Sometimes we get stuck; in life I mean. Our intentions are fine and sharp, the energy is there and all the conditions appear to be in your sails and urging you forward; but you don't move.
My car is nothing special, just an ordinary family saloon bought for the practical reasons of aging parents, an aging spine - don't you love that cracking sound as you descend into bucket seats in most sporty jobs? - and of course the sensible reason of more reasonable insurance, petrol consumption etc. Lately, over the last month, it has become resistant to my right foot. It seemed lazy, slow to respond and reluctant to lift its skirts and power away. I told myself it was my imagination. Then I reasoned that as I am getting older surely I would feel the opposite and think I was going too fast rather than dawdling? I put this thought to the back of my mind.
The same was true of my writing. I felt like I was pootling along, no injection of inspiration, no pulling out and powering away to overtake that pedestrian, plodding feeling. So, I carried on. Assuming that things were right for now, this was a process, you had to empty before you fill up again....did I need an MOT?
I took an extra day off from work. I would drive my partner to work, do the chores and spend the afternoon working through my third assignment.
I got up at the ungodly hour (ungodly when you are meant to be off work!), drove my partner to work, came home and put the washing on. Then I got as distracted as possible with a little gardening. Well, actually it was moving pots about, pulling up the odd weed and looking at my solitary blueberry bush and the buds growing on it. I was in short avoiding working on my writing - AGAIN!
I made a coffee; switched on the computer, checked my emails, read the news, checked my emails again and then put up the word document and went to get a fresh cuppa.
I returned to the screen. Put up the net radio player and picked out six programmes to listen to then clicked on the first. Then the phone went. The partner had got his yearly leave allocation, had an extra day and recklessly had taken it; he was heading home. I sensed escape.....
Picking him up I suggested a walk in the sunshine - shame to waste it after the forecast had been so bad. Live now, you’re a long time dead etc etc. We headed out, my partner reluctantly, an afternoon rehearsing on the violin, drinking coffee and smoking the odd cigarette sounding more attractive than a walk.
We drove through the country lanes, my foot went down and the car laboured along. I ignored it. We wove through a little village and climbed one of the steepest hills in Dorset. The car behind closed on me; I shoved down a gear and applied the right foot. The revs went up and not much else happened. The car slowed. The man behind closed in and then in a flash of foresight backed off. I shoved down a gear and had nowhere to go but into first, marvelling at the steepness of this mountain hugging road; it had been this difficult the last time we came this way, right?
WRONG! The car coughed and the muffler, behind and underneath my partner's seat exploded with the sound, but not the fury, of a bomb! The car lurched forward; the man behind dropped back, hidden momentarily in a black cloud, courtesy of my bucking Ford Focus that now sounded like a tractor. Our molars rattled with the vibration and I switched off the radio in the hope that this would lessen the overwhelming sound bouncing around - even opening the windows didn't help, just made us realized how much sound was now clearing the hedgerows and no doubt sending pheasants flapping into the next county.
We pulled into a lay-by. I climbed under the rear of my now quicker, but audible from space, vehicle. It looked as though I had run over an animal; there was hair bursting forth from a metal box along the exhaust pipe. I pulled at it and it came away in great handfuls. Had I hit something? I looked back along the road but as the - almost - take off point was over a mile away it was unlikely to help. It was hair. The muffler as my helpful exhaust fitter told me had ruptured and burst forth with it's sound-dampening hair.
"Bet she lost power just before?" He said with a chuckle, adding, "bloody hell look at that, burst right along the side..." He’ll be telling he grandchildren about this moment I thought to myself. He ran his fingers along the jagged wound and playfully pulled a few handfuls out for his own amusement.
£99.90 lighter we drove, seemingly silently away from the tyre and exhaust site.
We drove radio on, along the same lanes; the sun was now brighter and the countryside more spring like. We went for our walk, after driving up the same hill where the explosion had happened. I kept looking in my rear view mirror expecting the previous driver to come up behind me again to see if a repeat performance might be in the offing; he didn't and there was no animal, minus some hair, laying on the verge. We enjoyed our walk, talked about the pretty village of Little Bredy and contributed to the very English church.
Once home the violin came out, coffee made and I went back to my office to find my computer on, blinking at me, accusingly.
Two hours later I had re-written the assignment twice. The wonders of a change of gear and explosion underneath you!
Would seem that was all it needed.
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