I think I left a bit of a cliff-hanger last week – I had been hunched on the M1, waiting for help after my car broke down – so I might as well tell you what happened thereafter.
As I huddled on the cold bank with nothing but waiting to be done, phone battery running low and darkness falling fast, all I could do was think.
It’s almost like a present, thinking about banal stuff – like how I love condiment bottles becoming empty so I can buy a new one, or how children have the same brains as an adult but with less muck inside.
But eventually my heart soared as a huge white truck with flashing lights rumbled up and parked in front of my car.
I scrambled down the bank and a young fella clambered out and started asking questions.
He was portly but strong, his splayed legs giving him an unusual gait and his hands moving with an odd flourish.
Was the car MOT’d? Was I the policy holder? Where were we taking the vehicle? All questions answered, he asked me to step into the lorry and he would get “her” on the back in two secondos.
I climbed up, sat down in the warm cab and looked around me. It was big but cosy and the radio was playing tunes through nice speakers.
I had never been in a lorry and I was transfixed by the buttons and lights and the spongy seats.
In the mirror I saw the fella slithering around. Before long the car was hauled up and locked in and he was in the driver’s seat not remotely out of breath.
“Right, let’s get this steak on the grill,” he said. “Good job this is a nice easy one.”
“You make it look easy.”
I was amazed at how smooth and quiet the truck was, and the lofty position gave a superb view.
I noticed his hands were quite small compared to his large size, and his face didn’t really fit his head. His hands flighted around the gearstick in a delicate, almost girlish way and I was struck by this dichotomy. He was young, late twenties I guessed, and he never stopped talking.
“I finish at 5 you see, so if a call comes in at 5.15 I have to take it – no matter what. Like one Friday, I was on the way back to the yard at 5.25 and I thought magic, lock of pints and the chippy, happy days, and the phone went and I had to go to Kilkeel and take a whole family to Limavady.
“Hour and a half there, hour and a half at Kilkeel, two-and-three-quarter hours to Limavady, and an hour and a half back to Lurgan.”
“Do you get overtime?”
“No, I get a wage. Not by the hour.”
He said “hour” in a strange way. His small, white hands flashed about and he talked about tea breaks and awesome Eurospars and tyres and down-filled hi-viz coats, but mostly he talked about his rescues.
I truly have never been with a happier worker. He wafted the big truck along with me and my car snugly secured and faux-moaned about challenging call-outs, munching crisps and glugging Coke Zero, glancing at his state of the art sat-nav.
“I was 10 minutes from the yard when a call came from a camper van in Cushendall, and when I got there, I asked where they needed to go and they said Newcastle.
“I said that’s a hike alright but I’ll get you there in two and a half hours.
“They laughed and said have you an aircraft? They were going to Newcastle up in England. You see, the breakdown cover means I take you anywhere in the UK or Ireland that you want to go. Anywhere.”
As we continued our journey westward, I started wishing for a longer journey myself. Rescued and warm and heading home, watching the world disappear in the dark, drifting on towards Tyrone.