Stitched up by the local rag

Weds.10.05.06. It was quite late in the afternoon by the time we arrived at Slicks’ to begin stripping the chassis of any salvageable parts. The rusting twisted metal was reluctant to offer anything easily. Today has been a really hot day and working out in the open air, away from the tete dust, was exceptional.

 Most of the nuts and bolts that held the ancillary components were badly rusted but with WD 40 together with a few old tricks from Chris’s repertoire we managed to successfully remove the rear suspension in addition to the front wheel hubs by 6 pm. We packed up the tools, returning the parts that we could rescue back to Westmead.

Leaving the car at home we were met by Jo who greeted us with a copy of the Evening Post, which carried the story of the Beaujolais Run. Mildred, our next door neighbour had given the paper to Jo with comment “It’s not a very good photo of Nigel, is it”. 

Too bloody true it wasn’t, I resembled some sad recidivist loser on day release. Chris was also perplexed concerned over his image that had a likeness of some crusty old tramp huddled over the car, eating a bag of chips. He was outraged, so much so that he wanted to take the paper immediately to the Oak to show our friends. Jimmy the Axe and Knocker had mustered early, in the garden, to have the final team talk before their band trip to Porto on Thursday. Billy and Lewis were expected imminently, the Doc was preparing light refreshments for later. They were still debating the location of the final digs after they had left the city. Doc’s argument for pre booking again fell on deaf ears. The Axe and Knocker by this time were on their fourth pint and were definitely not in listening mode. They were also distracted when Chris produced the evening post with my beaming half-wit face filling most of the second page, above the caption read, “Nigel Plans One More Jolais Trip”. I was the village idiot, the smiling clown, the patsy, the shmuk who was not only totally humiliated in the local ‘rag’ but was subject to relentless abuse from the present congregation. When everyone had exhausted a seemingly endless list of derogatory terms we fell silent, but only for a moment until Lewis noticed that just to the left of my flaky, insane visage was a further caption that read “Man Faces Rape Charge”. This naturally started another round of jibes. At that point I was praying that their trip really does go Tit’s up.          

Thankfully, I claimed that the actual copy was well written and measured. Its one thing being stitched up by an unimaginative, predictable photographer but if the journalist had also twisted the story I would have been thoroughly pissed off. Luckily, I had made this statement in front of Salty who then informed me that Kristina Woods was in fact Robert’s fiance. I would have been in the doo doo if I had badmouthed the future daughter-in-law. Robert did arrive a little later and we had quite an informative chat about journalism, pot holing, geology and Chile. Funny old world.