Home life
Folly of tidying up
Alice Thomas Ellis
t has never happened to me before. It's not the sort of thing you expect. You take a taxi because the car's off the road. You don't ever imagine the taxi cab is going to break down. There we were negotiating a roundabout on the way to Olympia and the taxi driver said the accelerator cable had become detached from whatever it is sup- posed to be attached to and we would have to pause while he had a little think about it. It was, of course, Bank Holiday Monday — yet another pimple on the face of time — and hence few garages were open. The driver said bitterly that these things only happen on Bank Holiday Monday, and I had to agree with him, although in our case it's always the central heating on Christmas Eve or the washing machine on Maundy Thursday.
He peered under the bonnet of his vehicle and then emerged to enquire if I had a bit of string about my person. He said he knew it was a silly question, but he just wondered. As it happens, it wasn't such a silly question, because I had my handbag with me and in the normal way I'd probably have been able to provide him with yards of the stuff, only with Sod's law once more in majestic operation I had recently tidied my handbag. Ordinarily, I could have supplied him with a pen-knife with a thing for taking stones out of horses' hooves, a catapult (this is not a flight of fancy: I found a catapult under my jumpers in the wardrobe just the other day), a number of fluffy sweets, possibly an old apple core, and certainly about a million unanswered letters and receipts and a few Deathless Thoughts scribbled down on bits of paper napkin etc. As it was, I was unable to help.
I did wonder wildly, as I got later and later for my appointment,whether I should emulate those screen heroines of the Civil War and tear my petticoat into strips. Then the driver dug out a length of ribbon, or possibly a frock belt, from the boot of his cab and, with a hoarse cry of satisfaction, tied up his accelerator cable in such a fashion that we were able to limp onwards.
He was now driving by means of his brakes and gears. I didn't understand his explanation of our mode of progress but the result was jerky. He said we'd be all right if we didn't encounter a hill. But, of course, we did: only a little one, since the terrain around Olympia is not unduly curvaceous, but a hill nonetheless. We went up it very slowly and then, of course, all the roads to my destination were closed for repairs, and both of us were reduced nearly to tears.
Most of the other drivers on the road were rude and insensitive about our plight, perhaps not realising that we were in difficulties, though why otherwise they imagined we were crawling along at a senile snail's pace I can't think. Perhaps they thought I was taking an individual guided tour of the environs and selfishly slowing down the traffic while appreciating the wildernesses of building sites and the forests of cones.
I went on thinking about tearing up petticoats as we travelled. It isn't as easy as it sounds. Once a piece of cloth has been hemmed you have to cut through the hem with scissors or rend it with your teeth. I was glad it hadn't been necessary, as I visualised the scene: a mad lady by a spavined taxi cab frenziedly tearing up her clothing.
It's taught me one thing — or rather reminded me of what I knew all the time.
Tidying up is not the absolute virtue it is supposed to be. I threw away the catapult I found in the wardrobe and already I'm regretting it. When I finally reached my destination we sat in the garden and there were some very irritating pigeons flapping about just above our heads. Has anybody got a forked stick and a piece of elastic?
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