I THOUGHT we would grow old together. When we met the connection was instant. I sensed a vibrancy, an energy, a feeling that I would be looked after. And we had four blissful years together.
But a week ago today she was taken from me.
As I rolled up the bedroom blinds, as always, to look out to the car park and welcome the day with an appreciative smile in the direction of my little grey Mercedes sports car, I was numbed cold by a realisation. “She’s gone!” I yelled, and Hall & Oates could have written a song about the pain I immediately felt.
Wait a minute; had I left the car outside Tesco Metro last night? No. I remember unpacking. I ran into the living room and looked for my car keys. Nothing. Then I realised one of the living room windows was open six inches. It’s always locked. I’d been robbed.
Along with my wallet (containing cash, bank cards) my shoulder bag was also gone, which contained tape recorders, notes, memory sticks and a printed copy of a play I’d just finished (after two years of writing) about the life of Stanley Baxter. “B******s!” I screamed, louder than a schoolboy with his finger caught in a car door, but angry at myself. (I learned later more than 770 cars were stolen in the Glasgow area last year, many via housebreaking key thefts. But there was no comfort in the stats.)
I called the cops (my phone hadn’t been taken – too old, and too easily traced?) and two uniforms arrived. One said the car just might be recovered. Yet, the other indicated that, given this was most likely a stolen-to-order car theft, there would be more chance of a unicorn turning up in my front garden.
What to do? Let the memory of my little car go? Look for a replacement? It’s too soon. Besides, first I have to cancel bank cards, have new house door locks, (the car park fob had a spare house key attached). While dealing with the realisation I’d been in bed while the robbers were in the living room at 12.30am (CCTV later revealed) I’m also remembering the stolen car contents; a complete set of spare tennis kit, gardening tools, phone chargers. The early Elton CDs I can admit to (Madman, Tumbleweed Connection), but can I seriously own up to an Olivia Newton-John that’s not even her Greatest Hits?
That same afternoon however there is some good news. My shoulder bag has been found dumped in a pubic area in North Glasgow. Although soaked through after a night in the rain, amazingly my tape recorder is still working. Even more incredibly, the play, in its plastic folder, was drier than Stanley’s best gag.
But why did the car abductors dump the bag where it would surely be found? Had they skim-read the play and thought; “We may wreak carnage upon people’s lives, drill into their minds an existentialist fear and vulnerability and turn their world into a dysfunctional, dystopian nightmare, but we cannae deprive this clown of a CATS Scotland theatre award.”
Meantime, Home Security cops came round and explained there was a chance the car might be found. The thieves don’t know if the car has a tracker fitted (it hadn’t) so they park up in semi-plain sight in an area not too far from their locale, wait a few days to see if police searchers show up, and if not they’re in the clear to carry on cloning.
The weekend was mostly spent in reflection, confronting my overwhelming sense of keys stupidity, yet I also thought hard about the relationship with the car. I knew the robbers wouldn't care less; “So what? He’s a fully comprehensive bellend who’s got a CD of that burd fae Grease and he plays f****** tennis. He’s a bigger tool than the wan we used to open his crappy windae!”
Yet, I realised the little car meant a lot to me, and not because I’m Jeremy Clarkson-obsessed with motors. (I’ve never felt the urge to give a car a name.)
If the car burglars can in fact read, here’s what my little Merc meant to me. It made me proud because I managed to buy it as the result of spending a long, draining seven years with Brendan O’Carroll writing his biography, a time in which the mercurial Mrs Brown star drove me to the edges of a town called Breakdown. Believe me, an SLK was little more than I deserved.
So for four years I wouldn’t even let my car near a scratchy public car wash. And I loved it when my mother loved being driven around with the roof down, and it once drove a Nolan sister to dinner.
And now it’s gone. Wait a minute. The phone rings. It’s PC David Dinnen, a Police Scotland car finder, he says. And he’s found mine. What? How? Where? When? (Answers to come soon hopefully in a Herald Magazine feature.)
What I do know for sure is I’ve learned lessons. And once forensics are finished dusting, the love affair will continue.
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