A SMILING PREGNANT SNAIL
Just before I joined Geordie, I bought an Austin A35, basically because it was cheap and nobody else wanted it. It was black, and the registration was POB 96. So they nicknamed me POB, in Geordie. My daughter Kala married a Geordie lad called Pob many years later. Friggin’ spooky, eh?
This car resembled a pregnant snail with a smile on its face. It was tiny and powerless and a tad embarrassing to be seen in, but it had two doors, very little rust, and a real MOT. You see, MOTs were a constant source of worry to the lads I knew. Most of us had old bangers, and there was always something needed fixing to pass “the test.” A tax disc fashioned out of a Brown Ale label was a good trick to keep you on the road. My insurance was on the cusp of being legal. Lenny, the insurance bloke, got me the cheapest third-party-only insurance—third party only if the first and second party are not in the vicinity of the accident, or the third party is the thief that pinches it. Well, I was all right there. Nobody was gonna nick this car, because they’d get caught by a policeman on foot.
The sound of the engine on this thing always amazed me. It was unique. It sounded a bit like a truffle pig eating a plate of jelly. The thing is—it kept going. And I still miss the little bugger.
I remember taking a trip to a stately home with a mate and his wife. Now, Billy’s wife was a charming girl from Hartlepool who worked in a rope factory in Wallsend, but she wasn’t all bad (apart from looking bored at everything around her). I mean, she never drank her pint all in one go, she always farted out loud so that you knew it was her, and she had a laugh like a hyena getting its balls chewed off by a not-very-hungry lion. She did have some culture, though I suspect that was the yogurt in the fridge. She had a beehive hairdo, which was a little out of date in 1970. She sat in the back, where the roof line was very low, and her platinum thatch now looked like it was attached to the roof. But she hadn’t noticed. Should I say something? Well, Billy didn’t look bothered, so I didn’t. It wasn’t until she got out of the car that the full damage was revealed. Her armor-like hairspray had kept everything in place, but her hive was now shaped like an Austin A35 roof lining, and she still didn’t know.
I bit my lip. Billy still didn’t notice, even though people were pissing themselves. At last she went to the toilet. I heard the scream. She came out, lips back in a rictus grin, eyes just slits, claws out. She shuffled penguin-like up to Billy (knickers ’round her ankles—I didn’t realize she was an Elvis fan) and fetched him one right across the chops, followed by a testicular backhand that woulda done Boris Becker proud. “You friggin’ bastard, I’ll twat you when I get home.”
The drive home was fun. Billy was getting smacked every couple of minutes: “Twat!” Then, bang!
“C’mon now, guys. Take it easy.”
“And you can piss off an’ all, you little twit,” she said.
Finally I got them home to North Shields. She stormed out of the car and tottered on her high-heeled white kinky boots to the front door.
“Please can I come back with you?” Billy begged, and like a good friend, I said, “Piss off! She’ll only come and get you again.”
So Billy got out of the car, head down, knowing what he was in for. Now I knew why Billy worked more overtime that anyone else.
Fun days apart, the little car at least got me to work on time and was reliable, even though I got passed by the double-decker bus on the Coast Road.