De-automation

So there I was, crawling home on a thursday afternoon after a very long year in the office (it certainly felt that way). The dog greeted my return with her usual exuberance and I looked forward to a quick stopover before heading out for the evening.
Walking away from the car I heard a rather disturbing sound.
Psssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Nope, not a deflating tyre, hissing reptile or gas leak in sight.
It came from under the hood, and with more trepidation than a scream-queen running up the stairs to open a mysterious rattlin door, I stood there, eyeing the offensive sound.
But, someone had to face the music, or at least the wind-section of the orchestra and I mosied upstairs to drop my bags.
I returned downstairs and went down on my knees - praying, of course, but also to spot any obvious cause for the overheated engine. While driving I keep an eye on the temperature gauge, and since that had not red-lined, I held out a cautious hope.
There was a growing puddle under the car.
I stretched out my fingers I screamed... the dog had taken use of my prone position to insert a quick doggie kiss into the proceedings.
Thoroughly disgusted, I whiped my ear and reached out to the puddle again. A dirty liquid stained my fingers, but a quick chemical diagnosis (I sniffed at it), revealed that it wasn't oil or petrol.
It was dirty water, which together with the hissing engine pointed at radiator problems. I reached for my keys, stepped up to the driver's door and froze.
Where the point of my key would be there was a definite absence of key. I stared at it mutely for a few moments, trying to process this absence in a logical way. The only thing that kept rising to the front of my thoughts was "please don't let it have broken off in the ignition!" Or the door lock for that reason.
I scurried upstairs again to fetch my spare key and opened the door... not there then
I stuck the key in the ignition...not there either.
Shrugging that off as a minor problem, I opened the hood and had a look.
Now I know about as much about the averag combustion engine as I do about neural surgery. I looked at the engine, it looked at me.
I dialled my nr one on-call mechanic.
"Hi dad. I have a problem."
We talked about the patient, listing the symptoms and attempting some rough diagnosis.
Leaving the car to cool down an hour or so, i started the engine again, pulled it backwards and added water to the radiator to judge how badly things had gone.
It didn't take too much water and I felt confident to drive it to the local mechanic the next day.
Of course, it took mr master mechanic 2 seconds of listening to the engine and fiddling with the pipes to come up with "it's a welsh plug"
Right! Great! Fantastic! A Welsh plug?!? But my car is made in Japan!!! :-D
It's a tiny thing to replace... if you can get to it.
In a Sentra's case, it will probably involve a procedure through the exhaust system.
So here I am, typing away after a house-bound weekend. At least I finally got to spend some time in the garden! But as much as I enjoyed the enforced house-arrest, there's pet-food to be bought tomorrow, oh, and probably some human food too.