Scenes from a life past.....2

The next month passed by in a frenzy of activity. I managed to speak to Mr Graham on the phone, who said he was sure he had offered me the job but now he came to think about it he had never actually seen a copy of the letter. He began to be quite a pest at 6pm on several occasions phoning me to tell me of his master plan for this laboratory of his, how I was to be the first of a series of Super Techs appointed for their potential as management material and how he and I were going to sort the rest of the staff out. Golly, my only experience of lab work previous to this was cutting up frogs at university and a twelve month spell in a vinegar distillery which had literally turned sour as the work increasingly interrupted my evenings and weekends on the basis that I lived the nearest. I knew nothing about the Dairy Industry and even less about Management unless you counted supervising two teenagers in a flower shop. After the third phone call the same week Corporate Macho Husband began to say I was out, in the bath or visiting the sick. In reality he was waiting for his dinner.

The letter offering me the job finally arrived along with a hand-written note that said the contract would follow in due course as all company contracts were being revised. The terms and conditions seemed reasonable and all in all I was quite happy with it.

I handed in my notice at the flower shop and worked my last two weeks. They gave me an unexpected bonus, a large bunch of flowers and told me to go straight back when the long drive to work started to get me down. I had 2 weeks before I started the new job. I got my garden in order anticipating longer working days and went shopping for new clothes.

My usual attire in the flower shop had been last year’s cast offs and various old jumpers stuffed under a voluminous blue nylon overall atop a pair of thick soled desert boots and two pairs of socks. It was all designed to keep me warm. Obviously what suited in the freezing back yard of a flower shop in February was not going to fit my new role as a technician and potential management candidate. Accordingly I purchased some skirts, some business- looking tops, a jacket and three pairs of smart shoes.

The other problem we had to address was the thorny subject of my ailing Triumph Herald which had a great propensity to stall at lights, for the bonnet to fly up as the driver’s door flew open and had no synchromesh on first gear so I was constantly double declutching in traffic which I frequently messed up and so had to keep re-starting it. That was when it did start. I would be driving 19 miles each way to work in considerable traffic for half of it, stop start for at least 8 miles so driving the Herald was out of the question. Well according to me it was. The husband did not agree.

“You’ll be fine. Just as soon as you get used to the drive you’ll handle it better. You can always phone me if there’s a problem” Funnily enough I’d tried that before and after a walk of half a mile in driving snow down a dual carriageway in the near-dark his secretary had said he was in a meeting and must not be disturbed. The AA took 4 hours to come.

CMH had to go to the USA on business during this time so, seizing the opportunity, I advertised the Herald in the local paper and sold it to the first taker. All its’ little idiosyncrasies happened on the test drive but the man whose girlfriend was to buy it kept telling her that you had to expect such things with such a classic vehicle. They paid the asking price without a murmur and I waved them off with the fistful of notes.

I went and fetched CMH from the airport in the Scimitar which by then had been repaired after his altercation with the garage door. Driving down our road in the dark even jetlag had not blurred his sense of something missing.

“Oh my God you’ve crashed the Herald. I just knew you would do something like that whilst I was away!”

“No I didn’t. I sold it for £50. I just have to get a new car for next week now.” Our reunion after 10 days apart was not as sweet as it could have been but CMH’s joy at having had his Scimitar re-sprayed softened the blow.

“Oh it’s a beaut, lovely job. They even got the lines dead straight down each side. Look how it shines in the sun” and so on ad nauseum. I pointed out that we could buy me a very decent car on half the cost of the paint job.

He finally gave in and the following Friday night he went to the car auction with my cousin who was ‘in the trade’ and purchased a much more reliable vehicle. They phoned me from a phone box outside the auction as they filled it with petrol for the drive home.

“Yes, we got one. Cheap too, you’ll love it.”

“Is it a Ford?” I had had my eyes on the Ford Escorts in the local small ads and was keen to get one of those.

“Yes, great, lovely runner, cheap to maintain as well”

“What colour is it?”

“Oh you’ll really love it when you see it, I promise”. Ah, blue then. Good.

Heartened, I put the kettle on for coffee and waited for their return whilst I watched Bodie and Doyle fighting crime and driving around in their Ford Capri pleased to think that I was getting a smaller car so parking and traffic would be a lot easier. I was quite lost in the episode when I heard a tractor turning round outside my window.

“Odd,” I thought, “He must have taken a wrong turning,” then the sound of a key in the lock. I went to the front door and there was CMH and my cousin grinning from ear to ear.

“Come and see it then” I raced outside and there sat on the drive was a huge Ford Mark 3 Cortina, the really ugly one with a high back, only 2 doors and a roar like a stock car when it started up.

“Exhaust needs fixing of course but it will be great when it’s done.”

It was starting to get dark by then, I couldn’t quite see the colour. It looked like a sort of primer on the front wing. They thrust the documents at me and said “Look, all yours, just what you wanted.”

The colour description read ‘battleship grey’.

In the light of day the next morning it was the ugliest car I had ever set eyes on.