warmlove's Diaryland Diary

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Rental Vehicles

#Look at his Pea Coat tell me he ain't broke#

These past few weeks have truly and utterly been the strangest, most unexpected weeks of my life.
I always think of being a child and believing wise words from my low-key, wonderfully cynical Dad that life is generally boring, mundane and uneventful. But sometimes you are aware that events around you just get more like a film or unfold in a way the at you would considered a little far fetched in a soap. Whenever events on Albert Square come to a lull or a conclusion, there is always some other new story line bubbling up, some fresh (to use some specific reality television vernacular I despise) drama is on the horizon.
The Friday before last I went with a close friend to an Abortion clinic in the ridiculous location of just off Manchester's most hipster square of bars and coffee shops. We had been there the week before but she was too early for anything to show up on a scan so she had to come back. Walking down to the clinic, we talked about this being the major place you never wanted to bump into friends or acquaintances at, and we both bumped into one person we knew over the duration of the short walk. (Manchester's short - Whatever. We went to get a coffee before her number and colour were called, as west down at the only available table and man at the table next to us called out my friend's name...we turned around and it was a good friend of her ex fiancee (a man who had brought her to a near nervous breakdown and offered her zero sympathy when she found herself pregnant with his child and had to make a tough decision) sat with a gurgling, bouncy baby at a high chair. She was about to go have an abortion and we were sat right next to an old link to her ex and a baby. The irony did not escape us. Then, a couple of hours later, as she emerged tearful from the clinic, we stood together in the alley smoking a menthol each..who walks past but one of my very sensitive coworkers who is training to be a councellor and has had very supportive chats with me about Jess's drug problems. Such an appropriate person to pass...I got a bit emotional too so we looked like two mates crying in the alley next to an abortion clinic, read what you will into that as a passer-by. He hasn't mentioned it since obviously because he ius a sensitive, perceptive person.
A couple weeks later I was off to Devon to drive my friend Joel's parts of a potentially £15,000 winning sculpture.
We have become friends over 2 years of me fancying him but him being awkward to talk to, him being romanced by a charastmatic gay coworker of ours, me and him kissing at ManchesterHip hop night, me findingout he had a girlfriend he lived with the next day, us never working together for months after, then bonding on a night last summer where I was telling him about the confusing situation of the guy I was seeing at work sending out all mixed messages and me really liking that guy, us almost sleeping together, him thinking it was a jealousy play, then us becoming like mates who drink and ponder over about the aforementioned guy starting a serious relationship with a girl who works next-door despite all the talk of a classic commitment-phobe (something I expected) and a time of great, messy nights out together, sleeping together, spending time in my retirement home mansion room, him cooking for me and giving me food to make me happy, the fucked up sadness and grief of his close friend, our former colleague Harry getting killed by a car while riding his bike, and his times after that of being on a total self-destruct mode.
So that brought us to me in my driving overalls (a silk Paisley flared jumpsuit) driving us on this roadtrip down to the ragged coastal rocks on North Devon with giant steel frames and panels clanging in the back. We stopped at this mad, John Lewis on Oliver Bonas, Organic, fair-trade Hummus fueled Steroids Service Station that looked like a Grand Design - grass on the room and a Canada Goose pond out back. I feel with him like I can truly be myself like you can with true friends and for a person deemed 'quiet, shy and crazy' to quoted some of pour mutual friends we always have endless things to talk about or muse on.
Ultimately the Sat Nav on my cracked, old Samsung took us down Devon lanes that would not even be deemed roads by a Sylvanian Family of affable Badgers in their CamperVan. We were lost and at a dead end leading only to a field full of imprisoned sheep. So I jauntilly pulled the 4 metre panel transit van onto a verge and preceded to execute the kind of three point turn taught expertly to me thirteen years previously by my driving instructor Louise. Well, the three-point turn turned to eight, which then evolved into the previously unheard of fifteen-point turn and then after what felt like a millennia of myfaux self-assured van engine revving and unfulfilled biting points I had to conceded - we were stuck. In clay.
We both stayed very calm...a zen like state of being descended over that clay and bramble covered Verge. We tried everything - cutting back the surrounding hedgerow, laying carpet down under the spinning wheel, using our fingernails to scrsatch-out clay from the grooves of the tire and taking off the handbrake and both trying to push the van free.
We saw a light in a cottage further down the lane so our only hope was (it was 10.30pm and Joel expertly diverted his Dad who was expecting us at 8pm by talk of being 'a bit lost and off the route') to go knock on and hope for the best.
We approached the cottage through the surrounding pitch-black and knocked on the door ..the lights were on but no response. I saw a sliver of light under the garage and hesitantly tapped n the door. A black-haired guy, early-thirties with arm tattoos piped his head out. I explained the situation, not ereay knowing what I expected really, just sharing a dodgy situation. He took a pause, looked at us both carefully and said "Yeaah, alright, I can help you."
We all jumped into his pimped-up blue Citroen 206 that he told us someone was due to come buy off him that evening but they never turned-up and he though we were them but a few hours late. We got to the scene of the (Un-Skilled Driving) crime and he assessed the situation for a while, poking around in the bushes that the van had so unceremoniously intertwined herself with. He announced to us that he'd need to go back to the house to get more ropes (a sentence more surely bowl-emptying in any other remote, rural, "The Hills have Eyes-esque" situation but in this case most anxiety-reducing). So his one-working red tail light sped off into the inky-black night, leaving us with the fresh spring chill in the air, the faint sound of bleating lambs and a cynical though that this mysterious stranger might never return.
Ten minutes later our Hasellhoff was back! He squeezed under the van like a total pro, and started tying various ropes to the back Axel.... Me and Joel were silent and I kept thinking that I should be making the kind of small talk that had very explicit over-tones of..'we couldn't be more grateful, what present can we give you after this?' But I was just nervous hoping that it would work (we were hour 10 into this road trip, it had began surreptitiously enough with me meeting Joel at a cafe in Saford , him fresh from the sting of being ejected from the building where his final Art School exhibition, worth 90% of the degree was being judged that morning because he, in a sleep-deprived stupor, spilt a slick of black car paint all over the white gallery floor.)
All the ropes were tied and Leon (my unnecessary small talk had revealed one concrete fact: Our generous benefactor shares his name with London's premiere and most pretentious vegan take-away! And a Jean Luc Besson film I am still yet to see) coached me on how to get the van out of the clay without crashing into the back of his souped-up wonder Citroen. I was nervous, with Joel as a lost cause, I wanted at least Leon to think of me as a skilled transit driver, despite all damning evidence to the contrary.
There was a lot of revving and bumping and tugging and crunching but eventually the van, and all our hopes and dreams the lizards didnt eat were free!!! Well, Free-er.. the van had just transferred onto the grassy verge, adjacent to the clay slick that previously entrapped her. Leon and Joel seemed to have a small, secretive conference in the rosy glow of the van's tail lights and politely asked me if I felt 'comfortable' getting the van out from there. Leon, as it turned out, drives transit vans everyday so I was more than happy to step back and let the professional treat the van like a monster truck and get it back on the country lane for me. He then reversed it the slow 5 minutes up the lane to his place as me and Joel walked slowly, like a two person funeral procession behind the reversing van, trying not to laugh as not to look ungrateful for this wonderful stranger giving up forty-five minutes of his relaxing Monday evening to help a couple of incompetent large vehicle drivers from Manchester.

Then Leon drove for a good five miles to direct us back to the main road to Barnstaple and onto Sculpture Park glory. What an amazingly kind man! I really wished I could send him something as a thankyou! But I have no idea where in hell in all of North Devon that clay verge was!
We arrived at JurrassicPark about half an hour later and were greeting by Reinus, a warm, middle-aged Dutch man with twinkly eyes and Joel's Dad in the cabin where we were both staying ( the world's poshest big shed I would call it). I liked Joel's Dad's sense of humour straight away and how as a sixty-year old adult he described his day spent 'going to the sea side' three times in one anecdote. Joel's Dad went to sleep in his van and we went to sleep in the post tents bedroom. I read a text at 4.30am from my sister about some 'craziness in Manchester" and that was the suicide bombing in the MEN.
The next few days Joel was building his challenging sculpture, I helped where I could with sanding and lifting.
I was on one of my solo exploring trips around the grounds of the sculpture park - seeing some interesting and semi confusing and bland sculptures - pregnant, curvy women with strangely skinny arms cast in brass with usually exposed muscle and/or an exposed fetus seemed to be a trend - I was on the phone to Abbey and (almost ironic in a cinematic way due to me being imn almost paradise with the glorious sun beating down) she was giving me an update on my Mum's memory loss after basically a mental break down (my sisters think that it isn't genuine though) and Jess's continued heroin use. Cee, who was a friend of Frenchie's and has had his drug problems over the years..he must be in his late 50's, he knew us as children put it that way, well he said to Jess that he would buy her some smack if she had sex with him. I have no words. I am not naive and I understand that drugs push people to some beyond dark places and its not so much that he knew her as a child. I don't know. Things just don't seem real sometimes and you see how you've got to that point incrementally by just taking problems and crises camly, one day at a time and not falling into that 'woe is me' neurotic bullshit, if you can.
Back to Devon - The twinkly-eyed owner of the hotel/park and his wife, also the owner who never properly introduced herself treated us like faded popstars on tour or something..a fridge full of wine and cheese, glorious cooked breakfasts, al fresco lunches with beers and Devon's. Most sparkling bottled waters. We had two nights of dinners in the library in the hotel. Mad! It felt like being in some high-brown Cluedo Commune! Sat round the table with the owners, an artist from Lisbon who reminded me so much as a tired, grown-up Ana ..her name was Ana too ( the most common of Portuguese first names!) And me, Joel and his dad. His Dad making odd, incredibly funny comments like "I have left my elderly parents who I live with and care for locked in their cellar with a couple of packets of cat food. They are very positive people, always knowing that things will get better."
Delicious mediterranean cuisine was served and Reinus never stopped pouring us wine from his cellar, posh cheeses were passed around and when the political conversation got a bit uncomfortable for me, I kicked Joel under the table and he seemed to share my sentiment. I saw a moment where Joel seemed to earnestly (probably cos he was intensely sleep deprived ) make a comment that car paint has to be durable because cars are outside and I saw the wife owner who never introduced herself and Ana, the Portugese artist shared a mildly condescending smile as if to say "isn't he young, naive and cute" I felt a bit protective of him at that point, and also the thought "he's so focused and passionate,that is very attractive" happened in my brain.
Everyone seemed to assume that we were in a relationship the Misses" I was to sexist Paul, the groundskeeper with Devonshire dulset tones who drove a very camp, red Jeep around the park.
But we both dealt with it the same way..we didn't deny it or go "No, we're not together actually" we just kind of changed the subject. It did make me cringe a bit being put in the 'supportive girlfriend role' but I sort of thought it was a compliment because we must have looked like a nice, cute couple (I'm not saying I'm cute, though together we could potentially visually achieve that through a tactile friendship) doing something as normal as driving pieces of a 100 tonne steel sculpture from Manchester to Devon and sleeping in a shed together.
Getting back to Manchester, we went via Ilfracoombe and the its stunning coast and we climbed over the safety rails sat on the jagged rocks watching the cliché set over the metaphorical cliche horizon. But in truthfulness it get special to be there and (after his weeks of supreme, intense stress getting everything together I'm such a short time plus a final Art School show) like we'd runaway to a magic place no one else would have even known we were. We found a lighthouse minus a family crooning '90's feel good hits. We walked through this teeny town, seeing interesting people with intense gazes and a giant sculpture.
We drove back through the night, me fighting to stay alert at times. We stopped for a Wee hour MacDonalds and he disappeared for a while and came back with kids gift shop presents from WH Smiths - my weak spot ..token gifts from people I like that I can later look at with lots of sentimentality.
Rachel was staying in my room in The Ginger Care(Bear)Home so when we arrived in the van...to see our second sunset in a row with no sleep in between...we came in to her nekkid in my bed bless her but she woke up straight away...puts tshirt on and came to give us big hugs.we sat drinking tequila on my floor by where the tiki mini bar I was meant to build lay incomplete. I was so shattered. Rachel saw this and gave us the bed and i madeup the matress so she could sleep in my weird extra room where I store the vacuum cleaner.
Two hours after a spooning lie down me n Joel were up and driving the van to pick up Joi for us to go to the flat viewing. How strange for me to rock up with a drunk (on more of the tequila than me, as the DD) non boyfriend I've just gone on a bizarre adventure with. It was a gorgeous Manchester day...so rare... Boili ng hot. LongShort me n Joi viewed the flat.fell in love with it and 5hours later it was off the market and ours! Sorted!
Had work but spent the afternoon after dropping off the van drinking in a lovely Manchester park I'd never been to before. It was like the perfect relax after 4 days on intense stuff and visible, palpable stress for him. Really sweet. Though later at work he carried on drinking andi could tell he wasn't happy. A week later we had a proper chat about his mental health stuff. I hope mebeing there a and listening helped. He's moving away from Manchester pretty much now so I feel us (again) staying out til sunrise and kissing and hugging tightly on the steps of Tesco is like a goodbye.
Departing friends and family chaos have been a bit of a theme this year. I wonder what the lesson is in that?
The weekend after the Devon Adventures I was flying back home to see my Mum. She has been having some very disturbing, huge lapses of memory. Since Christmas, though I think maybe before

I found out that Jess had been taken into hospital. Into Charing Cross Hospital of all places - the place where my parents worked for years, fell in love and we were taken to to hangout with my Dad as small kids. This was late information provided to me by June on the calm, warm Sunday as I ran around to rent yet another van, courtesy of Joel, a couple of days before the departed...it made me chuckle...looking like some couple moving into a canal-facing flat , for sure the visual is charming through the cold, cynical prism of advert casting but the reality nothing as charming or 'normal'. It seemed noone in my family had called to let me know but June and Celia filled me in.
She had injected heroin into an artery (?) in her bum cheek and it had got infected and formed an abscess. So they had to perform emergency surgery. They didn't want to discharge her after the surgery because they knew that she was sleeping on a floor in a hostel so they kept her in for a while so they knew the dressing would be changed every day that it needed to be and there would be no risk of infection. But on evening the hospital exploded with activity, nurses running around everywhere. There had been a fire in nearby Kensington in a tower block and many casualties were to be taken. It was the fire at Grenfell tower and it meant that for some reason Jess was transfered to hotel accommodation down in Bournemouth. They put her on a train and when I spoke to her (I was Father's Day and I had spent it in beautiful Hebden Bridge with two friends from work ) she had been at the beach across the road from the hotel. How strange, to be in a idyllic holiday spot on the hottest day in a few decades because you are a recovering heroin addict who has been discharged from hospital after a surgery for an abscess caused by injecting into your bum. It is so stupidly ironic.
And now I rent my third vehicle in a month to drive home and be there for the verdict to be read out at Portsmouth Crown Court for her charges (six of them) of Conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and Dealing to an undercover police officer. Last I spoke to my Mum she said that it was final straw

12:46 p.m. - 2017-07-25

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