Back On The Road

It’s been a quieter week. Off the booze and knuckling down.

On Wednesday I had the opening chapters of what might become a novel workshopped. At the beginning of my course a couple of people asked me what being ‘workshopped’ meant and I glibly answered: “you give everyone copies of your work, they go away and read it for a week, come back and tell you why it’s shit.”

That’s not strictly true. With the possible exception of myself it’s a very talented group and there’s been no need to bandy the word ‘shit’ around. However, the process still feels a little like this.


Except, you know, there’s ten people yelling at you.

I find the process slightly addictive. It’s as though I need reassurance before I’m capable of finishing anything. With two lots of 5,000 words due in on Friday I’m submitting one piece I had workshopped in February (to which I’ve since made extensive changes) and another piece I’m having workshopped on Wednesday. This’ll give me less that forty-eight hours to do what I spent two months doing with the other piece.

Possibly not the greatest plan I’ve ever come up with.

Speaking of slightly daft plans…

Anyone who came to Beck’s show at the Slade last July will remember the Bristlecone Pine film and the shack-cinema it was shown in? Good. Well, it’s coming out again for a show in Margate opening this weekend.

Great.

Except…

At the end of the Slade show the shack was broken apart and after a brief holiday in an Edgware storage depot was swapped with Beck’s parent’s for a large chest of draws. Back in London the chest became completely wedged between the banisters, the bathroom door frame and the ceiling.

Look Ma, no hands.

We can add it to the reasons as to why we can’t move house. It’s not that the rent’s cheap, it’s that we can’t get the furniture back out again.

Beck shrugs and says: “When we next move we’ll do it properly and hire removal men.”

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Nearly a year later that still makes me chuckle.

Anyway: the film has also been shown in an exhibition in Leeds where the organisers paid for and built, to Beck’s designs, an even bigger shack. I’m not sure how big, I never made it up to the show, but I do know it took Beck and her friend Fritha ten hours to dismantle it at the end of the show. Ever environmentally conscious Beck decided not to scrap the wood, but to store in her sister’s garage on the outskirts of Leeds.

“Which shack are you going to be using in Margate?” I asked.

“The big one.” I needn’t have bothered really.

So, Thursday we get up at five and drive the van Beck collected from the hire centre the night before whilst I listened to people constructively demolishing my writing. We get up to Leeds by eleven-thirty, spend a couple of hours arguing about the best way to fit the panels, slats and frames between the garage, house wall, neighbour’s fence and van. We eat some much needed lunch and then set off back down the M1 by just after two.

We split the driving so it isn’t too hardcore, but I’m still a little worried. There’s no metal panel between the van’s storage area and the seats. Arriving, frankly, unprepared we’ve just piled the wood up in the back with nothing to hold it in place.

“The weight will hold it, won’t it?” she says before we set off.
“M’mmm.”
“Look. It won’t move, even with all my weight behind it.”

“No. Me neither.” I’m trying to remember how velocity works.

Just north of Nottingham some twat pulls out in front of us.

“Mind,” I unhelpfully say.

Beck brakes sharply. Everything behind us, all seventy-two cubic feet of ply board, jumps forward eighteen inches.

“Oof!”

The impact with the back of the seats winds us both. Beck pulls off at the next services and we inspect the load with one eye on the empty police car across the way.

There isn’t really an alternative so we keep on going and hope for the best. Things seemed pretty good. The ten mile an hour traffic from Luton to the M25 was actually a blessing. Then a Dutch petroleum tanker carves me up on the orbital, just when I’d finally got past 60mph. I hit the brakes and brace myself.

Nothing happens. The load has obviously wedged itself into the upholstery permanently.

By the time we reach Margate it’s already gone eight, but fortunately there was a crew to help us unload.

I share a panel with one.

“Been a long day?”

“Oh, you know. Six-hundred miles, twenty hours. The things you do…”

“For love? Hmm.”

“I was going to say ‘for money’. I haven’t mentioned that to Beck yet.”

She looks at me blankly and I shut up.

We eat fish and chips on the beach. In the dark. Shoulder to shoulder. Behind us, in the breakwater’s car-park, a gaggle of teenagers settle themselves down for the night in a tour coach.

It wasn’t quite over us, though. The cheap van hire company who let you pop the keys through the letter box at the end of a day thus allowing twenty-four hour drop-off are, obviously, based in Kentish Town. North London. We have to swing by the house to grab the car because by now we’d be playing a bit fast and loose with the last train and neither of us can handle the idea of a night bus today. As we leave the A2 in Blackheath, at about eleven, I glance over at the display.

“How long’s the fuel light been on?”

“I have no idea,” she replies.

Since getting to Kentish Town involves driving through some areas of London that you really don’t want to break down in at midnight we waste even more time trying to find a petrol station still open. It’s only on the seventh attempt that we get lucky.

Twenty-four hour city my arse.

Of course, the fun thing about driving around in the small hours on a school night is that the traffic isn’t actually that bad. Sure, there’s still probably more cars around than the rest of the country put together but the chances of gridlock are significantly reduced. Plus, after driving the van all day, the Focus suddenly feels like a Ferrari.

No doubt the brown envelope informing me of a fixed penalty notice will arrive by the end of the week.