We had grown up together, a few doors apart in a small Northumberland mining village. We started climbing together as teenagers. He was always better than me and he was my best friend. Now he was driving me to Ambleside for an interview at Charlotte Mason. But it was more complicated than that. I was also moving home after living with my dad for so long. I was also getting married in a weeks time. As we sped through the beautiful countryside one misty November morning I sat in my interview/ wedding suit in his precious Ford Capri. This car had taken us all over the country on climbing trips and was now brim full of all my worldly goods. My head was a whirl of emotions. College interview, leaving home, marriage, and my dad. Would he be alright on his own? My mam had died a few years before and he had struggled. I really loved him, but I was being pushed into the world by forces I didn't understand and couldn't seem to control.
As we took a sharp left hand bend the car started to slide sideways on the leaf covered road. This was classic Ford Capri stuff but this time it kept sliding. We hit the kerb on the other side of the road and flipped over. We were trapped upside down in a ditch! Petrol started to leak in. We couldn't open the doors! Mine was jammed by a tree. The other by the bank of the ditch. I had lost my specs and could only see blurs. Hanging upside down, trapped, covered in petrol and unable to see there was only one word that summed it up....
He had the presence of mind to switch off the engine. As a non driver I hadn't thought of that. He wouldn't let me kick out the windscreen for some obscure reason. Forgetting I was hanging upside down I released the seat belt and crumpled into a heap on the roof of the car. Being skinny climbers we crawled through the broken side window which was half covered by tree trunk. We stood at the side of the road in the early morning countryside covered in blood. He went off to find a farmer. I was now virtually blind and for some reason decided to take off my Wedding Suit in case it got spoiled by the blood. I stood peering into the mist in my budgie smugglers and blood stained shirt. A car approached. I could hear it. It slowed down. The driver seeing the semi naked, blood soaked zombie waving frantically at him in the early morning mist put his foot down and sped off. Two other cars did the same. I wonder what tales they told of that morning?
Eventually he arrived back with a farmer. " What insurance 'ave you got? " enquired the farmer in his soft Northumbrian accent. "Third party" was the reply. "Torch it" said the farmer. I wouldn't let them. After all it was full of everything I owned including my precious bike. He pulled us out with his tractor, the Capri flipping right way over in the process. There were massive dents in the roof and drivers door. How we had survived in that space was anybody's guess. My mates dad towed us home. It was still drivable! if it hadnt been for the lack of oil and petrol that is. His mam was crying. But we were relatively unscathed and I sloped off to see my dad and ring my girlfriend and the college to say I wouldn't be attending for interview that day.
Two weeks later I sat in the interview room in Ambleside in a newly dry cleaned suit. I had been married for a week. The interview wasn't going well. The interviewers all looked a bit green around the gills. The room reeked of petrol. I felt ill. One of them looked at me and asked " do you sniff petrol? " . "Not usually" I replied, "but I do now!". I had cleaned my suit but completely forgot about the leather brogues I had been wearing. The warm room had brought the petrol soaked shoes to life. We all rushed outside to be sick.
The Ford Capri was back on the road within a month, continuing it's primary task of carrying its occupants to Bowden Doors, The Wanneys, Kyloe and all the other wonderful Northumberland crags, and I got into college.