phantom biscuit tins

[freckles_and_doubt]

I caught myself doing a strange thing yesterday: I climbed into my car to go to the gym, and tried to open the window by pulling out a knob on the window base and sliding it away from me instead of reaching down to wind the handle. The knob/slide bit is the somewhat rudimentary mechanism in a Renault 4, not the Golf I've been driving for nearly three years now. I haven't driven a Renault 4 for over six years, since I crashed my late, much-loved and lamented Biscuit Tin in a moment of early-morning fog on my way up to campus¹.

(Now I'm wishing I had a Biscuit Tin photo to post. I do have photos, but they're on conventional film, not digital, and the Evil Landlord's scanner had a hissy fit when he got his new computer and defiantly refuses to be found by any upstart new version of Windows. I can see its point, actually. But it means no photos, which is sad, as a small blue box-like vehicle which made the trek from Harare to Cape Town driven by me and my mother, is worth commemorating).

Anyway, she says, heading herself sharply off at the digressive pass, I have no idea why muscle-memory should suddenly be regressing six years to unconsciously perform a motion so long out of date - I don't think I even did that when I first got my new car. I can only link it to a slightly odd dream I had a few nights back, in which I saw my Biscuit Tin, all new and blue and shiny but lacking a number plate, driving down the road around the corner from our house. I knew immediately that the mechanic had fixed it up and sold it off without telling me, and accosted the dodgy-looking drivers, who promptly fled in all directions. I then drove it triumphantly home and hid it in the garden in case they came looking for it.

But as to precisely why my subconscious is all nostalgic for my car, it's anybody's guess. Except that I loved that car. I still miss her. I guess my body is simply reminding me of the fact.

¹ The car was not quite a write-off, but after the mechanic had had it for two years and a nervous breakdown and still hadn't done anything to sort it out, I more or less gave up. For all I know the poor little vehicle is still sitting in his garage in Kalk Bay, with a giant cannon on top of it², amid the dismembered bits of other elderly Renaults. A good Renault mechanic is hard to find in these climes, particularly with older models, but there are limits.

² Polystyrene stage prop. Very surreal.³

³ Breaking out in footnotes, scroob must be in town...

Comments

[nimnod.livejournal.com]

Were/are you Zimbabwean? I was born in Harare.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, indeedy. Born in Bulawayo, lived all over as my dad was in agricultural research and we moved around a lot. Came down to CT for undergrad, adopted city, lived happily ever after. Occasionally.

Did you leave as a small child?

[nimnod.livejournal.com]

Yeah, left aged 2. We went back for the full duration of every single holiday until I was about 8, though- my Dad was very homesick - so I think of Harare as a second home. I still have cousins there and my husband's family immediate live there too.