For reasons of self-preservation I'm not going to give the name of the town we found orselves in, suffice to say it wasn't very nice. We found a large garage, the only one in the area. A mechanic inspected the car and did a lot of head shaking. The cylinder head was gone and it sounded as if it had thrown a rod too. It wasn’t worth repairing. They wouldn’t take it off our hands because I hadn’t got the registration document with me – it was in a box in the back of a truck somewhere. But they let us make a phone call to try and find a hire car and then got stroppy when we tried to make more than one call even though we offered to pay. It was obvious that we were in a predicament but the boss of the garage was extremely unhelpful so we steamed out of there in the Smokemobile and went to into a transport café opposite.
The woman behind the bar was almost friendly, and lent us a copy of the yellow pages. The nearest car hire place was forty kilometres away in Amiens. The Volvo wasn’t going to make it that far. We inquired about buses and trains and they took great delight in telling us that there weren’t any. A couple of old gits that worked there were also very enthusiastic about the idea of a taxi costing a couple of hundred euros – that was, if there was one available, which I could tell they hoped wouldn’t be the case. The place stunk of drainage problems so we decided to leave and hitch a lift to Amiens.
I got quite used to hitching when I lived in France before, but Amy never had because nobody does in America unless they’re a murderous psycho or someone with a death wish who just wants to meet a murderous psycho. I think The Texas Chainsaw Massacre put paid to any winsome Jack Kerouac type of fantasies anyone may have had about hitchhiking through America, even though Creedence Clearwater Revival did that great Sweet Hitch-hiker tune and Hitching A Ride by Vanity Fayre was a big hit. (I once played with Vanity Fayre but that’s another story, and I don’t think I want to talk about it because it was back in the eighties when life was grim.)
We stood at the side of the poplar-lined road opposite the entrance to the truck stop place, Amy midway between tears of desperation and elation at this exciting new hitch hiking adventures, me thinking it was just like the old days but not really the French experience I’d had in mind. Trucks thundered past – I wasn’t going to say thundered but it’s the only word that adequately describes it – the ground shaking beneath our feet and the displaced air nearly knocking us off our feet and covering us in diesel fumes and debris.

Every truck was like an insult – Knights Of The Road? I don’t think so. Try fat, flatulent, ugly, arrogant, aggressive, racist, bigoted, bone-headed Barons of Meathead Land. (That’s the truck driving faction of my audience gone, and good bloody riddance too if that’s what they’re like. Now I suppose I’m going to be awash with emails from effete, gay, china-collecting truck drivers. But that’s OK, just as long as they don’t send me any of their poetry.) I feel justified in having a pop at truck drivers because I quite frequently stop at the Red Lodge transport cafe just off the A11 late at night on my way from London to Norwich. And last time we stopped there, just before Christmas at four in the morning in torrential rain, Amy asked if she could purchase one of the mince pies that were sat on a dish gathering germs on the counter, and the women said no, they were only for the drivers. Well, fuck the drivers, they're fat enough already without scoffing down germ-laden pies. I know none of it's their fault but I'm feeling unreasonable so it's beside the point.

After ten minutes of this havoc when I was beginning to wonder if we ever going to get a lift, a dilapidated red Renault 5 stopped and the large, overalled man inside told us to get in and he’d take us to Amiens. He was the exception that proves the rule – the only nice person in the whole of the Somme. (That’s probably not true but please don’t try and point it out to me because I’m not listening.) He took us all the way to the car hire place and our tears were almost tears of joy etc.
Of course, the car hire place was shut for lunch for a couple of hours but as luck would have in there was an Intermarche nearby so we bought some bread, cheese and apples and sat on the window ledge of a disused pharmacy and enjoyed a spot of lunch. The sun came out so it was almost quite agreeable.
The car hire people were obnoxious but it didn’t bother us because we were getting used to it. We just did the deal, got the car - some sort of metallic blue Peugeot, and got the hell out of there.
It was a somewhat smaller car than the Volvo estate so it was a bit of a challenge getting everything packed into it. First we had to take everything out of the Volvo, strew it all over the car park and access the situation. Then we set to and started stuffing things into parts of cars where things rarely get stuffed. You get quite good at that sort of thing if you pack enough vehicles regularly enough, but since we’ve been doing this it’s become an obsession. Much later that evening, lying in a hot bath in the hotel, I found myself scrutinising the soap dish and I realised that what I was thinking was that with care I could pack not just four, but six pairs of socks into it.
As packing goes it was a triumph. Admittedly we set of with the long bits of the bedstead hanging in mid air between us and a duvet falling over our faces, but apart from that it was a miracle of packing and should be put forward to the Vatican, or wherever they decide that sort of thing, for a miracle nomination. Of course we didn’t get any accolades from the miserable fuckwits inhabitants of the Somme – locals drove by and stared at us and one stopped his car and shouted at us, letting us no in no uncertain terms that we couldn’t leave the Volvo where it was. I think it’s a tribute to my command of the French language that I was able to tell him, also in no uncertain terms, that I was actually thinking of taking the car and parking it up his arse, sideways.
Of course we weren’t going to leave the car where it was – we drove it round to a supermarket car park round the corner and left it there. I sometimes stop and think about it and wonder if it’s still there. It's my gift to the people of that ghastly town. I expect the garage people got it eventually - they passed up a bit of a bargain there because I'd just had four new tyres put on the thing. But I'm sure it's all worked out for the best now.