in the way a squirrel is inventive when it tries to store nuts in the exhaust pipe of a lawnmower.

Jimmy had a dream. Not a big one, like going to space or baking a cake that didn’t explode — no, his dream was simple: he wanted to drive a car. The problem was, Jimmy was allergic to banks, and money, and success, and laws. So instead of buying a car, he decided to build one.

“I’ll make me own motor!” he declared to the lads in the pub, who immediately placed bets on how long it would take before he blew up his shed. (The smart money was on Tuesday.)

Over the years, Jimmy had been collecting “useful bits” from skips, fields, and the occasional unfortunate neighbour. His garden looked like a scrapyard run by a magpie with a drinking problem. There were rusty wheelbarrows, half a fridge, a pram from the 1930s, a bathtub with “DO NOT SIT – CURSED” painted on it, and the entire front end of a Morris Minor he’d “liberated” from a hedge in County Cavan.

Piece by piece, with the precision of a man who once superglued a hat to his head, Jimmy got to work. The chassis was built from old bunk bed frames. The engine came from a ride-on lawnmower that hadn’t run since the Clinton administration. He found four vaguely round wheels — two from a shopping trolley, one from a wheelie bin, and the last from a circus unicycle that still smelled faintly of monkey.

For a steering wheel, he used a dinner plate, glued to the shaft of an old Dyson hoover. The horn was a bicycle bell that went meep when it felt like it, and the seat was a toilet with a cushion taped on.

By the time it was finished, the car — which Jimmy proudly named The Ballykillduff Banger — looked like something between a mobile compost heap and a Transformer suffering from depression.

“It’s a marvel of engineering,” he beamed.

“It’s a miracle you’re still alive,” muttered Mrs. O’Toole, as her cat hissed at the vehicle and immediately ran away to live with the postman.

The grand unveiling took place on a Sunday, when the townsfolk gathered to witness the maiden voyage. Father Dunne blessed the contraption from a safe distance behind the parish wall. Jimmy put on his driving goggles (sieved colanders with clingfilm), revved the engine (which sounded like a goat with bronchitis), and shot forward down the hill.

Shot forward… sideways… then backwards… then spun in a tight circle before rolling gently into Seamus Gallagher’s hen house.

There was silence. Then clucking. Then feathers. Then Jimmy popped his head out the window (which was just a hole) and shouted, “She handles like a dream! Especially if the dream involves terror and poultry!”

Repairs were made. Modifications were attempted. The bathtub was added as a passenger seat. A windscreen made from an old microwave door was fitted. By the following weekend, Jimmy was ready for a second attempt — this time uphill.

He made it seven feet before a wheel fell off and rolled dramatically down the hill, chased by a child, a dog, and Father Dunne yelling, “It’s heading for the sacristy!”

Eventually, Jimmy retired the Ballykillduff Banger, converting it into a stationary art installation outside his cottage, where tourists occasionally took selfies and locals occasionally used it as a bin.

But still, every Friday evening, Jimmy would sit in the driver’s seat, hands on the dinner plate, making engine noises and sipping tea from a mug shaped like a spark plug.

“Best car I ever owned,” he’d say proudly, as smoke rose from somewhere it definitely shouldn’t.

And nobody had the heart to tell him otherwise.