June 21st: London, driving and bleeding toes


The test drive in the chosen van takes place today. I’m a bit nervous because I was banned from driving for six months last year and have not driven since.  It doesn't help that my little toe, and the toe next to it on my left foot, are sore and bandaged. And the tenuous reason why – five days ago I had a date in London with ‘Nice Bloke Neil’, a coppicer, as dedicated to his job as any of my previous boyfriends including four professors and two doctors were to theirs.  Nice Bloke and I had both taken trains for our Trafalgar Square rendezvous. I’d taken the 90-minute train from Leicester and he’d taken the 150-minute train from Dorset.  When we met, on the steps of the National Gallery, he greeted me with a bag of homemade Florentines which was utterly lovely of him.

We’d barely walked a couple of hundred metres down the Embankment when I confessed to him about my very sore foot. In a nearby café, while he was getting the coffees and after I’d wolfed a couple of the florentines, I checked my toes.  I’d not worn tights and my middle-aged pterodactyl toes were rubbing on the insides of my heeled wedges. Yuk. They looked like there’d been submerged in a tomato and chile dipping sauce. Neil was sympathetic and lingered politely while I purchased plasters and a pair of tights before we continued the four-hour date that included the café in the underground crypt near the National Gallery.  I’d not known it existed – thank you Neil, and the crypt builders.

            Nice Bloke and I have spoken once on the phone since, but I don’t think we’re Romeo and Juliet, or even, a more age appropriate Beatrice and Benedict or their parents.  In a nutshell, sex in the coppicer’s Landrover amidst the willow and twine is unlikely. But fast forward five days and I’m trying to look like a confident, competent driver as I change gears with my poorly left foot flat down in a three-ton van.   Chris, the salesman sits next to me and Georgie is in the back having a wheeze that her mum is finally driving.  She’s been my chauffeur for the last ten months and found it demanding.  But I’m happy with the van and can foresee a good relationship unfolding, a relationship that, unlike every encounter I’ve had in the last twelve years, might last more than three months. 
            “Yes, please. I’ll buy him, her, it. Can you supply a free tank of petrol too?”  And so, it comes to pass.  I’m rather excited.

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