Cars, Planes, WOMBATS
I once thought of writing the story of a relationship
in terms of the vehicles in which and by which it is conducted, over several
years. This seemed plausible to me even though I can't drive and have little idea what goes on under a car bonnet.
Clearly it was Nick I had in mind.
In 1985 he was still in his young executive slimline
briefcase phase, although, in his own words, had just fucked his career at
American Express.
He had gone to his bosses and demanded they remove
him from a jetsetting job running training for Amex agents all over
French-speaking Africa, to doing any available work in the massive Brighton
offices that could be dropped like a hot brick at 3 each afternoon in order for
him to pick Jess up from nursery. He then spent the next hours playing with her and
getting her tea before dropping her back at her Mum’s at seven pm.
I think there had been some additional deal about him
returning to the AmEx office for another few hours work after that, or at
weekends, but I’m pretty sure it seldom occurred. But pick up and spend time
with Jessica he did, every weekday.
The car was a Cavalier: a model much loved by
advertising execs and sales fleet procurers. It was metallic looking – very
popular in the 80s – and the very first car I’d ever been in where the music
system played CDs instead of battered cassettes that got stuck and spewed loops
of tape.
CDs! The very cherry on the Black Forest Gateau of
80s sophistication!
The sound quality was very good indeed: in fact there
was a James Last CD in which Nick could make out a metallic little clink. After careful listening he concluded it was the
sound of the flute knocking against the music stand.
In-car listening was not quite what you’d associate
with Nick of later years: Eurythmics, Level 42, Simply Red, and bloody Dire
bloody Straits, who were everywhere at the time. But also Dr Hook, whose surprisingly rude songs may
well have influenced subsequent donkey-based humour, the delightful Roche
sisters, for the Plum to sing along to from the Plumseat in the back, and Frank
Zappa, Joe’s Garage, as soon as Nick knew I had been a Roman Catholic.
Blasting along between Birmingham and Leamington Spa, or from Brighton to Drusilla's, or through Southern England on the way to Glastonbury, we sang The Freaker's Ball, Ireland Soon, and many another.
Later came Vanessa, a VW camper van. I think there
were at least two Vanessas, one with a popup top in which there was a little
den for Jessica to sleep in at festivals.
The final Vanessa, in the mid 1990s, became a bit of
a nuisance, which Nick decided to solve by arranging for it to be “stolen” and
disposed of while he was away visiting me in Thailand.
He was outraged on his return to find the thing still
gently rotting where he had left it. ‘Where can you find a thief you can trust
these days?’
Finally there came a succession of vans and trucks, in various states of
repair, many of them fitted out with ingenuity, often full of musical
paraphernalia, old t-shirts, and even worse, musicians.
In one WOMBAT - Waste Of Money, Brains And Time - covered in rust and patches, he
drove up to Norwich for August Bank Holiday 2003. We had both just returned to
England from elsewhere – he from France, me from the United Arab Emirates.
The van pootled along fairly reliably once it got going, but starting
was complicated. It involved pulling out the cover behind the steering wheel –
revealing a spaghetti of different coloured wires - and Nick diving down into
the footwell with a large pair of pliers while at the same time keeping a hand,
or occasionally a foot, on the wheel. He could not see where he was going and
get going at the same time, and the tangle of wires became ominously longer
each time.
At one point as we potttered along the Norfolk lanes we passed a convoy
of rather splendid glittering vintage cars coming the other way, out for what
was probably their ‘once a year if the weather is right’ excursion away from
the deep oil, bubble-wrap, and temperature-controlled garages in which they
were usually preserved. The drivers were vintage too – some of them dressed
appropriately in deerstalkers, capes, big hats and so on.
Nick fixed his eyes on the drivers, took both hands off the wheel and
applauded wildly, nearly causing the leading driver to swallow his meerschaum
pipe.
‘It’s nice of them to make all that effort just to entertain us,’ Nick
said. "Think of all the trouble they’ve gone to so we can look at them.
And they have to
look at us! "
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