Spectacles

by Sue Perkins

  I assumed the position.

  Anna:

  Right, so what would you like to achieve?

  Me:

  I’d like … Gosh, that’s a big one. Well, I’d like to be more free. More creative. Confident. Socially adept. I’d like a house, if I’m honest. I like the flat, but I’d love a house. I’d like not to be blocked. I’d –

  Anna:

  Right, Sue – do you want to pick just one?

  [It really is impossible to underestimate how annoying she finds me.]

  Me:

  OK. I’d like to be more creatively free.

  We established that my life’s timeline was above me, running from left to right, like a zip wire. I’m a fairly visual person, so I could see it clearly and it was easy to hop on board. Using this zip wire I could scoot along to points in my past and look down from a position of safety.

  Anna:

  Right, Sue, if you’d like to travel back to a point in time when you feel you are being blocked.

  There’s a nagging itch in my big toe. I can’t move to assuage it. I am too busy, too busy travelling down my own personal zip wire to the past.

  And I am there.

  Anna:

  Where are you?

  Me:

  I’m over my bedroom.

  Anna:

  How old are you?

  Me:

  I’m eight.

  Anna:

  Who’s in the bedroom with you?

  Me:

  My mum.

  Anna:

  OK, do you want to go down into the room …

  Me:

  I’m in the room.

  Anna:

  Right …

  Me:

  She’s SO annoying …

  My hands move to my hips and my jaw juts out like a chicken. I am the very model of petulance.

  Anna:

  And what are you talking about?

  Me:

  I’ve done a project. On the Romans.

  Anna:

  Right …

  Me:

  I could do a project on anything I wanted. That’s what the teacher said. So I’ve done it on Roman food. I’ve done a bunch of papier mâché grapes and a papier mâché dormouse.

  There is the sound of a snigger. Both levels of my consciousness choose to ignore it.

  Me:

  Mum’s saying that it isn’t right. That the perspective isn’t right and that the dormouse is way too big.

  Anna:

  OK, Sue, listen to my voice. Now let’s try to turn the colour down on the scene …

  Me:

  Shut up! I’m busy talking to my mum. I am SO angry. I can do a project on anything I want and I want to do it on Roman food and it doesn’t matter that the dormouse is three times the size of a bunch of grapes because I have been told I can do anything I want …

  Fifteen minutes later I am hoarse, arguing with a mother in a tight perm and pink jogging suit who hasn’t existed for thirty-five years. Anna’s interventions are now becoming desperate.

  Anna:

  And now let’s move upwards, can you do that?

  Me:

  Yes.

  Anna:

  OK then, let’s go upwards – back to your safe place, and look down on the scene from above. Does that seem better?

  Me:

  Yes.

  Anna:

  [palpable relief in her voice] Thank God.

  Me:

  Oh, hang on – no.

  Anna:

  Christ! [Now despair] Do you want to go back down?

  Me:

  Yes.

  And I’m in my childhood bedroom again. Hands on hips, locked in an eternal battle of wills with Ann Perkins.

  Me:

  It doesn’t matter that the grapes are blue! I can do anything I want! I can do anything I want! The teacher said! The grapes could be orange or red or white …

  Another ten minutes pass. I am exhausted and grow quiet. Anna leads me back onto the zip wire and I look down at myself and my mum. I feel calm. Resolved.

  Anna:

  OK, now let’s move along the years.

  Me:

  Stop!

  We’ve barely moved six months or so.

  Anna:

  [muttering] Give me strength … What is it? How old are you?

  Me:

  I’m eight and a half.

  Anna:

  What’s happened?

  Me:

  I’ve done a project on drums. I can do anything I want, and I’ve chosen drums. She’s saying the snare drum’s too big …

  We never did timeline regression again. Shortly after that Anna stopped using me as a guinea pig and started practising on her friend Lesley. Now she is fully qualified and will be the most amazing therapist. Even better, I no longer have to be the trial-and-error brain she practises on. These days, when we row, I don’t have to spend hours in a trance state – I can just be like everyone else. I can storm off to the pub, have a drink and crawl back later full of regret.

  But every so often I get the strangest feeling, like a ball of heavy metal in my left hand, weighing me down.

  It’s All Over the Front Page

  I have ‘issues’ with driving.* When everyone else at school turned seventeen, they seemed to absorb the Highway Code through osmosis and instantly understand the multitasking of mirror, signal and manoeuvre. They’d sail through their parallel parks and three-point-turns and were, in a heartbeat, racing to exotic places like Woldingham, Westerham and West Wickham. I want to go to West Wickham! I’d think while sitting red-faced atop my rusty Chopper, chain-smoking and contemplating the slight incline home.

  The only compensation for being a non-driver was that I could drink myself unconscious every night of the week and rely on my boyfriend Rob for transportation home. Rob owned a diarrhoea-coloured Datsun Cherry, the only vehicle on earth that could make the idea of walking preferable to a teenager. You’d hear it before you could see it. Hell, you could smell it before you could see it. His arrival was heralded by the roar of ripped clutch and the reek of a benzo-cloud of horror hydrocarbons.

  ‘Yes, everyone!’ I’d shout to bystanders. ‘This is MY BOYFRIEND! He drives the car of a Latin-teaching MOT-failing sex offender! Deal with it!’

  I am in denial about how many times I failed my driving test. It may be as few as three, it may be as many as six. I care not. It’s like your A levels. Nobody asks you about the results until you’re in court.

  If the test had been purely academic, I’d have passed with flying colours. Annoyingly there’s this practical section, where you actually have to get in a car. All my te
sts started well enough. I managed to get into the correct side of the vehicle, the side by the steering wheel, and turn the key in the ignition. But after that it all went downhill. As did I – usually during the hill-start portion of the exam. There would be the inevitable squelch of tyre against kerb, the nudge of bumper on bollard, the crack of examiner’s head against windscreen – those telltale signs that my vehicular dreams were over and that once again I’d be getting the night bus home.

  One reason for my consistent failure may have been my eyesight. My right eye has the vision of a sparrowhawk; my left, however, is a mess. I had an accident as a kid, and it’s now a short-sighted ball of jelly with peripheral double vision. I’m not sure if they do something as basic as this now, but the first part of the driving test used to be a bit like an eye exam. You had to read the number plate on the car in front of you, just so they could check you had eyes that worked. It’s a fairly commonsensical starting point for a test in my opinion, but one I had to try and get around. I was in denial and too vain to get a pair of glasses, so my eyes had bewilderingly different depths of focus. In order to get a crisp image, I had to cup my left eye so that the sparrowhawk side of me could go about its business. However, it proved quite hard to do this without alerting the attention of the examiner. On my first test I overdid it and looked like a budget pirate. The sight of me, Cyclops, palm over one eye, did nothing to instil confidence in him. Next time I was more subtle – pretending I was scratching my eyebrow. The third I pretended to be winking at a passing builder while recording the plate details.

  I finally passed my test at the age of twenty-nine and a bit. By which I mean thirty. Mel and I sat our exams in the same week, and it is still a bone of contention between us that I scored one mark higher than her in the written test. (I knew the depth of tread that tyres need, she didn’t. It doesn’t matter.*)

  Just because I’m not good at driving, doesn’t mean I don’t like driving. My love of motoring stems from when I was seven years old. Our road was on a small incline, and our house sat at the very top. Our car, as you know, was always parked half-in and half-out of the garage, due to the construction issues outlined earlier. Having said that, even if the garage had been built to the correct dimensions, and the car could have fitted inside, I still believe Mum would have parked the car where she could see it. There are two possible explanations for this.

  a. Mum adheres to the now outdated Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which posits that an object exists in simultaneous states until observed. Thus, if the car was parked inside the garage, it could be both safe and stolen. By observing the car half-out of the garage, Mum can maintain the knowledge the car is safe.

  b. Mum is nuts.

  I’m digressing. So, I’m seven. My mum is taking my brother and me somewhere – judo, ballet or some combination of the two – but she has forgotten something and rushes back to the house. I climb into the driver’s seat. My brother climbs into the passenger seat next to me.

  ‘We’re going to do driving,’ I say, leaning right into his face.

  ‘OK,’ he says, playing along as always.

  I have been studying my parents for years. I know what to do. It takes all my strength, and both hands, to lift the handbrake and let it fall again. But I manage. Slowly the wheels turn, gaining momentum as we reverse.

  ‘We’re doing driving,’ I tell David.

  ‘OK’, he says, head pressed back into the seat.

  I see Mum coming down the steps of the house. Then I see her seeing us. Her mouth widens into a scream. It all goes a bit slo-mo from there.

  I still remember the thrill of it. The acceleration. The slow turn of the steering wheel. The bump as we crash into the neighbour’s wall, the crumble of brick against metal until we finally come to a halt. The screaming. The terrible screaming. It’s a series of sensations I’ve relived several times since then – although the thrill is somewhat lessened when you’re the one who has to pay the bill.

  So, at the tender age of twenty-nine, I was officially allowed on the roads. To celebrate the occasion I bought an ex-boyfriend’s car – a turd-green Spanish ringer which he, for some reason, appeared very keen to get rid of.

  The week after my test I thought I’d take my baby for a spin, so I hopped in and turned the key in the ignition. Radio 1 blared from the speakers so loudly I couldn’t hear myself think. Perfect. I put the car into reverse, floored the clutch and pumped the accelerator. Nothing. I pumped again – couldn’t hear a sausage. So I lifted the handbrake and put the pedal to the metal. Still nothing. Something must be wrong. I lifted the clutch a tad, and that was when it happened. The car lurched back with such force I was in danger of severing my head with my own jowls. I smashed into the car behind, then, panicking, removed both feet from the pedals and promptly stalled.

  The car behind belonged to my wonderful mate Neil, who had heard the roar of an engine and the thump of heavy house music and come to take a look just in time to see a cloud of smoke billowing from my exhaust as I hurtled backwards at breakneck speed. I don’t know exactly what happens when you reverse at full speed into a stationary car. But I do know how much it costs.

  £1,200

  Every year since then I have managed to put on a similarly cretinous display. I have reversed into fork-lift trucks, boulders and gates. For me the bumpers of a car exist solely to provide a handy first-hand indicator of just how close you are to an object.

  But this year I excelled myself. I didn’t just stick to my car.

  POO-ETRY IN MOTION

  One Friday night I planned to collect my surviving dog, Parker, from the farm where she stayed when I was working. The idea was then for Anna and myself to carry on and have a weekend away in the West Country. There was just one slight problem.

  Me:

  Sweetie …

  Anna:

  You never call me sweetie. What do you want?

  Me:

  Can we take your car this weekend?

  Anna:

  Why can’t we take yours?

  Me:

  It’s in the garage getting serviced, and I can’t be bothered to pick it up. Pleeeease …

  Anna:

  [loud and forceful exhalation] I’ve just had it valeted. I love Parker, but she smells.

  Me:

  No she doesn’t!*

  Anna:

  She really does …

  Me:

  Listen, she’ll be on her blanket buckled up on the back seat. You won’t even know she’s there …

  We arrived at the farm and Parker seemed her usual self, namely emotionally disconnected and food-obsessed. I clipped her into her seat belt on the back seat and we all got under way.

  Half an hour into the onward journey I became aware of the dog circling on the back seat and pulling on her lead. Then came a wave of heavy stink – gastric, fecal – all the smells you never want to smell in a confined space.

  Anna:

  Your dog has just thrown up.

  Me:

  [instantly defensive] Oh, FFS!

  Anna:

  [peering round] It’s all over her blanket.

  Me:

  [even more defensive] Right. Right! Well I’ll pull into the service station and sort it out then. Jesus!

  BRIDGWATER SERVICES

  is my least favourite service station o
n the M5. It has an air of menace that not even the finest Greggs Baked Bean Lattice can alleviate. Whereas most service-area car parks are open to the air and spacious, this is cramped and concrete. The parking is free, as is the overpowering stench of piss that greets you upon leaving your vehicle.

  I pulled in, whipped Parker’s puke-sodden blanket out of the car and popped it in a bin. Thankfully Anna’s upholstery was untouched. Phew. I went off to grab us some sandwiches, which we ate in an uncomfortable silence in the front seat. I was a ticking time bomb of rage. I love my dog. I wanted Anna to love my dog. Why, therefore, had my dog decided to vomit in her car? Did she want Anna to hate her?

  After wolfing down something that claimed to be a crayfish bap, we bickered about where to recycle the leftovers. I was a dick. The bicker quickly developed into a full-blown row – so full-blown that we didn’t notice the dog panting in the back.

  We got under way again and managed around ten or so miles before we noticed Parker’s heavy breathing – gusts of stale stomach air pumping onto the back of our necks. Before long, that wave of sick/shit was back.

  Anna:

  She’s done it again.

  Me:

  Fuck!

  I turn round to see a bile-coated turd nestled into the seat, sticky brown liquid oozing into the fabric.

  Anna: