Transportmentally Challenged
It wasn't the trolleys, although there were four of them piled high with ten flat-packed furniture items, two double futons, a large rug, fifteen cushions and several bags of assorted tat, and manoeuvring them was slightly awkward.
It wasn't the weather, although driving through dense fog on the motorway in the middle of the night is possibly not the best of ideas, particularly when your passenger hasn't left Manchester for several months, has agoraphobia and has run out of cigarettes.
It wasn't even the decapitation thing. And come to think of it, the fog helped us with that...
You see, we had rather a lot of stuff. And some of it was big stuff. Long stuff. And the car is long, but apparently not quite long enough.
"Maybe I could sit behind you."
"No, I need that space for the futons. Look, we'll just push the seat really far forward."
"OK."
"You won't have much leg room though. And there'll be a flat-pack bookcase in the back of your neck. Is that all right?"
"Yeah. I think so."
But then we were on the road and I realised that if I braked at all suddenly, the seven-foot-long heavy wooden package would come shooting forward and chop Jane's head off. And I would be stranded in the middle of nowhere with a decapitated friend and a car full of blood-stained bookshelves.
But it was very VERY foggy. So I could get away with driving at 40mph, and keeping at least a million miles between me and the car in front.
So, none of that stuff was so bad. No. I think it would all have been fine, if it weren’t for the panther. And the car-not-going thing. Yes, that was a problem too.
Because there we were. Doing just fine, thankyouverymuch. Slow, but fine.
And then I ran out of fuel.
No, I don't mean the thingy went into the red. I mean I ran. Out of. Diesel. In the middle of the night. We thought we were so clever, taking advantage of IKEA’s 12am closing time...
But anyway. Here was I, intrepid adventurer, all ready to venture forth into the black black night, on my own, miles from the nearest garage. Until Jane suggested we ring the AA. Never let anyone tell you agoraphobics don’t have their heads screwed on.
Of course, at that point I didn’t know about the panther.
The AA told us to get out of the car and wait on the other side of the barrier. They didn't know about the panther either. But luckily we decided it was too cold for such nonsense, and they said they’d be at least an hour and a half, and it was the middle of the night for God's sake. And foggy. Did I mention the fog? It was very foggy.
So we stayed in the car.
The policeman who spotted us and stopped to investigate, he knew about the panther. But he didn't tell us straight away. He said if we had a container, he could drive us to the nearest services. I did! I had a fuel can!
I brought it specially. Because I knew running out of juice was a distinct possibility. Not because I had actually checked - that would be silly. No, it's just that I quite often run out.
The policeman said it might help if I look at the gauge more often. And of course I would, it's just that it's only right in front of my eyes and therefore not very noticeable. And this car never runs out because the tank is really really big and the diesel lasts for ever and ever and ever and really it gets so boring when all it ever says is "Full Up" and I feel like an over-enthusiastic aunt with a teapot...
"Do you need more fuel yet, car dear?"
"No."
"Do you need more fuel yet, car dear?"
"No."
"Do you need more fuel yet, car dear?"
Well, after a while you stop bothering to ask, don't you?
Anyway. I had can. For fuel-running-out scenarios such as this.
But I also had a car packed to the gills with stuff. There was not a chink of space left that didn't have a brightly-coloured cushion crammed into it. And guess where the fuel can was?
My mum always says, if you've lost anything... look under things. Several things. Everything.
So we littered the hard shoulder with hard and soft furnishing, just in case a panther should stop by and need a rest, and, eventually, we unearthed a fuel can.
Sadly we forgot about the spout. So when we got to the petrol station we had to make the nice lady unlock the shop so we could buy another can, and despite all that it didn't occur to me to buy cigarettes for poor old Jane who really was coping very well with the whole thing...
And then the policeman told us about the panther. The one that lives in the woods, behind the crash barrier.
But that was OK because we had diesel, we had one-and-a-half containers, we had a policeman covering our backs...
("What will you do if it attacks me?"
"Lock my door and call for help."
"Maybe I could douse it in diesel and set light to it?")
So there I was, nothing between me and a panther but a can of fuel, and then I discovered the central locking, which was broken, which meant the fuel cap wouldn't open...
SOD THAT.
Who knew how easy it is to break into a VW fuel tank? I did it with my bare fingers.
Such is the strength of a woman.
___
It wasn't the weather, although driving through dense fog on the motorway in the middle of the night is possibly not the best of ideas, particularly when your passenger hasn't left Manchester for several months, has agoraphobia and has run out of cigarettes.
It wasn't even the decapitation thing. And come to think of it, the fog helped us with that...
You see, we had rather a lot of stuff. And some of it was big stuff. Long stuff. And the car is long, but apparently not quite long enough.
"Maybe I could sit behind you."
"No, I need that space for the futons. Look, we'll just push the seat really far forward."
"OK."
"You won't have much leg room though. And there'll be a flat-pack bookcase in the back of your neck. Is that all right?"
"Yeah. I think so."
But then we were on the road and I realised that if I braked at all suddenly, the seven-foot-long heavy wooden package would come shooting forward and chop Jane's head off. And I would be stranded in the middle of nowhere with a decapitated friend and a car full of blood-stained bookshelves.
But it was very VERY foggy. So I could get away with driving at 40mph, and keeping at least a million miles between me and the car in front.
So, none of that stuff was so bad. No. I think it would all have been fine, if it weren’t for the panther. And the car-not-going thing. Yes, that was a problem too.
Because there we were. Doing just fine, thankyouverymuch. Slow, but fine.
And then I ran out of fuel.
No, I don't mean the thingy went into the red. I mean I ran. Out of. Diesel. In the middle of the night. We thought we were so clever, taking advantage of IKEA’s 12am closing time...
But anyway. Here was I, intrepid adventurer, all ready to venture forth into the black black night, on my own, miles from the nearest garage. Until Jane suggested we ring the AA. Never let anyone tell you agoraphobics don’t have their heads screwed on.
Of course, at that point I didn’t know about the panther.
The AA told us to get out of the car and wait on the other side of the barrier. They didn't know about the panther either. But luckily we decided it was too cold for such nonsense, and they said they’d be at least an hour and a half, and it was the middle of the night for God's sake. And foggy. Did I mention the fog? It was very foggy.
So we stayed in the car.
The policeman who spotted us and stopped to investigate, he knew about the panther. But he didn't tell us straight away. He said if we had a container, he could drive us to the nearest services. I did! I had a fuel can!
I brought it specially. Because I knew running out of juice was a distinct possibility. Not because I had actually checked - that would be silly. No, it's just that I quite often run out.
The policeman said it might help if I look at the gauge more often. And of course I would, it's just that it's only right in front of my eyes and therefore not very noticeable. And this car never runs out because the tank is really really big and the diesel lasts for ever and ever and ever and really it gets so boring when all it ever says is "Full Up" and I feel like an over-enthusiastic aunt with a teapot...
"Do you need more fuel yet, car dear?"
"No."
"Do you need more fuel yet, car dear?"
"No."
"Do you need more fuel yet, car dear?"
Well, after a while you stop bothering to ask, don't you?
Anyway. I had can. For fuel-running-out scenarios such as this.
But I also had a car packed to the gills with stuff. There was not a chink of space left that didn't have a brightly-coloured cushion crammed into it. And guess where the fuel can was?
My mum always says, if you've lost anything... look under things. Several things. Everything.
So we littered the hard shoulder with hard and soft furnishing, just in case a panther should stop by and need a rest, and, eventually, we unearthed a fuel can.
Sadly we forgot about the spout. So when we got to the petrol station we had to make the nice lady unlock the shop so we could buy another can, and despite all that it didn't occur to me to buy cigarettes for poor old Jane who really was coping very well with the whole thing...
And then the policeman told us about the panther. The one that lives in the woods, behind the crash barrier.
But that was OK because we had diesel, we had one-and-a-half containers, we had a policeman covering our backs...
("What will you do if it attacks me?"
"Lock my door and call for help."
"Maybe I could douse it in diesel and set light to it?")
So there I was, nothing between me and a panther but a can of fuel, and then I discovered the central locking, which was broken, which meant the fuel cap wouldn't open...
SOD THAT.
Who knew how easy it is to break into a VW fuel tank? I did it with my bare fingers.
Such is the strength of a woman.
___
Labels: Disaster Prone
10 Comments:
*rolls eyes*
SOME people shouldn't be let out in public!
It was foggy so you stayed IN the car?? So with low visibility you trusted other road users not to hit your car with you and Jane in it... and what's with overpacking the car?
Only idiots do that.
Yes we've done it too...
"It's OK dear, we'll be home in an hour..."
She STILL casts that one up!! ;-)
The problem with IKEA is that it's very hard to know how much stuff you've bought and whether it'll fit in the car or not until AFTER you've bought it. And we are talking a very large car.
But yes, you're right. Consider my hand slapped.
As for getting out of the car...
There was very little traffic. We kept our seatbelts on. We had hazard warning and fog lights on. They would have had to have moved onto the hard shoulder and swerved into us to hit us. OK, it was a possibility, but the AA were going to be an hour and a half, it was very cold, and THERE WAS A PANTHER IN THE WOODS.
We also practiced a little emergency procedure.
"DUCK!"
[Jane ducks]
Foolproof. Obviously.
A better emergency procedure might have been
"PANTHER!"
[Jane screams]
A friend of my parents' got run over on the hard shoulder in fog while walking back to his car from the emergency phone (way before the days of mobiles). Personally I have always found sitting in the car on the hard shoulder of a motorway rather scary. It's the way the whole car rocks as the big lorries whoosh by. But, yes, panther. Um.
We once had to get the RAC out to open a fuel tank. It was before we owned a car, and we'd hired an Astra to go from Stirling where we lived to a wedding in Leeds. We had to be back the next day to head off on holiday. Now the Astra had one of the sensible modern arrangement where the one key opens everything. Only it didn't open the fuel tank, because some plonker had put a different Astra's fuel cap back on it. When we returned the car, along with the key I posted the bits of fuel tank cap through the letter box. Serves them right.
P.S. Re overloading, on Monday night I had an entire set of tubular bells plus rack in the back of our Picasso. It required both the front headrests to be removed, and I drove with a tubular bell rack over my shoulder. But I drove very gently. (The bells - all 18 of them - were carefully wrapped in umpteen dust sheets and lying flat on the floor.)
Cue the Mike Oldfield....
Our last trip to San Diego involved a final stop at Ikea. Which resulted in my wife sitting scrunched in the back because we had to recline the front seat to fit in all the nice little shelf thingies, but it was only a five hour drive and we didn't run out of diesel, 'cause I LOOK AT THE GAUGE ONCE IN A WHILE.
"only a five hour drive"
Haha, there speaks an American. Five hours is a LONG car journey in Britain. I certainly wouldn't travel five hours to go shopping! It also seems like a long time to be travelling in a precariously-loaded car. But Sensible Head says five minutes is too long if you're endangering your life. Plus most accidents happen with a mile of the home...
Don't you just love Ikea.Then I guess you had to go home unload the car and then put the darn thing together !!!
I'm sure fun was had by all...
I'd have stayed in the car to I'd rather get struck by a car than get:
1/ Eaten by a panther
2/ Die of hypothermia
Clare, this is a rare thing for me: I'm speechless.
Tell me you made it up, tell me you made this all up.
A panther in the woods?!? In England?
Oh man, you are too funny for words, yeah, I'm speechless.
It's all true, I tell you!
"I was called out to this bit of motorway a few weeks ago," he says. "Somebody saw a panther sitting at the side of the road. Not sure what I was supposed to do about it. I asked a local farmer, and he said there's all sorts in these woods."
You often gets stories of big black cats in the English countryside. Some say it's just people's eyes playing tricks on them in the dark and getting their perspective all muddled up. Some say that people have imported illegal exotic pets and then abandoned them in woodland when they've got too much.
I'm prepared to believe it. But only cos I want it to be true.
the AA were going to be an hour and a half, it was very cold, and THERE WAS A PANTHER IN THE WOODS.
Wuss. Did the Guides teach you nothing? Why, I remember a jolly campfire song from my days in the Scouts which covered just this eventuality:
Oh, there's a lion in the woods,
There's a lion in the woods (woods woods!)
It's big and scary and dan-GER-OUS
But we'renotafraidofanything, no NOT US
Not even the lion in the woods (woods woods!)
We are scouts and we are BRAVE
Just like SirRobertBadenPowellandhis wife Ol-AVE
Oh oh oh...
Oh, there's a panther in the woods
[etc etc]
Think on.
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