Sophisticated Side

What could be the possible motivation for standing in your shed sawing a cassette in half? Surely strange behaviour, unless, like me, you received "Country Classics II" for Christmas and wish to make obvious your displeasure. There are only so many times you can listen to Juice Newton murder "Queen of Hearts" without poking your own ears out... But what was my motivation for sacrificing an otherwise serviceable TDK - one that contained no steel guitar or bouffant 80's country hair? Let me explain.

A few months ago I had three holes in my commuter car where some shiftless youth had decided to either liberate my CD player or destroy my speakers. At the time, the idea of driving around without any radio at all seemed quite agreeable. For about three minutes. I'm afraid to admit that in peak hour traffic you need to have some other amusement than making dirty phrases out of number plate letter combinations or provoking reactions by smiling inanely at your fellow commuters. But there was a consolation - one day I watched in amazement at the amount of water (lots, if you're wondering) that gushed down into the doors past the windows, the six by nine inch holes proving to be excellent viewing portals on the rainy day.

I had to have at least a radio.

Rummaging in the shed unearthed two options that didn't involve an outlay of cash on something that would probably be nicked. The first was the original National Panasonic shaft-mounted cassette player fitted by the Alfa dealer way back in 1978. It had survived the best part of twenty years without provoking a break-in. Unfortunately, it was also not working. The second was an early Nineties Sony tape unit, the DIN face of which had been sun-ravaged to the point where the LCD display no longer displayed. I didn't really care too much as long as the radio worked (which it did). In fact, once powered up, even the station memory and station search functions were found to work perfectly (lucky, as there was no way to tune it by looking at the frequencies).

"How am I going to install this thing?" I wondered aloud. I had three holes in the car but none of them were remotely DIN-sized. Two were oval shaped and carved crudely in the front doors. The other one was a very large hole normally taken up by a plastic centre console. The thieves had taken the entire thing and I still hadn't managed to track one down.

I had a spare gearshift surround console though - a long plastic affair with a big coin tray at one end. Some more rummaging through the boxes of junk I keep for such occasions was rewarded with a huge, flat gate hinge and an octopus strap. Perfect. The hinge bolted to the gearshift console to the place where the centre console would normally go. The tape unit was shoved crudely underneath the top part of the hinge and the whole thing secured with a combination of octopus strap and duct tape. Ten minutes of wire-baring, twisting and electrical tape later and I had a functional radio. I didn't think it really deserved the solder/crimp connector treatment and I was right.

To say that it looked horrible would be an understatement. I quickly bunged a bit of spare black carpet over the whole mess and it looked very Mad Max, somewhat keeping in character with the rest of the car; that is, if Mad Max wanted to drive an effete Italian coupe.

The two ancient Pioneer dual cone speakers in the back (too awful to steal, too tough to destroy, apparently) serviced to let the noise out of the radio.

But does anybody listen to FM radio any more? It has either become dreadful or I've fallen into an age-related demographic hole that simply isn't catered to. Somewhere between stations that endlessly belt out "classic rawwkk", all the way through to the (apparently) youth-oriented stations: insipid, unfunny morning shows and unrelenting adherence to early Nineties grunge; or perhaps the "dance" station that seems to be an 808 drum'n'bass machine and some screaming woman alternated with a bit of street patois; all day the same song. Yes I'll freely admit I'm getting a bit past it. The twenty-minute radio install had turned into somewhat of an anti-climax. Obviously this wasn't going to work out - there was nothing to listen to...

Plan B involved a personal CD player and one of those cassette-based CD doodads that shoves in where the tape normally goes. Worked OK in the garage. On the road, that rock-hard suspension that makes corners so much fun also turns out to be an excellent CD skip generator. Unlistenable. I reluctantly went back to the radio for some months, settling on a vanilla "middle of the road" station that at least had a reasonable back catalog of old Stax/Atlantic and Motown. The morning show in this case consisted of some guy making fat jokes about himself and playing a birthday wheel game every day in which nobody seemed to win. Combined with the occasional treat of water running down inside the doors, this provided a reasonable amount of in car entertainment.

Christmas came. Somewhat to my surprise I started looking at CD players again. I really didn't want to buy something just to provoke another break-in. This time it had to be a detachable face unit. I spent too much money (the usual story, went in to buy the loss-leader CD player advertised in the catalog and allowed myself to be talked into a better one), which lead to a healthy amount of paranoia when planning the installation. Stealth was what I wanted. Either fill the car with undesirable stuff that nobody wants, or hide it.

Step one to stealth involved digging up the original metal speaker covers. Some new six-by-nines went into the doors (the car is really too noisy for quality speakers anyway) and were disguised by the speaker covers. No brand names visible. The rear speakers copped the same treatment, relocated underneath the panel and covered up with the flat metal grilles. A better arrangement for the CD player itself was fashioned (proper metal brackets, some wood, some glued carpet) - still ugly but no octopus strap this time. In fact, you could say that it looked a little too good. The head unit sat there, shiny and vulnerable, waiting to be whisked off to some dodgy pawn shop. Even with the face removed, it was obviously worth the gamble of breaking in to check to see whether the face was under the seat or in the glovebox. But that cruddy National Panasonic shaft mount tape player, mocking me from the workbench, provided a bit of crazed, irrational inspiration.

Some more glue and twenty seconds with a screwdriver gave me the front of that tape player, fake volume and tuning knobs glued to the trim plate. Just the right size to fill the spot where the face normally goes on the CD player. For that touch of authenticity, the hand saw came out and this is how I found myself sawing up a TDK in the garage. With half of the plastic shell poking out of my fake tape player, the illusion was complete.

The only person it's fooled so far has been me (I idly went to shove the tape in yesterday, before realising my mistake), and it probably won't fool anybody not in a hurry, but it has bought me a little piece of mind. "What about Country Classics II?" I hear you ask. Well, I didn't have the heart to saw it up in the end. I keep it in the glovebox, to put on the passenger seat when the car is unattended.

Surely that'll horrify thieves enough to make them not bother...