Two old ladies are clacking at the next table in the service station where I stop for coffee and a Chorley cake. Enjoying their run out on a Sunday morning. There is a lot of talk in the restaurant, though their snippets are a cut above. I try to tune in my hearing but there is crackling interference from the three nearby truckers - assorted ages, sizes and loads - yapping over their tea and baked beans with buttered wings...crackle "Llandudno, Eastbourne, Weston...they're all much of a muchness..." crackle. I strain and refocus on the women, both fairly malevolent, skinny, one in slacks and a top, the other in best shoes, pleated skirt, cardy (it's bloomin hot but she is totally buttoned up). Both have granny-curly hairdos, specs, a bit of slap, a bit too much. I'm hoping for an Alan Bennett moment: something along the lines of, "He was terribly bow-leggged, your Uncle Joe, but he had lovely handwriting." No such luck. Pleated skirt starts up and I can just catch a few bits, "came home the colour of a Pakistani", "she never does a hand's turn", "he's been married twice, you know, and now he's got this other one with 'im who doesn't get on with the kiddies. Well, he wants shot of her because of it but she wants to stay put...but I don't want to know 'is business". I finish my coffee.
Next to the restaurant is something called the CB Shack. It seems to be a sort of Halfords for lorry drivers but today it is closed. I blink through the window, though much of the stock is obscured by transfers meant for truck cabs, one of them the outline of a long-haired, titty nubile and another proclaiming that Truckers Like Hard Shoulders and Soft Thighs. Little evidence here of political correctness and none of post-modern irony.
I walk back to the car, left outside an adjoining McDonald's. It seems to be a meeting place for the local chapter of middle-aged weekend Harley riders and their wives and ladyfriends. All nicely turned out, leather, denim. The bikes are on tick-over and make a potato-potato-potato sound until the Alpha Male lazily rolls his wrist over his throttle and suddenly the car park is juddering with the noise from eight V-twins and they disappear in a roar, bent on causing trouble in the continental-style cafe of that poncey big garden centre outside Knutsford.
4 comments:
"Potato-potato-potato" describes it nicely. I love the sound of the big bikes.
What's a Chorley cake please?
A pastry disc filled with stewed currants and sultanas. Not to be confused with Eccles cakes which are the same but a slightly different size. Chorley and Eccles are both towns in Lancashire.
Just missed my Alan Bennett moment - couldnt keep my nerve.
I ve just downloaded Skype - brilliant programme. Did a conference call to Anns mother and to her Aunt and just listened to what ensued on the computer. Both their phones rang and they couldnt work out who had rung who - they were getting quite tetchy with each other. I owned up far too soon though.
Wicked man. You should be had up under the Wireless Telegraphy Act, or whatever it's called. I bet they gave you down the banks afterwards. Great fun though!
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