Away we go...

3:59pm Friday 28th March 2008

"We need to get out more, Scribbler," declared Thelma Gusset (pronounced "Gussay") as the pair of them lay top-to-tail in the hammock in the broom cupboard he (and increasingly she) called home on the third floor of the T&A building in Hall Ings.

The sun was just rising above the Leisure Exchange and Sunday-morning cartoons were flickering on the portable black-and-white television perched precariously on the kitchen unit that doubled as a sideboard. Arnold the Pigeon "Croo-croo'd" on the windowsill, his home-made parrot disguise close at hand ready to be pulled over him and zipped up in the unlikely event of a surprise visit by the Assistant Editor with Special Responsibility for Building Hygiene, who had barred pigeons as vermin but for some reason accepted birds of the Pretty Polly variety.

"You see," continued Thelma, "we never seem to go anywhere. I'm getting a bit bored of sitting in the Boilermaker's, strolling around Undercliffe Cemetery and visiting the Media Museum on our days off. I'd like to go to Wensleydale, or even Whitby. I've heard of all these places, but being a London girl I've never actually seen them. What we need is a car."

Thelma, fleeing to Bradford to escape the control freakery of her husband Ray Gusset (pronounced "Gussay") who had since had the decency to die, didn't have enough money left over to buy a car out of her T&A wages, after paying the rent for a buy-to-let apartment on the outer fringe of Little Germany.

She had considered giving it up and moving in with the The Scribbler full-time but he, rather enjoying the luxury of her bijou bathroom when he visited her, had talked her out of it - at least for the time being.

"I have a car, you know," he told her, remembering the Austin Gearcruncher Mark 3 that had been stored in a shed for the last four years, waiting to be MoT'd, taxed and insured as soon as The Scribbler was given the big pay increase he deserved. Thelma had never seen it. Perhaps it was time she did.

Later that morning The Scribbler turned the key in the big padlock on a ramshackle timber garage in a West Bowling back street. The door creaked open and fell off its hinges. He shone his torch into the gloom then went in ahead of Thelma. Seizing the corner of a tarpaulin he yanked it back, filling the air with dust which billowed out of the doorway, accompanied by the love of his life.

"What the hell is that, Scribbler?" cried Thelma, coughing. "I haven't seen anything like that since I was a babe in arms. It's ancient!"

The Scribbler looked at his mechanical pride and joy, studying its idiosyncrasies and remembering the times they'd had together. He'd done quite a good job of making a new sill out of a corn-flakes box and Plastic Padding after the rusting original fell off when he jacked the car up to change a wheel. And under the rough paintwork you could barely see the tape he'd used to fix the offside headlight housing back in place after it crashed into the road, complete with headlight and attached cable, as he pulled up suddenly at the Bridge Street traffic lights when Bradford's least-lovely twins lurched drunkenly out of The Goose and into the road.

"It might not look much, but at least it's a car," said The Scribbler. "If you'll go halves with me, I'll get Marvin the Mechanic, Graham the Gasman's mate, to fix it."

Thelma looked doubtful. But trips to Wensleydale and Whitby beckoned. She put her reservations to one side and nodded. Anything was preferable to yet another plod around the hilltop monuments raised long ago to Bradford's illustrious dead. You could (she reflected) have too much of a good thing.

To be continued

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