This is a fun little piece I wrote describing a trip a friend and I made to an auto repairs shop. I challenged myself to not say “car” and to never use the same alternative twice.
We ventured forth into the unknown realm of Tennant. After much complex discussion and implication our plans finally coalesced and we left in a small motor vehicle, slightly unprepared for what awaited.
But our timing was fortuitous and the flow of travellers was sufficiently thin so as not to pose a serious impediment to our progress. Moreover memory yielded up the requisite directions with sufficient clarity so that, with only one misdirection, we arrived without incident.
Where was our destination? What our quest? Good questions indeed. Our destination the “Panel Beaters” a bit of a misnomer as they usually replace and buff rather than beat; perhaps “Panel furbishers”? A curious place, a warehouse full of the various stages of chassis surrounded by panels in varying states of refurbishment and, at that time, frantic activity to complete the week. Our goal to extract one complete motor vehicle with newly beautified buttocks.
So we arrived. We entered the waiting room. While it is true that the room was furnished with two veritable thrones of chairs we declined to sit, being a part of that class whose typical day wonderfully and frustratingly involves a great deal of that.
Along the wall opposite the secretary and receptionist’s desk, a desk of copious shelves an evidently large through put of expensive transporter repairs, there was a great fish tank. This tank was crowned and underscored by shelves displaying the testimony to a passionate hobby: beautiful or well used remotely controlled cars. Some looked to be need of the self same service provided by there housing establishment. But the pride of the wall was the tank with a large Koi.
This Koi looked to be psychic and so going mad. Just imagine being a fish of so great faculties as to swim the world of thought as well as that of water. Then to have the great privilege of being lifted out of the dull world of slow thinking aquatic inhabitants and placed in the lively world of sentient travails. Only to find that the world is reduce to a place of waiting! The same thought a thousand times a day: the dull suspension of all else coloured by degrees of impatience while those around try to appease it through politeness and franticsism. Surely a place of darkest fog and dwindling sanity for so capable a beast. It swam aimlessly observing the stream of waiters that entered the room designated for such.
Then, to our astonishment, a man appeared loudly proclaiming a question in a barely intelligible language. While this, in itself, was not that surprising – the place had an air of the frantic about it – what caused the astonishment, and a little panic, was that, as he left, it became apparent that the question was directed at me and that the answer I wanted to give was yes, but alas he had vanished! Fortunately another gentleman, for whom this was amusing, rescued me by helping find this apparition. So was secured the missing spare hoof for my mechanical beast of burden.
In due coarse, though delightfully unwitnessed, I had but a glimpse, chaos my silver conveyance device was brought forth and we claimed it. Ah what a delightful sight, a trunk with an operational lock! And what a smell, the clean smell of interior polish. And so, having achieved the first part of our quest we moved on, severing our single channel of movement into two but maintaining the singularity of destination.
Fear not, there is not much more to tell. We transported the transportation successfully, but mildly inadequately (as mentioned before, the keys had not come with for full completion), and then returned, having grown and altered the colour of our stead, to our place of origin. All in time and with no consequence to our hasty departure. With all better than it began, as hoped.