Copy Life

Years ago I shared an apartment building with a girl who had the bravest, most devil may care attitude toward personal transport. I lived in the ground floor and she lived in the top floor studio apartment. She worked for the local television studios as a journalist, so need to travel to work each day by car.

I was unable to drive at the time, I did not pass my test until years later, so I would commute via the bus to my office in an industrial estate some miles away. Sometimes if my friend Zora was late, she would offer me a lift on the grounds that as she was already in trouble she may as well do me the favor.

Her car was the most unbelievable wreck you ever saw. It was some kind of Ford and had originally been red, we thought, but was now an ugly shade of dull pink without any shine whatever, the paint having faded to nothing some decades before. Rust edged every window and wing mirror and the interior seating was an ugly shade of gold in pvc.

The parcel shelf at the back displayed a series of gonks in multicolored suits, Zora thought they made the car look festive and welcoming. When it rained, she thrust her feet into two plastic Harrods shopping bags to keep her shoes dry in the driver’s flooded foot well.

There was no second gear for some strange reason, and no reverse. The brakes made a crunching noise and none of the window winding handles were actually attached to the doors, they were all hanging by wires, which one had to apply to the bare window screws prior to actually winding the windows up or down.

A policeman stopped us at the traffic lights once and asked whether Zora ever put air in her tyres.

‘How am I supposed to know when to put air in the tyres?’ she asked testily.

‘When they go square at the bottom Madam.’ He answered.

He eventually waved us on, on the understanding that Zora would have the radiator fixed, which bled red water into the road whenever she was stationery for more than two minutes, and that she would pay some attention to the tyres before driving the car again.