Back at the guest apartment i pack up, empty the safe, and take a forlorn look at the unused ice packs a vacuum bags. Hunting not Shopping
Im 400 miles from mi casa, my phone rings incessantly with work nonsense, i bid the chaps farewell and stifling a yawn hit the road. The panel van is slightly reluctant to go into first. The phone routes me away from the M6 and on to the M1. The traffic fairy is my co-pilot and southward i trundle. As the afternoon wears on i could feel better. After 200 miles my eyelids are drooping so i take the turn off for Leeds and rock up at The Northern Monkey’s gaff.
I ring The Witch who is unable to contain her almost vegetarian delight that no goats were harmed during production of this blogpost and offers a stark choice, death on the roads or an early night.
Bit o’ ring road, 200 miles o’ M1 turn right and your at your mum’s. In either direction this is how TNM and i comute between our matriarchal abodes.
The deal with the hire company means we have the van for the rest of the week,, i set about running some errands, moving piles of floorboards from site to site. My phone runs out of charge. On what was to be the last of my cross town errands the left hand peddle wont depress, then it will but won’t rise, and the smell of burnt clutch fills the air.
I coast to a stop half on half off the pavement. Hazard lights on. Dead phone. I don’t know anyone’s number off by heart.
Flag down some passing cops. And begin the arduous process of explaining:
there is no number livery’d on to the sode od the pannel van, no i don’t know the mame of the hire company or their phone number/ email adress off by heart, no i cant look in my phone, no i cant charge my phone, which is the reason im interypting your day to ask you look up the name of Master At Arms’ company on google, ring the main number,,ask for The Viking and explain whay ive just told you to him so he can look up the hire company and ring them to find out which breakdown service provides covet.
By the third time we've been through this one of the cops is laughing so much he is no help at all and the other wanders off to ‘Make a call’ which see s to involve a cloud of cigarette smoke coming from behind a bin store.
The Viking will be back from lunch in ten minutes, could we call back?
A long and arduous process that has the laughing policeman in stitches several times later it transpires that the number for the rescue service is written on the van” s key. His colleague pushes him over the edge, into helpless giggling, one last time with the words
Your pal
SBW
Join me next time for Shirt and Tie duck hunting
