Beauty and the Beast

I wish I could say that I hold an unrivalled place in Husband’s affections.  That I was his one and only true love, that my chassis was classy enough to make him stop and stare.  But I have a rival.  She’s a few years younger than me too, just to rub salt in the wound.  We do have quite a few things in common; a somewhat unpredictable nature, we both require a fair bit of love and attention when the going gets tough and over the years he’s spent a small fortune keeping us both happy.  I know that he loves me, sure, but HER?  Well, he adores her.  The kids do too.

I used to curl my lip whenever she was mentioned or Husband needed (or wanted, more like) to spend time with her. He says “I’ll only be gone about an hour”.  It’s always, always longer.  “She’s complicated” he protests when I dare to grumble. She’s completely unreliable too, I’ve lost count of the number of times she’s let him down.  I always refer to her as ‘The Beast’ and try to have as little to do with her as possible. 

Recently The Beast and I have been sort of thrown together. We’ve been forced to find a way of getting along.  Husband’s new job has meant that he needs a decent car to get round the M25 – the cue for him to take my lovely motor and disappear off into the sunrise every day.  You’ve probably guessed by now that The Beast is a mechanical rival; she’s a rather old Land Rover, a bone shaker of the highest order.

Sometimes she starts, sometimes she simply can’t be bothered.  Either way she emits a big puff of blue smoke, a sort of ‘Gallic shrug’, you know like the Parisians whenever you dare to complain about anything.  Even if she is minded to start, it doesn’t mean she’ll keep going, oh no.  Last week she had a funny turn at the Bat & Ball traffic lights so I was forced into a kind of hot shoe shuffle as my feet darted between brake, clutch and accelerator while my hand frantically worked the ancient, upright handbrake like I was drawing water from a pump in a drought.  Happy days.

But oh my goodness does she draw attention!  Chugging along I suddenly become aware of many eyes upon me which I always put down to the ghastly noise she makes.  Small children stop and point and wave, sometimes their dads join in too (yes always the dads, never the mums).  The other day I was halfway up the high street when another Landie, a tad shinier than The Beast, was coming in the opposite direction.  As it drew closer I saw the (rather fit) bloke driving it raise just his index finger off the steering wheel in a kind of clandestine salute. Not the whole hand, just the finger. I felt compelled, as if by some unseen force, to raise my finger in return.  I did. He nodded, almost imperceptibly, I nodded and we carried on in our separate directions.  I have a feeling that should The Beast decide to really ruin my day and properly break down, I wouldn’t be stranded for long….

But just as I was starting to feel a tiny bit of affection towards her and was busily making plans for our next outing, we very nearly came a cropper. I’d asked Husband which one of the three coloured levers I would use to put her into overdrive so that an exhilarating top speed of approximately 49mph might be reached.  I’ve seen him do it a thousand times and he did start to explain very clearly but Reader, to be honest in those 25 seconds my irreverent brain had skipped onto a completely different subject and I must confess I didn’t really listen properly.  I was probably thinking that I really must take those sheets out of the tumble dryer before they got all creased up.  Or something like that.

Anyway the next day, trundling along, I eyed the three knobs warily.  Hmmmm, now what did he say again?  Probably not the yellow one, as that has something about 4-wheel drive written on it.  I dredged the depths of my memory and recalled him saying something along the lines of I would have to reach quite far forward to engage it.  So it can’t be the black one then as that’s up near the gearstick.  Right, it must be the RED one all the way down there!  I ease her into 4^th gear on a nice straight bit of road and the familiar whining noise increases as we build up a bit of speed.  I reach down and give the red knob a firm push.  JEEEEEEZUSSSSS. The noise is like nothing on earth; a deafening combination of crashing, grinding, thrashing, grating metal on metal, the lever bucks angrily against my hand.  I’m sure I can see actual sparks flying.

My panicked eyes flick up, we’re still travelling forwards.  Maybe I didn’t push it firmly enough?  I try again. NOOOO!  Wrong decision.  Even more of a racket than before. The Beast is telling me very firmly that I have selected the wrong lever and will I please leave off.  The sweat of fear is now prickling my armpits. I tentatively press the throttle, the engine races but clearly there is now nothing connecting that to the motion of the vehicle, I have lost all transmission.  What have I done?  Thankfully there’s a layby coming up, I indicate and glide to a halt.  Lifting my sweaty, shaking palms from the steering wheel I gently nudge the red lever back to where it was and after a few gulps of fresh air, recover my wits enough to carry on, alert for the possible smell of burning which thankfully doesn’t come.

Husband’s reaction when I tell him later on is so distressing it’s almost comical.  He sits, head in his hands, ashen faced; “you pushed the RED one? As you were going ALONG? You could have broken her” (yeah thanks, not me, her – but I don’t say this out loud) “what were you thinking?  I SAID the black one…blah blah..” and so it went on.  Reader don’t get me wrong, I was truly sorry that my inattention almost resulted in a ruined gearbox, and I am eternally thankful to The Beast that she kept on going and didn’t leave me high and dry with a massive problem to fix.

In fact the past month has made me reconsider. I started off thinking that if she was The Beast then I must be the beauty, but now I’m not so sure. It’s she that is strong, seemingly unbreakable and entirely loved by our family.  It is she that all the children’s friends want a lift home in. It’s she that draws admiring and wondering looks everywhere she goes.  She takes whatever we throw at her, be it muddy bikes, bits of furniture or rubbish for the tip and just keeps on chugging along.  But if she’s actually the beauty, then oh dear, what does that make me?