Currant Bun

I’m not sure what the opposite of a turf war looks like, but I’ve recently been involved in a rather ugly one.

Many months ago, one of my children asked whether he could borrow my car for Glastonbury, to which I replied with an immediate ‘yes’, and then named a reasonable price, which was to have it valeted inside and out on return. This was a bit cheeky, as it was already in a pretty grim state.

Deep into the Sunday night of the festival, the car was duly returned home, by five bearded nuns, as I recall, in good condition but even filthier than when I had handed it over. When I mentioned the valeting in the cold light of day, as so often happens, the price looked worse to the customer on checking out than it had on checking in.

‘I’ve got to go back to work,’ was the gist of the thing. ‘Could you get it cleaned and then let me know what it cost’. He mentioned a couple of elderly stains on the upholstery that he and his guests had noticed on their way down the A303, just to make the point that they had been clocked.

Frankly, I was damned if I would and, anyway, the nice Bosnians who use to do the business outside Budgens have gone back to Sarajevo, and Budgens has closed. Besides, I couldn’t find anywhere in the area that cleaned cars any more. That ship has sailed, along with the Armada of other ships in this brave new world.

Thus, we both began a long pretence that we had nothing whatsoever to do with the car.

August and September came and went, with Tom utterly failing to acknowledge its filthiness, and me utterly failing to acknowledge that it had looked like a pigsty when I handed it over. We needed mediation, but none was available.

October brought with it rainy skies and falling leaves, but absolutely no movement on the Golf, which now looked more like a compost heap than the actual one in the garden. It got to the stage where I was parking it a good half mile from any meeting I was having, at least if I wanted them to take me seriously. Green moss was appearing at the bottom of the windows, and something very unwholesome and potentially lively had made its home in the ash tray.

November brought with it a new Prime Minister, and a fevered suggestion from the Number 1 son that I finally got it cleaned so that he could settle the account, something that may or may not have had something to do with the requirement he suddenly found he had of the car for five days over New Year.

Simultaneously, I discovered one of the local garages has a gang of car cleaners operating just behind, who come highly recommended by people far fussier than me, so this morning I took it along.

‘Half clean or dirty?’ asked the manager, when I asked him how much it would be.

‘Maybe dirty,’ I said, with a studied vagueness, as if it was touch or go to which of these categories it belonged. He asked for £26.00. I would have paid £50.00 at that point, but was disappointed when he said that he would have a look inside before settling on his final price.

‘£30.00,’ he said with no hint of a smile, as he extricated himself from what he evidently saw as a skip on four wheels. ‘Worse that I have seen this month. Maybe worse of year.’ A little crowd of spectators had built up behind, consisting of an elderly couple with a gleaming car that was going to have to wait, and someone else, who turned out to be someone who had been in the front row of a recent talk I had given, collecting their own vehicle.

From that point, though, it was all joy. I sat in the warmth of a mid November day that should have been ten degrees cooler, and read a copy of the Sun that they had kindly left for their discerning customers.

Now, you can say what you like about the Sun, from its robust love of the last Prime Minister but two, and its lively disinterest in the environment, but I was thrilled in a slightly shame-faced way, for those ten minutes, to be re-united with the sub-editors art that they have made all their own over the years.

‘Don’t get catarrh because of Qatar’ it advised, suggesting attendees of the World Cup got jabbed.

‘Eyeful Tower’, said the next, (‘Trio caught doing porn vid next to Paris landmark’); ‘M25 chaos is Oil over….for now’; and ‘Keep your Becker up’, where we learn of Tennis Legend’s jail classes. But the one that left me smiling, even as I handed over those three tenners was from ‘our correspondent Down Under’, and which referred to our ex Health Secretary’s humiliation in the jungle.

‘Hancock’s Barf Hour!!’

The Guardian and the Times will never be the same.