One cold November morning I stumbled out of my house on my usual trip into work, the wind was bellowing around me and the sun was but a distant friend who had set sail for more welcoming shores. As I fumbled with my keys, a thin layer of liquid ran down my eyes, as my body tried as it could to give me some protection from the sneering wind at my face, like a thousand points of separate and varied pressure all trying to gain entry to my head. What a day this is I thought as I hurried down the long cobbled steps that I had known for so many years, that were almost as reassuring to me as the house I had lived in for half my life. At the gate I passed old Mr Hubbard, as I call him, who made some passing remark on the weather and some unfortunate ’sods’ car, I couldn’t help thinking that he did look old, and for a moment I reminised on the time we had not always been old mr this, or old mr that, as no doubt I was also now known by the same moniker, but simply Fiona or Fred. What is it they say about youth, that it is a blessed thing, unless actually you find yourself no-longer able to find the sentence you were searching for, and then you are just simply old. No exaggeration needed, just simply one word.
As I approached where I usually have my car parked I could not believe my eyes, a tree had fallen from the other side of the street and where my car once was alone, it was now joined by an elongated friend who had laid ever so lovingly upon, over and across. In the process turning my cherished and loved little beetle Mia into a carnaged mess. As the wind and the rain carried on battling down on me like a horde of elephants trying to fluff a cushion, I surveyed my car and its new found friend from across the road. A tear rolled down my cheek as I looked over what was once the smooth and supple body of my 20 year old volkswagon, now bent and twisted as though it had succumb to the conditions it was now experiencing.
As I struggled to regain my composure a young man not more than 20 out walking his dog stopped at an angle adjacent to the back of my car and let out a long lingering whistle, similar to a boiling kettle being slowly strangled.
“The owner’s not going to be pleased when he see’s that”
“I know” I said, as I tried my hardest to suppress my anger at the unfairness of the situation, up and down the street was full of cars, and yet this was my beetle’s destiny, crushed by an inanimate object. I quickly hurried down back into my house as I could feel the faint hint of despair in my stomach and rather than let it submerge me right there in the street I decided some privacy would be more churchhill-esque.
As I stumbled through the door and into my dimly lit passage there on the floor lay a leaflet with the words ‘PAYDAY ADVANCE’ in bold letters, as I pondered this and the quandry I was now in, the irony hit me like a metaphysical shovel across the coccyx, “I haven’t got any extra money until 2 weeks time” I exclaimed aloud shocking myself and the empty house around me.
As I sat and pondered this fact, my heart slowed to the speed of a lazy bus as it stops at the various points on its never-ending journey, my situation more bleak and dark than the weather I had just escaped from, although it wasn’t me that the tree had crashed into, the way I felt it may as well of been.
Before I knew what had come over me my melancholic mood had engulfed me totally, the car was essential for me to travel to work, I sat dumbfounded and amazed at the sheer effortless that my situation had gone from bad to disaster. I sat staring at the weather for the next 2 hours, to-ing and fro-ing in my mind over nieces and nephews, friends and even neighbours I could ask to borrow the money, but there was no-one. I had no-one I said to myself, yet this was how I liked it, just me, it had always been the same. This thought now stuck with me like a thorn in my side and then suddenly as though going from dark to light I saw the answer.
“I would get a payday loan”