Chapter 2 - You Know My Name

CHAPTER 2: YOU KNOW MY NAME

Harry Humley was tremendously proud of the ‘home-assembly’ option, and that his cars could be constructed by anyone: "Any numpty can throw one of my carts together. My factory’s full of numptys and they’re throwing them together nearly every day!"

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You’d see Ben astride a wooden three-legged stool. A black and white dairy cow could have been in front of him rather than a 1948 Bentley Special roadster. But that wasn’t the point. The stool gave him the right amount of elevation to work from, and to fling insults at his customers. No matter what the job, Ben always found it right to sit or stand atop that three-legged stool of wood.

People were afraid of the overly ripe man in the hut at the end of the village. Afraid of his grey beard, his powers, his slick invoicing system. People are always afraid of the unknown.

With old cars he appeared a total whiz; a complete wizard some might say. But all I saw was an old man with a few tools, dodgy knees and a healthy retirement fund.

People were afraid, but still they came.

I used to sit on the wall in front of his shed - I shouldn’t call it a shed, really, but that’s no more than it was. Quickly Qars said the welded and wrought iron sign suspended from corroding cables and oxidised engine lifters, all bolted precariously to the gable end of the shed - I mean garage.

When it rained I’d get wet, until he’d wave his arm at a piece of carpet or rubber matting somewhere deep in the garage, and I’d make a dive for it as if the rain were poison.

I watched him work, watched customers bring cars to him, and watched him as he told them what was wrong.

"How do you know what’s wrong with my car? You haven’t even looked at it?" That would be a newbie then, somebody who hadn’t brought their car to Benjamin Drofluazide’s garage before.

"I can be smelling it," Ben might reply.

"Eh?"

"Since you left the petrol station four miles away, you schmuck!" Customer care wasn’t his strong point.

Of course it could have been a load of crap - a bit of spiel to keep up his reputation. Whatever it was, he always knew the problem, and he was never short of cars to fix or customers to abuse.

By the time his customers got to know him, they’d just roll up, have a nosey in the garage at his latest patient, and with a, "Keys are in the ignition," they’d leave him with their pride and joy, jalopy, old bucket or rusting garbage scow, his insults ringing in their ears:

A 1970 works specification Mexico, heavy duty body shell, dry sump and Minilights, cream paint with an Esso blue stripe running the height of the door handle and bumping over curves of flared wheelarch. The owner has wiped out the rear end, heading backwards into a tree: "Maybe you should be using the forward gears next time!"

Black Frogeye Sprite, seen days better than the disappointment it had been to its owner, history of electrical faults, flat tyres, resting on the back of a low-loader: "What am I, a charity?"

Dark blue 1966 Jaguar Kougar with 3.8 XK engine. The triple Webbers need balancing: "Who is needing krypton or rolling roads or any of that Chazeray!"

Ford Mustang 3.2 straight six muscle with prancing pony, Shelby stripes and racing green cellulose looks bright and beautiful on top, but is a rusting tub of holes underneath; a welder’s nightmare: "Come back next year – it’ll be too soon."

The pea-green TR7 is last in line; sharp bodywork, clean, black rubber bumpers, BL door handles stolen from Landrover, smooth engine and box just needing servicing and that dent in the front wing ironing out: "A little Bubele," Ben whispers to me carefully out of owner’s earshot.

Ben knows them all. Inside and out.

Just after Dave died, Quickly Qars embraced a new learner. And I’d watch, and I’d help out; make the tea, make him his favourite chicken soup, put the sockets back in order on the correct racks, write out the envelopes for the ‘final demand of payment’.

His customers knew him. They knew he didn’t like anybody hanging around the workshop when he was administering tender loving repair. They knew not to ask how long it would be, what the damage was, or would it be ready in time for the weekend. For it would be ready when it’s ready, and it would cost as much as parts and labour costs. Plus VAT, of course.

I never found out why he tolerated me, why he let me sit watching on a wall, reclining on rug or rubber mat, setting up the torque wrench. Maybe he just liked the company. Maybe he liked the free labour. Maybe he was training an apprentice - the magician’s nephew. Only I wasn’t his nephew. I couldn’t have been.

He talked as he worked, did Ben. Whether to himself or to me, at first I wasn’t ever sure. But after a while he started looking at me, making eye contact, calling me by name, asking me to pass him stuff. And I watched, and listed, and learnt. I studied anatomy and physiology; greases and lubricants; bad earths from faulty fuses; imperial from metric. I learnt the tools of the trade; how to "tell", diagnose, identify, spot and suss-out. I became skilled in the use of the enchanted 20 bladed feeler gauge, gained knowledge of the sprocket holding tool of marvel and the miracle mole grips of no-release. The gear puller of joy became my friend, as did the mystical relieving ball joint separator. I understood the penetrating fluid of freedom, and applied the magic copperslip grease. And finally I was trained to wield the magic AF combination spanner, miraculously fitting every nut, bolt or setscrew it went near.

Of course, dad didn’t like me going down there; he forbid me, demanded I stay away, instructed me to play elsewhere, seek entertainment from other sources, mix with normal people. I asked dad what a "normal person" looked like, and when he stuttered for an answer, I asked him to kindly point one out to me next time they passed by so’s I could take their picture.

I disobeyed my dad and spent my time wall-sitting and spanner-wielding. So I guess that’s where I learnt it from; this auto psychomotor, psychic fixer.

My harbinger of vroom.

#

Address http://www.bigendbearing.com/profiles/BertW/ PrivateMessageHistory:

Received From: Eric A on 24 Dec. 11.04. Thanks Bert! Sounds like it’s going to be great fun.

Sent To: Eric A on 24 Dec. 11.21. No, thank YOU, Eric! You saved my bacon. I’ve have to complete this run and prove everybody wrong about the Humley Major. I’ve the chance to show them all. It’ll be the first time a Humley’s entered The Four Corners, so we’ve got a duty to ensure that the establishment is represented in the most professional manor. Have a Merry Christmas and I’ll be in touch in the New Year.

Received From: Eric A on 24 Dec. 11.25. You to Bert! Happy Chrimbo.

#

Needless to say Christmas in our house was as cheerful as a rainy day in Rotherham. There were only three of us, which made it harder.

Last year there had been my Auntie Kath, and cousins Kate and Jonny (they’re always a good laugh). But they’ve gone off to Australia to get away from Uncle Mat who sleeps with prostitutes.

Last year there had been Auntie Mary and Uncle Pete - they’re no more relatives than I’m related to Santa Clause, but Uncle Pete went to school with my dad. Apart from that they don’t have any family (I think he’s a Jaffa). But they won the lottery and have gone to live in Bermuda or Barbados or somewhere beginning with "B" .I’m secretly quite glad, ‘cause every Christmas my dad and Uncle Pete would get drunk and sing this stupid song:

"Auntie Mary had a canary, up the leg of her draws,

When she farted it departed, to a round of applause."

So embarrassing.

Last year there had been Paul, and Mark too, but they’re on duty, or whatever it’s called, on the south coast getting their salt legs and getting texts from me about seamen and wearing gay sailor outfits.

And last year there had been the coffin dodgers - gran and granddad. But they couldn’t make it this year on account of them being dead. Granddad died in the New Year, and with gran dieing just before Christmas this year I could sense a bit of a downer during future solstices.

This was also the second Christmas without Dave.

I love opening the pressies - it’s still the best part of Christmas, and the part of me that still feels like a kid. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not one of those teenagers who gets a huff on if they don’t get what they want. Quite the opposite. I tend to analyse each present and try to figure out the motivation behind the gift. I also like shopping for people, and trying to figure out what their face will look like when they peel back the paper.

But this year it almost felt like being in a warehouse: "This one’s for you, from Graham. There’s no tag, but I think Sarah sent you this one. This one’s from me – Merry Christmas." All flat and dead pan, matter-of-fact, going through the motions. Gardening gloves of green for father’s garden; Terry Wogan’s biography for mother’s spare time (not that she has any); FM transmitter for my iPod.

Mum did the dinner with a face that looked like she’d rather spit in it than serve it.

Dad carved the Turkey mumbling that it was "too dry", that it’d been in the oven "too long".

I listened to the clink and clunk of best pottery as we ate, enduring local radio DJ Bobby Watson’s Christmas carol collection. "Hark the Triumph Herald Angels sing!" sang me with amusement operating purely on my wavelength.

Nobody spoke - mum was fuming at dad after the massive row they’d had, and dad was troffing as much food as possible so’s he didn’t have to look up from his dog’s dinner plate. I hate the smell of sprouts (it’s the one thing that puts me off Christmas) having to hold my nose from the time they go in the pan on a low heat, to the time the last one finally turns to a cold stone on the plate. Over the years I’ve managed to convince mum to do quadruple the amount of piping hot apple sauce, which I strategically position in its sauce-boat as close to my plate as possible. Sweet hot stewed apples release particles that are chemically precise at neutralising the stench of rotting flesh exuding from the sprouts.

Yeah, I know, its utter bullshit, but it’s one of my many excellent coping strategies - and I’ve gotten to be competent with coping strategies (see if you can spot any - no more clues from now).

During the Queen’s speech, dad became comatosed on the sofa, mum neatly folded up all the wrapping paper for next year, and I did the washing up. The washing up is mine, on account of me not being able to cook anything without significantly increasing it’s carbon index or doubling the number of people attending casualty with food poisoning.

I brought them mugs of fresh coffee (the old coffee percolator is one item of kitchen technology that isn’t a stranger) in time to watch James Bond. Mum had been crying although she denied it and said it was the pine needles making her hayfever worse. I stared at our plastic Christmas tree and spotted a last chocolate bell dangling from a bottom branch. I took it and offered it to mum. She shook her head and told me to have it.

One of the new gold and green glittery paper streamers that dad had suspended with blue tack from one side of the ceiling to the other, drifted down draping itself over dad’s head. He wasn’t exactly snoring but every time he breathed out, the end of the streamer wafted gently into the air a few inches over his mouth. Mum and I burst out laughing, which disturbed dad and he grunted in his sleep, partially inhaling the streamer, which made us roll on the floor - well, you had to be there.

I asked mum if I should move the streamer, but she shook her head and said that it deserved to stay there as it had just cheered her up. I gave her a hug and she hugged me back. I could hear her sniffing still, so I knew she wasn’t completely cheered up. But it was a tiny island of togetherness during that intense Christmas of storm.

We sat drinking coffee and eating mince pies in silence through James Bond – the one where Blofeld tries to blackmail the world by sabotaging the food supply and Bond tries to cop-off with Comtesse Teresa (007 calls her Tracy). Bond had just managed to escape being squished on the ice by a bobsled, when mum decides she’s has enough and switches channels to watch some house renovation program.

"Ear! I was watching that," says my dad, waking from his slumber.

Mum says, "Fine!" slams the remote control down on dad’s chest and storms out the room. Dad just switches back to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I walk to the bottom of the stairs and hear her up in her room with the portable black and white listening to some woman talking about "constant cream" and "neutral wallpaper", so I return to see what happens to James and Tracy.

He only ends up marrying her doesn’t he! Oh, but then, right near the end of the film she gets shot through the windscreen by Blofeld’s evil side kick Frau Bunt. It was so sad - that beautiful Aston Martin DBS V8 getting riddled with bullet holes like that.

Anyway, Christmas came and went, and bloody good riddance to it. This year anyway. This year I felt numb, like Christmas was cancelled, or bypassed, or that it was some half arsed dress rehearsal for next year.

And because it was so quiet I started thinking about The Four Corners of the Apocalypse, and how I would tell mum and dad that I needed a few days off to do it. I knew they wouldn’t be pleased, I knew dad would say I needed to spend more time revising, and I knew they wouldn’t give me any money either - they didn’t have any to give. So I was going to have to hope that Bert W was prepared to pay the whole entry fee plus petrol himself, otherwise I was stuffed. Then I thought of Bert and how much he wanted to go, and that he’d only been able to find me as co-driver at the last possible minute, so I figured he’d be more than happy to pay.

But just in case, the day after Boxing Day I went down to the hole in the wall in the village and withdrew all £105 of the money I’d earned babysitting for Tommy Simpson. I figured if the worst came to the worst I could always catch a train home.

I sent Bert W another message asking him where and when we should meet up. When I received the reply I almost fell off my chair. He was only in Herbewey, just over a mile from our house in fact. He said it was fate and before I mentioned anything about money, he said that he’d be paying for everything and that all I needed to do was bring myself, a change of clothes and my toothbrush.

The next day we’d agreed to meet up at his house to make plans for the trip, so I set off on my bike. Typically English rain missled away to itself, so I wore my parker and canvas combat trousers that don’t get too heavy when they’re wet.

Bertie’s house is quite modern, built in that pale Yorkshire stone that’s not actually Yorkshire stone but a conglomerate of pressed powder making it look like it’s been dug out of a quarry near Harrogate. The front garden (sorry, lawn) is bigger than the whole of my parent’s little plot of land. The centre-piece willow tree at home in the turf may be very pretty in twenty years or so. Its trailing greenery should eventually weep over the wide gravel drive that runs up a slight incline from the road through the garden to the large double garage with electric up-and-over door painted British Racing Green.

A silver Volvo estate was parked to one side and behind it a bright red Mazda MX5 with a private registration.

The garage door was open as I cycled up. Fifties or sixties rock and roll was bumping from a stereo somewhere at the back. The Humley had pride of place in the middle of the garage, nose in, with the bonnet up. I propped my bike against the wall and stepped into the garage, pulling down my parker hood and lighting up a ciggy.

The garage carpet really was quite thick – I’ve never felt like wiping my feet before entering a garage. I counted six double fluorescent tubes overhead and a massive metal rack of red and silver tools on the right hand wall, all neatly ordered, cleaned and ready for use. The walls were painted brilliant white (to reflect the light of course) and there were framed prints of British classics; I recognised a Morris Minor, an Austin 1300, a Triumph TR4, a Wolseley 1660 and a Lotus Elan.

Bertie’s Humley was a deep blue (unusual, I thought) Trafalgar blue (I guessed) with an Old English white swage line, massive steel wheels bulging into the arches, and bright chrome hubcaps with the Humley logo in the centre. The Humley Major’s shape was traditionally fifties; a square box on top of a larger rectangular box. The windscreen was curved and raked back slightly which always looked odd with the roof that’s almost flat. The grille must have been stolen from Morris or Austin, as must the seven inch sealed beam headlamps. The Firina tailfins reminded me of those on the Vitesse.

A maroon leather interior, sumptuous American-style bench seat, heater, oil pressure and volts gages, radio and chrome ash trays made this the Deluxe model. The pale veneered walnut cladding on the top edge of the dash must have been an optional extra.

There’s not much written about the Humley, which is probably why you’ve never heard of them. The only info I could find was on the Humley Owners Club website, and most of this is restricted to "members only" (and I don’t think there are many of them). After Bertie had given me the passwords, I took a look though the website and found some back issues of Practically Sports Cars that had been scanned and uploaded. The pdf files make interesting reading, if you’re into Humleys.

Bertie had his head under the bonnet and was using an expensive looking torque wrench to tighten one of the bolts holding the air filter housing to the carbs. A bright inspection lamp was clipped to a bracket on the underside of the bonnet, and I spent a few seconds having a look round the engine bay. The engine and ancillaries were sparkling and polished to a degree higher than factory finish. The high sheen of deep blue paintwork extended into the engine bay, but just below the bulkhead, near to where it meets a chassis rail, I spotted the original Rose Taupe cellulose – an area missed despite best efforts of a spray gun.

Bertie was wearing a pale blue sweatshirt with ‘There’s A Methodist In My Madness’ in yellow gothic font. For a moment I wondered if he was a member of the God Squad and half thought about turning round and doing a runner. A beanpole man of six feet, he could have been good at the high-jump or basketball had it not been for the spare tyre of middle-age that was inflating itself around his girth. He’d a big Roman nose - long but without an arching bridge. As a result those big glasses with the almost square frame and rounded edges, must fall down his nose a lot, especially when he leans over to look in an engine bay. A brown and black checked flat cap on top of a pile of thick grey hair completed the ‘I’m fifty and I’m proud’ look.

"Hello," I said.

He lifted his head and stared at me blankly. "Yes? Can I help you?"

"I dunno, mate. Can you?" I smiled.

But he didn’t get the joke. "Have you come to collect the paper money?"

I laughed. But he wasn’t joking. "I don’t deliver papers," I said.

"I’m sorry, miss, but why are you here?" He spoke with a slow yet clear deliberateness, his sentences rolling with pitch, each syllable as important as the next. He’d have a good voice for children’s stories or advertising custard creams on the radio. Not at all like my loud, brash, non-stop verbal abuse with a giggle at the end of each sentence - well that’s what my Year 11 Form Tutor used to say about the way I spoke. My Form Tutor also said I spoke in parenthesis (how he could tell that, I don’t know) and because I speak so quickly it often leaves people milling over the paragraph before last. Whereas Bertie had a more economical use of speech – my Form Tutor would probably have said that each word actually had a use.

"Well, we agreed I’d come over today so we could talk about The Four Corners." I said, nodding my head with a slow sympathetic schoolteacher smile.

"What?"

"The Four Corners? Of the Apocalypse? Long drive. Dead of winter. You need a navigator. I’m it?"

"What?"

I blew smoke through my lips, scratching my head. Maybe he was just a harmless nutter, I thought. "You are Bert W, aren’t you?"

"Yes."

"We’ve been chatting on Bigendbearing dot com – on the forum. Remember?"

"But you’re – that’s – I mean – Eric A?"

"That’s it. That’s me."

"Eric? You’re Eric?"

"Erica - but that name had been taken so I had to call myself Eric A. Quite funny really." I chortled. "Don’t worry, I always get mistaken for being a boy - usually ‘cause I’m good with cars and don’t wear perfume." I laughed, more out of nervousness.

"But you’re a girl!"

"Well I was last time I looked." I chuckled again.

"But girl’s can’t go on The Four Corners."

And that’s when I stopped laughing.

I guess it was my own fault – I should have told him I was a girl and that he shouldn’t be surprised when I knew about old cars. I should have thought more about what his reaction might have been rather than who was going to pay for it all or what I was going to tell mum and dad.

But you live and learn.

And you die and you learn.

I walked around him to the other side of the engine bay, looking at the air filters. "Thought so," I said knowingly.

"What?"

"You aren’t going anywhere, mate."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, try starting the engine in that state and it’ll just die?"

"What? How do you know? You’re…"

"Yeah, I’m only a girl," I finished his sentence. "Well go ahead. Start it."

I didn’t think he would. I thought he’d say "What?" again, or start asking questions about what I was talking about. But he opened the driver’s door and climbed in. I saw the choke cable being pulled slightly (probably only a quarter way), followed by the tick tick tick of the fuel pump. The starter motor whirred and the engine coughed in to life. He sat there and grinned at me before the engine coughed again and died. He turned it over again but it wouldn’t fire. He tried it for about two minutes. Then he glared at me and got out of the car.

"What have you done to it?" he asked.

"Me? Oh nothing. I’m only a girl. I couldn’t possibly know about engines."

His glare would have raised the temperature of exhaust gas, as he leant under the bonnet. He fiddled with the HT leads, squirted penetrating oil over the dizzy, pulled at the battery terminals and checked the water in the washer bottle.

I couldn’t help laughing but he really hadn’t got a clue. "You’re going to need more than a wash wipe if you’re going to survive The Four Corners of the Apocalypse, Bertie."

He repositioned his cap a few times as if he’d realised that it might be a size too small.

"I’m Bert, not Bertie," he told me. "Do you always go round pretending to be a boy? And put that filthy cigarette out."

I shrugged. "Do you always go round pre judging the sex of your friends?"

"Well you should have told me."

"You should have asked."

"How was I supposed to know?"

"You weren’t. But then again, it doesn’t matter. It’s not supposed to matter. Anyway, it can’t. You can’t stop me due to my sex, just the same as you can’t stop me getting a job. Sex discrimination that’s called. You’ve heard of that I suppose? Anyway, entry to The Four Corners should be on merit, not on weather you’ve got tits or not." His mouth dropped open. "Sorry. That was rude. I meant to say womb."

"Well you can’t come and that’s final!" Most people become animated when they’re cross, but his body sort of stood to attention whilst his voice jumped up and down all over the place, his voice box having a leaky shock absorber.

"Well if I’m not going then you can’t go either, mate."

"I’ll get another co-driver?"

"Where from?"

"The forum."

"You’re too late. It’s past the closing date."

"I’ll get an exemption."

"If you like. Bet you can’t get your car started though."

"What? You’ve! How? Oooooh!" His voice jumped up and down in his throat again, whilst his frame became like a statue. "I’ll show you, you…madam!"

"Miss."

He picked up the phone and dialled a number. "Nigel? Bert Wearing here. Yes, fine thanks. Yourself? Splendid. Yes, seasons greetings to you too. Listen, I don’t suppose you can help with a diagnosis can you? Splendid. Won’t start, turning over, battery and starter are fine, sprayed the distributor cap…no, haven’t tried that…yes, it’s ticking alright…no, all six are new today, properly gapped and everything, and new leads…yes…yes…alright – I’ll put you on the speaker phone."

He pressed a button on the phone and popped it down next to the blue Stanley vice clamped to his large wooden workbench at the back of the garage. Picking up a Snap On spark plug wrench, he removed a plug and stuck it back in the end of the HT lead. He turned the ignition key a click and then earthed the plug to the chassis.

"I’d hold the plug with a pair of pliers or a glove if I were you. I usually use a piece of rag." Well, the least I could do was give him clues - I knew what was going to happen, you see.

But he didn’t even look at me. He pressed the button on the starter solenoid, the engine turned over, there was a flash of blue, a yell, and the engine fell silent.

I peered over the wing, grinning at him lying flat on his back, stiff as a corpse (sorry - shouldn’t say that after gran died) with his right hand out in front of him. His flat cap was nowhere to be seen and his grey hair was stood on end.

"Bert? Bert? What was that? Are you all right?" Nigel on the speakerphone.

"Shocking isn’t it?" I knelt by his side and whispered in his ear. "But at least you proved you have a spark. So, the ignition’s working. All you need to do now is check the delivery of mixture." His eyes widened. "Or you could just get me to fix it for you."

He shook himself and refused my offer of help, getting to his feet himself and retrieving his flat cap from across the garage.

"Yes, yes, thank you, Nigel. The, err, ignition appears to be in satisfactory working order."

"Fuel starvation old boy!" came back Nigel. "Must have a blockage in the fuel line. Tell you what, remove the fuel filter and replace it with a new one. You do have a new fuel filter, don’t you?"

"Oh yes, of course, Nigel," he said.

"Well then, that’s your answer. Let me know how you get on."

"Thank you, Nigel. Yes, I will do."

"Cheerio!"

"Goodbye, Nigel."

"Who was that?" I enquired as he hung up.

"That was Nigel Plumbsmith. Chairman of the Herbewey cum Quickly and district Classic Car Club."

"Oh, that Nigel Plumbsmith."

Another exhaust manifold glare wafted my way. "If you’ll excuse me, young lady, I have work to do now." He opened one of the many little red metal drawers underneath his workbench and pulled out a new inline fuel filter.

"You’re not actually going to change it are you?" I was pretty horrified as he started rummaging around inside the engine bay below the fuel pump. "Look, why don’t you let me…"

"Thank you, Miss.?"

"Nernie."

"Thank you, Miss Nernie, but I’m quite capable of…" He did that double take they always do. He straightened up and gave me that look they always do. "Nernie? Erica Nernie?" Here it comes. The smirk. Then the giggle. Then the guffaw.

I just raised my eyebrows, put my hands on my hips and sighed like I always do. I waited for the tap on the shoulders and the slap on the cheeks, or the jokes about, "How much is the tea, Earn?" but instead he just chuckled to himself and stuck his head back in the engine bay whistling, "Bring Me Sunshine". Oh how original.

That was when I decided I wasn’t going to help him. I wasn’t going to tell him that the fuel filter was under the car, not inside the engine bay. When he found it, I decided that I wasn’t going to advise him to clamp the fuel line either side of the filter, or to drain the fuel tank first. And when petrol came flooding out of the pipe into his face and on to the carpet, I wasn’t going to put my thumb over the fuel tank breather pipe to stop the remainder of the ninety-five octane pouring itself out over the garage shag pile. Nope - neither was I was going to hand him that washing up bowl to catch the go-juice in.

But when he grovelled and rolled around shouting, "My eyes! My eyes! I’m blinded! I’m blinded!" I took pity and helped him to the kitchen. I made him put his head over the sink. I took off his specs and poured water over his eyes, telling him to keep them open so’s I could flush out the sans-plom.

"Do you know you’re supposed to fit hardened valve seats if you’re running unleaded petrol?" I asked. But strangely, he wasn’t bothered.

After about five minutes he was still screaming blue thunder, so I took him out on to the drive where I’d seen a hosepipe, and getting him to lie on the lawn I ran the hose gently over his eyes whilst calling for an ambulance on my mobile.

The guys in the Bloodmobile said I’d done exactly the right thing.

"You could have saved your dad’s eyesight," said Martin the Paramedic. He couldn’t understand why I was in hysterics, even when I set him straight. "Sorry. My mistake." In the back of the Ambulance he trickled saline over Bertie’s eyes whilst chatting me up. Well, I think he was chatting me up ‘cause he kept asking all about me and what I’d done for Christmas.

I said I’d watched James Bond on Christmas Day and Martin said I looked just like Diana Rigg. "Only with shorter hair," he said. "Honestly, you’ve got the same eyes, high cheekbones, same dark auburn hair and everything."

"I saw the film," I said.

"Yes. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her with that colour hair, rather than black which I’m guessing is her natural colour - like she had in The Avengers."

"Well it makes a change from being called a Pixie."

"A Pixie?"

"Yes. I went to this Lord Of The Rings party once, dressed as an Elf. But because I’m not exactly flushed with height, Connie Stone-Water (she’s the chief bitch in the sixth form) declared me a Pixie. I tried to explain that there aren’t any Pixies in Lord Of The Rings, but the silly cow made such a noise about it that the name stuck. For a while anyway."

"I bet you made a better Elf than even Liv Tyler," said Martin. "But I still say you’re a Dianna Rigg with cropped hair."

"Some say I bear a remarkable resemblance to Sean Connery," said Bertie, whose pain had subsided to make way for monstrous eyes of swollen red borrowed from a Scooby Doo cartoon.

Martin looked at me and then let the saline run all over Bertie’s nose and mouth making him cough and choke.

"Ooops, sorry," said Martin, grinning at me.

"It’s a good job you’re in the medical profession," spluttered Bertie. "Otherwise I could have dealt you a mortal blow."

"You what?" said Martin.

"These hands," Bertie raised his arms in the air, his hands rigid like a Karate expert, "trained in the martial arts. When I was in the Navy…"

"You were in the Navy?" I asked.

"Oh yes. Some time ago of course. Trained killer. What I’m trying to say is you should be more careful around me. My nerves are constantly on edge, and could be triggered subconsciously in self defence if provoked."

"I’ll try to remember that," said Martin, making circular motions by the side of his head.

I stifled a giggle, but was genuinely interested. "When were you in the Navy, Bertie?"

"Oh a long time ago. I don’t like to talk about it now of course."

Then we arrived at A&E and Bertie was bundled off into a cubicle where they did things to him that I didn’t really want to know about.

After about an hour the curtains went back and the nurse came out. "Your dad’s ok for you to take him home now."

"He’s not my dad."

"Oh, err, sorry," said the nurse who wouldn’t look me in the eye. "We’ve phoned for a taxi, but, err…Mr Wearing doesn’t have any money on him." I sighed. It was at least thirty miles back to Herbewey, but I’d make him pay me back. "You’ll need to pick up this prescription from the pharmacy," she continued handing me a small green piece of paper. "It’s just down this corridor. He’ll be ready to leave when you get back."

Well that cost me over thirteen quid for two lots of eye drops, and they kept me waiting ages for it. And I wasn’t told that "just down the corridor" really meant "at the other side of the hospital" so it was another hour before I got back to A&E.

"Where have you been?" Bertie was annoyed. "I’ve been waiting for you for ages. Can’t just leave you here. They think you’re my daughter - or something."

"I know. Bloody embarrassing isn’t it?" I was just glad my mum (she’s a nurse, which is ironic seeing as I hate hospitals) hadn’t been on duty and seen me with Bertie.

"Come on, the taxi’s here." He didn’t even thank me for his eye drops.

Martin the Paramedic was waiting at the exit, and he handed me a piece of paper with his phone number on it.

"Sorry," I said. "See no evil, hear no evil, date no evil." And handed him back the note.

"Look," said Martin, "Just give me a call. Come on, it might be fun?"

"I’m not your type. I’m not inflatable." I gave one of my best pH1 looks.

As we passed the ambulance, I stopped suddenly and turned back to the deflated paramedic. "You’d better get the garage to check your brakes." I pointed to the front wheel. "Piston sticking on the front nearside."

We sat in silence in the back of the rattle-n-hum taxi.

"You were rather rude to that young ambulance man," Bertie said eventually.

I just shrugged my shoulders and wondered when he was going to pay me back for the prescriptions and the taxi.

When we got back to Herbewey I asked him if he wanted my help to get the Humley started. But he just told me to go home as he was going to lie down in a dark room for a few hours and let the eye drops work.

So, that was that. He was going to drop out of The Four Corners and I’d never hear from him again. I was genuinely disappointed, and regretted not telling him I was a girl. And perhaps I should have pointed out what was wrong with his car rather than letting him turn himself in to a potential Molotov cocktail. But, to paraphrase Newton, for every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction.