As if my luck needed livening up, some daft old codger pulled out on me just as I was innocently driving to work. No mirror. No signal. One lurching manoeuvre. He took out my headlight as he slammed into my port side. Livid as a tub of bees, I found myself bashing my head on the steering wheel deliberately, while the fella was sat behind the wheel of his Zetec blinking. “Idiot! Bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody…”
Eventually, I could get out of the car – its nickname, The Squashed Tomato, now possessing the kind of irony that makes me want to have it towed instantly to a breaker’s yard – without my mouth drilled into a howling maw, but the silly bugger was still sat there opening and closing his eyes.
Insurance? I demanded, snapping open my hand. Like that was going to happen. The old bloke wearily climbed out and replied: “I know a man who’ll fix it..”
Later, in nursery, after I’d bitten off the heads off several small children, my line-manager (for it was she), asked if I thought I might be in shock. Shock? Shock? I am in fury, I reply. Until, of course, I hide in the store cupboard (minus two degrees c, a ton of play equipment and the smell of leaking fruit – the scheme is complicated by the edict that age 3 and 4s are only entitled to half a piece each..) and phone Jon. Who gets shouty and says I drive too fast and, whatd’youmeanyoudidn’tgethisinsurance? Then I crumple and have to go and compose myself in the teacher’s lav. Well, not quite ‘in’ it. I wasn’t gonna beat myself up that badly.
Later still, His Nibs calms considerably and puts the phone down having spoken to the fella. “He knows a man who’ll fix it,” he says.
On the Monday I drive the circus down by Rye Lane, around the contours of the old lido (you can still see a swimming pool blue fountain with its moulded luxuriant cascade amidst the shrubs and rats), to meet my nemesis as instructed. Why I am taking orders from him, I know not, but he says I’ll never be able to find the garage he uses without him leading me there. However, our cars did not coincide (!) and I was back on the blower to take my next command kidnap style, my confidence wavering betwixt tarmac level and exhaust pipe. His missus said: “He’s been driving’ round and round and he never saw you. You see, it wasn’t a very clever place to meet..”
On the Wednesday, having demanded a real live address, I track down ‘Blessed Autos’ under the arches in Peckham. Yes, if I wrote it as fiction I would lay myself open to all kinds of accusations and brickbats, nicked or otherwise. But the facts remain untouched by parody: a big black chap with gold gnashers told me to bring the Squashed Tomato back on Friday morning and he’d slot in a new light and re-spray the side. When I whimpered that I’d need it back by teatime, he shook his head as if I was totally, totally mad and hissed that, “The paint gotta dry…” Meanwhile, the old bloke peeled off a single tenner and pressed it into the mechanic’s hand like he was a grandchild. I retreated on foot, using the walk home to test the feeling of being stressed without a motor to stitch me from one commitment to another.
I spent a sleepless Friday night wondering if we’d ever sell the house, buy the one we’ve already shelled out a bunch of legal fees on; whether I’d get to Chiswick for my Aunty B’s 60th birthday party the next afternoon with 4 kids and the District and Picadilly lines shut and Tfl saying there were no trains to Clapham Junction – toss, turn, toss, turn; whether I’d get to the arches early Saturday morning and find my car there and my swimming floats still in the boot so that I could be in the water to teach by nine-thirty am – toss, toss, turn, turn.. The stress in my stomach was in no small part affected by the haunting answering machine message that greeted me after work that day saying: “This is the wife of the man that went into your car. He has paid the man at the garage so if he asks you for any more money when you go to collect your car, DON’T give it to him…..”
And did I mention that through this I was doing my motherly duty by lovingly celebrating my middle-daughter’s birthday, with chocolate cake and a surprise ear-piercing? The look of utter shock on her face when she realised what was happening resonated with the week’s events. The decadence of a dreamy recall of her birthstory would have to wait for another less busy night’s sleep.
And did I mention that, as well as the birthday presents and scabby ears, my son had football and we had to get a parping crowd to music school on Saturday morning? Never mind Blessed bleedin’ Autos, Blessed Emma stepped in and somehow collected us at sparrow’s fart the next dawn with the mist still swirling round the skips on Heber Road and took us, as I simmered with trepidation, to the arches under which I’d left my car.
It was there. As were the floats. And there was a new headlight. And every single dent and dink on the port side had been ironed out and coated with a fresh layer of ketchup, touch dry. The starboard side looked like it belonged to another car.
Never has a set of swimming lessons seemed so easy on a Saturday. Blindfold and pissed would not have made a difference as I felt so relieved and able. And despite Tfl’s best intentions, we saw Aunty B on her birthday that afternoon. On Sunday, while the world lay in, I took my son to Charlton in The Notso Squashed Tomato to play a football match and then, while Jon manned the till and my lot did their homework and Dulwich thronged the aisle in Sainsburys, I treated myself to getting the car hand-washed in the carpark by an Eastern European with deadly armpits that stun within twenty paces. Bring on the brickbats..
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