1st July: A van by any other name


1st July
I post a photo of me and the van on Facebook.
·         Just tape a VW badge on the front and it’ll be cool. J
·         Crazy lady xxx
·         Living in it? Are you fifty-one or twenty-one?
·         Van is cool...real man bait!  (this optimistic one is from old-dad in New Zealand)
·         Love it, but "Van" needs a name!

I’d kept the name ‘Ross’ quiet perhaps because I’m unhappy with it.  Other possibilities include Vin Diesel, but this van’s healthy, using unleaded petrol, not diesel.  Van Morrison? Dick Van Dyke?  Van Gogh?  No, these are all men and I don’t know if the exhaust represents an appendage or an orifice but my van will be a she: Lauren LaVan.  I update Facebook with this news as though announcing a Royal Christening in The Times.

Georgie appears an hour after the update after a night at her dad’s. “Mum, I see on Facebook that that Ross is now Lauren LaVan.”
“Ah yes. Ross was its foster name, as its new adoptive mother I have changed it.”
“And you've changed its sex?”
            “Yes.”
"So it's a transgender transit van?  It might need counseling."  It could well be a post-traumatic reaction to the name change and gender realignment but maybe Georgie is right - Lauren won’t start.  Caput. Zilch.  My insurance covers breakdown recovery so I phone for assistance and then leave a charming-through-gritted-teeth message for Chris my smiling salesman.  Van recovery arrives, tests the battery and asserts that it’s knackered. I sit in the recovery truck alongside the driver and we tow Lauren to Wigston for her Christening present, a new battery.

A teaching friend, Alison, is getting married tomorrow and a designer around the corner from me has made the wedding dress. To avoid the possibility of creasing the dress in her car I offer to collect it, hang it up in the van and drive it over to Barsby, her east Leicestershire village.  Just as I’m about to head off with my silk cargo I get a request from Alison for a mattress for her son to sleep on tonight in the marquee; it’s so he can protect the sixty bottles of Aldi champagne. Yes, I’ve a spare mattress that’s not yet reached the ranks of my hundreds of sold possessions, so that goes into the van too.  Should I inform the insurance company that I’m now doing deliveries?  No, they’d probably declare me uninsurable.

As I drive through Leicester, carefully and within the speed limit a man in an approaching car raises his middle finger at me. I believe this is called ‘giving the bird’.  I have no idea why he did this; he’s certainly wasn’t showing approval.

The bride and groom have asked me to read Shakespeare’s, or rather, Juliet’s, act three, scene two speech beginning “Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds” in the church.  It’s where the impatient virgin is pulsating with sexual desire for Romeo.  I’ve just spent an hour being inspired by actors on YouTube but don’t think I should emulate the more passionate of performances; the vicar might get a stiffie

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