First week traumas

Later today we're off on our first overnight stay to a campsite in Delamere Forest. The heatwave continues, the forecast is for wall to wall blue, sounds idyllic does it not? Well let's hope so, because the process of getting to this point has been less than an idyll, in fact low level stress and irritation all round.

Now the said un-named white beast is too big to park permanently on our drive and is garaged at a farm campsite about three miles away. Good that it's in a big barn and under cover, but this is not without challenges. Remember Arkwright's twitchy till in Open All Hours? Well the security barriers at the campsite entrance seem to have been manufactured by the same company. Now BWB (big white beast) being an automatic does not exactly manage a' le Mans start', there is a momentary delay in setting off, just long enough for the entry code to invalidate itself and send the barrier swiftly downwards just as you inch forward, so basically it's a two person job to access the place.


This is a piece of cake compared to operating the security roller shutters to the barn. The code opens the doors no trouble at all, but come to shut them, then all that happens is that mechanism bursts into life, lowers the door by about an inch, then stops. You have to wait 30 seconds before you can re-enter the code, then the same thing happens. Given that the barn doors are designed to accommodate a combine harvester I guess they must be about fifteen feet high. By my estimate, factoring in the time delay on the code pad, 5 seconds to re-enter the code, 20 seconds every fifth attempt for a blue language break and two 20 minute phone calls to your therapist to seek advice on stress management strategies, then shutting the roller doors would take precisely 10 hours, 47 minutes and 23 seconds. I was less than half way through this process when Ed, the farm's owner, turned up and revealed to me an arcane, masonic ritual that speeds things up. Apparently, you enter the code on the inner pad, wait for it to fail, press the yellow emergency stop button, re-enter the code on the outside pad, then twist the stop button in a clockwise direction and BINGO! the door mysteriously lowers. Thanks Ed, you could have told me that at the outset!

Gill and the 'magic roller door'

1. Enter code

2. Wait for mechanism to jam

3. Press emergency stop, re-enter code, twist red button to the left...

4. Drive off, wondering how we ever managed without technology to help us.

I am given to understand that if the above procedure fails, then drawing a pentagram on the floor of the barn, lighting five black candles at each point, seizing one of Ed's Spring lambs from the adjacent meadow and ritually slaughtering it while reciting the Lord's prayer backwards can be equally effective.

Now all of this is just low level aggravation when compared to mechanical failure affecting BWB itself. All was going well until Tuesday when I turned up to stock-up BWB (must think of a name) in anticipation of our weekend away. Battery, stone dead, not a sausage, not a glimmer even on the dashboard clock. With benefit of hindsight I should not have parked the thing with the cab facing the wall between a livestock trailer and a gleaming white, cruise-ship sized, twin wheeled caravan. No way was I going to be able to attach my newly purchased 10 foot jump leads to restart the thing. There ensued many hours of trying to communicate with Ed, who as his other half always asserted, is a very busy man plagued by staff who are either on holiday or off-sick. All I needed to happen was for someone to move the livestock trailer forwards by about twenty feet, but after a day and a half of prevarication I decided to adopt plan B and call the RAC, thus reducing hassle for Ed and, as I thought, frustration for me.

Simple you might think. Realising that there was no chance of getting a mobile signal at the farm I parked my car at the nearby Brierlow Bar Bookstore. My new iphone may look the part and be a whizz at downloading apps to provide cyber-assistance that enhances every aspect of today's mundane and tawdry existence, but it did not let me make a simple phone call from this particular rural spot - no choice, drive three miles back to Buxton.

Duly ensconced in Spring Gardens' car park I finally got through to the worldwide helpline thoughtfully provided by my insurers whose policy allegedly covers every imaginable mishap from repatriation in the case of sudden death to multi-lateral negotiation with Somali pirates. Of course they'd never heard of me, my vehicle or the policy that I'd purchased at enormous expense just ten days earlier. 'Let me look into this', Tom, said, magnanimously promising to ring back in just a few minute 'at my company's cost'. I felt overwhelmed by his generosity.

Dum de Dum de Dum.... funny how time slows when you await a phone call; I wonder how Professor Cox explains the quantum theory behind that?

Meanwhile, enter stage left two men of girth, each clutching a Greggs' paper bag; they plonk their ample behinds on the low car park wall not three feet in front of me, I have plenty of time to make a brief anthropological study of my new companions. Both wear voluminous below the knee shorts, roughly the same acreage as a king-size duvet cover, one pair is khaki, the other 'combat camoflaged'; both garments sport many side pockets of mysterious purpose. Person A, a fierce, stocky individual with a grey pony-tail, effusive white beard and death's head tee-shirt, withdraws a large meat pie from its bag and proceeds to devour it slowly and silently with just a touch of menace. His friend, a little taller, but of equal girth sports a ribbed cotton vest, the sort my eldest daughter calls 'a wife beater'. It is gleaming white, chosen to show- off the blue tinged 'American Eagle' whose noble profile is tattooed across the back of his shaved head and down his blubber-creased neck, its quivering wings stretched across his shoulders. From his paper bag he withdraws a baton length jumbo sausage roll. and in what is clearly a well honed move, grips the monster savoury snack in his teeth, while his left hand scrunches-up and deposits the paper bag on the ground, simultaneously with his right he pulls out a smart phone from his shorts' upper thigh pocket. Deftly he operates the device with a single thumb; as the device connects he removes the sausage roll from his mouth and begins an intense, crumb spluttered, conversation with some unfortunate distant acquaintance.


So fascinated had I now become that I considered lowering the window to overhear what was being said, but a modicum of good manners prevailed and I contented myself with listening to him babbling away incomprehensibly, catching only the occasional 'mate,' 'pal,' 'bro', and 'buddy' which peppered the lengthy harangue. I was about to embark on a profound re-consideration of how this novel use of multiple terms of affiliation quite squared with Jakobson's pioneering post war work on phatic modes of speech when my own phone burbled its silly ring-tone and Tom (remember Tom?) announced with a note of pride in his voice that he had Aviva customer service wishing to speak to me.

A voice, quietly spoken, almost posh whispered, 'Good arrfternoon, Mr Turpie, I am Mohammad, how may I assist?'

Now I have to say, I was amazed. We are all well used to wiley colleagues from the Financial Services sector taking 'costs out of their businesses' by out-sourcing support functions to far flung 'emerging economies' who then employ well educated, low waged staff skilled in every aspect of their job apart from EFL. However, Aviva's 'coup de grace' was clearly to be the first major insurer to franchise such services to a Divine. Sadly, not even The Prophet was able to deal with my case; he kindly explained he was only able to assist direct customers and not those using a broker. Quite obviously no one developing this new business model had factored in the limitations of monotheism. Resisting the temptation to ask my well spoken friend if any of his pantheistic colleagues, Krishna or Aphrodite for instance, may be better placed to help, I gave up and decided to head home and phone the broker from there.

All the while as I communed with the Divine, staring bleakly out of the windscreen, I watched Buxton Festival Fringe's groundbreaking re-working of 'The Life of Pie' move into its next act. Enter stage right, Mr. Eagle-Headman's comely female companion. Of equal girth but somewhat more squat, and similarly kitted out in sahara-sized shorts, impressively, this stalwart lady carried two Greggs' bags. Standing legs apart, facing her partner she placed one bag on the wall and took from the second a jumbo sausage roll even longer than her beloved's. I speculated briefly if the happy pair had colluded on a 'three for the price of two deal, but was distracted by an outbreak of robotic twitching involving the lady's over-lively, scoop-neck, candy-pink tee-shirt. Its innate tendency towards sideways slippage provoked a flurry of simultaneous garment-tugging, black bra-strap hitching and sausage-roll devouring no less impressive than her partner's artistry in combining speed snacking with smart phone bullying. As I pulled away, glancing in my wing mirror, I saw Mrs Eagle-Headman reach over to the wall and take from her second paper bag a pork pie which in terms of size and shape resembled a disused gasometer. Well, there goes my three for two theory, I thought to myself.

From this point on my day became much less stressful but considerably less entertaining. Jim from the brokers was a paragon of helpfulness and efficiency; he fixed the RAC glitch in a jiffy. Within five minutes, Stuart from Breakdown Services was on the phone informing me he was less than half an hour away. When I explained my problem and where the van was situated, 'Ah yes,' he said, 'I know the place. I was there on Sunday to another call. Do you have the barrier code, it's a bit difficult isn't it?'

After the two of us pushed all 3.5 tonnes of BWB half way down the barn, Stuart's worst predictions of battery death through 'reversed polarity' failed to materialise. Connected to his truck BWB soon spluttered into life and my day of technological challenge and impromptu street theatre indeed ended idyllically. Gill, Laura and I took an unexpected trip around the lanes of North Staffordshire ending up watching some ducks bobbing about on Tittersworth Reservoir.

Gradually the calm waters took on a golden sheen as the sun set, a peaceful scene ruined only by the low throb of BWB's diesel engine which we dared not turn-off fearing the battery was still insufficiently charged.