CHEERING UP CLIFF
I bought a new Land Rover (LR3, as they’re known in America) at Christmas 2005. I liked the look of it. My wife, Brenda, said it was sexy. She’s American, which explains that. Anyway, we also have an aluminum Airstream, a beautiful throwback of U.S. flair. One day we heard the dreadful news that Cliff (yup, Ferrari Cliff) had got himself in a bad way. He had tripped over a log or something whilst carrying a paraffin lamp. The glass smashed, he fell on it and cut himself pretty bad. By that I mean the tendons to all his fingers were severed. Not good for one of the finest bass players in the world.
Six hours of microsurgery later, he was put back together, but he was in extreme pain, plus he didn’t know whether he would play again. This happened at his summer home at Lake Toxaway, North Carolina, a gorgeous house in the Smoky Mountains. I said to Brenda, “Shit, let’s go and cheer him up.”
So I hooked up the Airstream to the Land Rover and off we went. Nine and a half hours later, we arrived at Wherethefuckarewe campsite, situated in a beautiful valley, accessed by a perilous downhill unpaved road. And by downhill, I mean, frikkin’ steep.
There was a beautiful brook running right by the site we camped at. Cliff and Georgeanne, his wife, came to visit us, and we had prepared dinner. It started to rain, Jacques Cousteau stuff. Georgeanne took Cliff back home, before the Prozac wore off, and the brook became a river, the river became a torrent, and the torrent became an evacuation order.
The campsite owner was screaming, “Everybody leave now. The valley’s flooding. Leave your vehicles and walk up the road as quick as you can!”
It was two in the morning. The water was up to the axles on the Rover and the Airstream. I jumped out of the trailer and hooked it up to the LR3, water up to my knees. Then I got in the Land Rover, started her up, and hit the magic yellow button which guarantees to pull you out of Hell if need be.
The park owner shouted, “You guys are nuts! You’re never gonna make it!”
I didn’t care. I just knew it would do it, and as we pulled that Airstream out, up a very steep hill, on non-tarmac breaking-away-at-the-sides road in Horrific Conditions, I started to laugh. That little bugger was doing it, nonstop, slow, sure, steady, sooo English. We will fill up our walls with our English dead, and let all those who lie abed this day think themselves accursed, for we shall cry, “Harry, England,” etc., etc. Whoa, sorry, guys. Got carried away there. But I gotta tell ya, it really felt like that.
The best SUV in the world.