Crinklybee

The Fiat Punto Which Cried Wolf

I've been reading 'A Moveable Feast', Hemingway's memoir of his days as an aspiring twentysomething writer living in penury on the banks of the Seine.  Among the many fascinating vignettes is an account of a nightmare weekend spent travelling to Bordeaux and back with F Scott Fitzgerald, who, it turns out, has such a weakness for alcohol that the merest whiff of the garcon's apron is enough to effect a transformation from erudite literary starlet to boorish misanthropic hypochondriac.  After a sleepness Saturday night spent holed up in a backstreet hotel trying to convince the sodden Great Gatsby creator that he is not about to succumb to yellow fever but has merely been rendereed incapable of movement by too much whisky, Hemingway reflects that he should have realised he was in for a bad trip as soon as he found himself setting out alone on the southbound express train out of the capital, Fitzgerald having failed to make a morning rendezvous at the Gare de Lyon.  'Until then', he reflects witheringly. 'I had never known a grown man fail to catch a train'.

Fortunately, the call-handlers at the AA seem to take a more generous view than Ernest Hemingway of their fellow human beings' capacity for blithering incompetence when attempting to convey themselves short distances across the urban landscape- at least to judge from Friday night, when, on the ten-mile journey home from work along familiar intersuburban thoroughfares,  I somehow managed to run out of fuel.  As the Fiat Punto phut-phut-phutted to a halt at the intersection of Wilbraham Road and the Princess Parkway (just thirty yards from one of the several petrol stations peppering the route home) I cartwheeled through the gamut of emotions that will be familiar to anyone who has ever been caught short in this singular fashion: denial; embarrassment; then, as a scrambling lunge into the glove compartment revealed any amount of cheap sunglasses with an arm missing, gunged-up packets of fruit polos, and half-forgotten C90 audio cassettes featuring Wedding Present 'B' sides, but no AA membership card whatsoever, blind, desperate panic.

A minute later I remembered I had put it in my coat pocket that very morning, having, in a rare but misplaced bout of uber-preparedness, become convinced that the three-week-old slow puncture on the driver's side back tyre could be about due to turn itself into a fast puncture.   Two more minutes later a bright yellow van pulled up at the intersection, and a cheerful, competent looking individual in oily overalls clambered out onto the path.

'Hell, that was quick.  I only just called yous up'

'I didn't get the call, mate.  I was just on my way home when I saw your hazard lights flashing.  What's up?'

And so, I had to own up, for the second time in as many minutes, to having driven past half a  dozen petrol stations in twenty minutes, even though the little orange light on the dashboard had been showing ever since I set off (although in my defence, as I decided not to add at this point, the little bastard does have an annoying tendency to start flickering almost as soon as you have filled up, meaning that you fall into the habit of ignoring it altogether, like the villagers in the story did with the Boy who cried wolf).  Showing the same commendable professionalism that had been exhibited by his colleague on the telephone moments earlier, the oily gentleman eschewed the opportunity to break out into raucous laughter at my self-inflicted predicament- instead busying himself with hooks and tow-ropes.  Twenty minutes later- via a stop-off at the petrol station just short of the Queen of Hearts crossroads- I was home.

The worst thing is that this episode doesn't even make number one in our all-time family list of embarrassing call-outs to the AA.  That honour is disputed between

1- the time we tried to go on holiday to Devon but wasted the batteries by leaving all the doors open when packing, with the result that we couldn't even get out of our street

2- the time when we went to visit our friends Simon and Sarah and their new baby in hospital and on the way back managed to lock the keys in the car in the hospital carpark.  We were too embarrassed to admit our mistake to the successsion of other friends who happened past while we were waiting to be rescued, so launched into a lengthy facade of making small talk and pretending to look for the keys in our jackets while hoping that they would get bored and go away.  Eventually the van turned up and we had to sheepishly admit why we had seemed so reluctant to set off home.

3- the time (not long before number two which is why we were so embarrassed at the hospital) when we were all going to the Lake District to celebrate Sarah's birthday and, owing to a dodgy clutch and a series of administrative cock-ups between ourselves and the AA, we ended up getting towed most of the way there on Friday night then all the way home again on Sunday morning.

4- the time when Simon and Sarah (who had moved away from Manchester by then, possibly because they couldn't cope any more with their friends being so useless) were visiting for the weekend and we arrived two hours late for a big lunchtime get-together because the cobbles in our street had shaken the exhaust pipe plain off the bottom of the chassis.

I could probably go on, but I think I will leave it to Simon and Sarah themselves (who are occasional visitors to the comment box) to decide which one of those should be number one.  In the meantime if there are any AA advertising executives who would be interested in featuring us as a poster family in an upcoming campaign highlighting their status as the fourth emergency service to the sort of people who should probably be banned by law from the public highways on general principles, then I can tell them right now that no reasonable offer will be refused.  We do have a very cute three year old who would doubtless look just the part on the posters- if that is, he can be persuaded to share the limelight with his feckless parents.    

When Santa came to Salford

We took Frankie to the Lowry (or at least the shopping centre attached to the Lowry) to see Santa Claus turning on the lights.  He didn't come on straight away- first we had to endure a succession of scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel support acts.  First up were a three-piece girl band who were introduced as 'The New Spice Girls'.  I don't think the old ones will be losing any sleep judging by the hideously out-of-tune sub R'n'B racket that passed for their Christmas single.  The interview with the compere on stage afterwards didn't do much either to endear them to the assembled Sunday afternoon shoppers and toddlers:

'So- I hear you girls are on tour.  When are you due in Manchester?'

'Oh, we're not coming to Manchester'

'Er, fair enough.  Now then, next on stage, the choir of St Josephs Catholic Girls School Davyhulme, who are going to give us 'Away in a Manger'.  Take it away girls'.

There was also what appeared to be a Blues Brothers Tribute Band (basically three badly-choreographed blokes in cheap suits and sunglasses who could quite conceivably have been the security guards from Argos passing by in their lunch hour) and some bloke whose claim to fame is having flirted (unsuccesfully) with Tara Palmer Tomkinson during the 2005 edition of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.  Thankfully he hasn't got a Christmas single out- or perhaps he had been ganged up on backstage and had it beaten out of him by the massed ranks of the Blues Brothers tirbute band and the choir of St Joseph's Catholic Girls School, Davyhulme.  At this time of year it is indeed heartwarming to witness the lengths ordinary members of the public will go to in order to lessen the distress of their fellow men.

Eventually the Celebrity bloke shuffled off to rapturous apathy.... to be replaced by Santa Claus himself.  Between you and me mind, I'm not sure it was the real Santa Claus at all, red coat and flowing white beard or no red coat and flowing white beard.  The fellow looked about twenty-five, couldn't have weighed more than eight stone, and spent his brief appearance in the limelight jingling the change in the cavernous pockets of his outsize red jumpsuit trousers.  The compere (who I was starting to feel sorry for by now) had about as much success as with the wannabee Spice Girls:

'So, Santa, you'll be busy this time of year,then, I suppose?'

'Er, what's that mate?'

'I mean, you and the elves'll be busy getting all the presents packed for the good boys and girls, isn't that right, Santa?'

'Oh aye, right.  Right you are.  Me and me elves, mate, aye'.

Of course none of this matters at all though, does it?  The truth is I wasn't really watching the welterweight Santa, I was watching three-year-old-Frankie, who was perched on my shoulder and peering intently towards the stage.   And the lad was charmed, make no mistake.  The look of sheer wonderment that came over his face as the guy in the red suit took the hastily-constructed stage, and stayed there right through his fleeting, faltering appearance, is one that will stay with me (and maybe with him) forever.  Which is more, thankfully, than can be said for Santa's support acts.  Maybe he should have just brought some of those elves of his instead.

The Seventeenth Earl of Wherever's Imaginary Cafeteria

For reasons we are not quite at liberty to go into here, this Sunday afternoon finds us in even more pressing need than usual to get the hell out of the inner city.  We pile into the Fiat Punto and point it in the general direction of leafiest Cheshire.  Fifteen minutes later we take a sharp right turn off a 'B' road, then slow to a gravelly halt alongside a curious structure resembling a garden shed with a man-sized hole carved into its side.  Sure enough, a man-sized man pops his head out of the hole, and a short transaction takes place in which a crisp five pound note is exchanged for an informative leaflet detailing the delights of Dunham Massey Deer Sanctuary, and a courteous wave in the general direction of the car-park.  That's right, we are entering National Trust country.

Dunham Massey is a seventeen-hectare chunk of prime real estate (or some impresively large area anyway, go on, you look it up) which used to belong to the Seventeenth Earl of Somewhereorother (look, what do you think this is, the Rough Guide to the Manchester Stockbroker Belt?) until, in a fit of benevolence possibly not unrelated to an unexpected demand for inheritance task on the part of the Wilson Administration (1974, actually- see, I did retain some of the information on the helpful pathside noticeboards) it was handed over into the stewardship of the nation.  Like every National Trust property we have ever visited (and we used to have membership cards back when we had the wherewithal to afford such fripperies, so can speak from substantial experience), the estate's grounds are dominated by a grey stone mansion the size of a battleship, surrounded on all sides by expensive-looking  driveways and ornate pillars topped by statues of rearing stallions. 

Presumably the insides are just as impressive, featuring chaise-longues, coats of armour standing to attention outside of banqueting halls, Queen Anne chairs (whatever they are) and other items straight out of a BBC2 adaptation of a Jane Austen classic.  I say 'presumably' because you always have to pay an extra fiver to get into the inner sanctum of these places, and we always decide we have seen enough BBC2 adaptations of Jane Austen classics to be able to leave the furnishings to our imagination.  We can therefore, we reason, save any crisp fivers that haven't been handed over to the garden shed bloke for the main event of the day: the visit to the on-site cafeteria for a pot of tea and a reasonably-priced scone.

Actually I'm missing a bit out.  You can't of course just walk straight into a National Trust property and head straight for the scones- there are wardens with barbour jackets and walkie-talkies patrolling the grounds on the look-out for just such telltale examples of unwholesome slothfulness, and any schoolboy errors of that nature will see you bundled into the back of a Land Rover and unceremoniously dumped in the nearest Council Estate.  If you wish to avoid such a fate then there is only one thing for it- to get the hiking boots out of the car boot and embark on A Cursory Inspection Of The Grounds.

It is at this point that a day out in a National Trust property really starts to distinguish itself from more rugged countryside pursuits, such as orienteering, tug-of-war competitions between teams of drunken villagers, rambling, and bear-baiting.  Like all country estates passed over into the hands of the nation, Dunham Massey has been carefully landscaped in such a way as to provide the discerning visitor with plentiful opportunity to observe the native wildlife- otherwise known as the English Middle Classes- in their natural habitat.  So- small boys with floppy fringes and green wellington boots gambol by the duckpond under the watchful eye of fathers in Sale Rugby Union shirts.  Instantly identifiable by their exotic plumage, a family-size clutch of Pakistani dentists break off from the main flock in order to make an impromptu forage into the giftshop.  Most impressively of all, a stretch of the path leading to the Old Stables (Old  Laundryroom/ Old Cowmarket/ Old Cock-Fighting enclosure, I don't know, I didn't read all the signs) has been narrowed to single-file width, via the erection of an arched iron gateway, for the sole apparent purpose of steering men in North Face windcheaters into each other's path, where they compete for the favour of the assembled ladyfolk by way of an intricate display of aggressive courtesy. 'After you'- 'No, after you'- Not at all'- You're too kind'- 'Thank you'- 'No, thank you'.

Negotiating this singular obstacle we alight, at last, at the cafeteria, only to find the entire population of Cheshire has got there first.  The queue for tea and scones stretches right out of the dining room, down the stairs, and half-way down the gravelled path leading back to the car-park.  Come to think of it this is exactly what happened last time, and we begin to suspect the much-vaunted 'cafeteria' is merely an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the Seventeenth Earl of Wherever, who has chosen to punish the General Public for tramping over his land every Sunday teatime by leading them on a thankless slow-motion conga through his labrynthine outhouses, snaking four times around the laundryroom before emerging blinking into the light via a hidden staircase.  The General Public, being too polite to complain, acquiesce mildly to this postmodern take on feudal oppressive behaviour; a significant number of them find the experience so enjoyable, in fact, that they start coming every week.

Narrowly, we avoid being drawn into this vortex of mild-mannered madness.  Instead we pile back into the Fiat Punto, and, doffing our imaginary caps at your man in the garden shed as we pass, head back out into the wilds of Cheshire in search of an Olde Englishe Tea Shoppe.  Such establishments, however, prove as elusive as the Seventeenth Earl's imaginary cafeteria, and forty-five minutes later we find ourselves, via a winding 'B' road and a bruising encounter with central Altrincham's One-Way system, in a backstreet branch of Caffe Nero's opposite a midsize Marks and Spencers.  The trainee barista takes our order (a standard Americano, a cup of tea and a packet of reassuringly expensive European wafers) and, possibly flummoxed by the unfamiliar workings of the till, throws in young Frankie's cup of milk free of charge.  It is the perfect ending to a very nearly perfect Cheshire afternoon.