by Hatch, Ben
‘What was her name?’ I say taking my notebook out.
‘Susan Carter.’
I write it down.
The shopkeeper doesn’t take credit cards but kindly lets me off a few pence when I haven’t enough change for our ham rolls and outside, Dinah says, ‘That’s weird – I don’t think Susan Carter takes Visa either.’
I take my notebook out and write this down too.
‘This box copy,’ says Dinah. ‘Are you planning to take the piss out of me in it by any chance?’
Back in the car we follow the woman’s directions to The Old Bull pub, where the show’s stars gather sometimes for Archers reunions. The timber-framed pub doesn’t open until lunchtime, but staring in through the windows Dinah starts to recount the heart-warming episode when Nelson lied about his age so he could take Mrs Perkins to an over-sixties tea dance, ‘even though he was only fifty-seven’.
‘You can’t stop yourself, can you?’ I say, taking my notebook out again. And soon she’s spotting them everywhere. The faint sound of a woman’s voice inside the pub – probably the cleaner’s – reminds her of Pat Archer’s. Whilst in the car park, a young guy doing a U-turn in his Citroën Xantia is, ‘just like Ed Grundy. He was saved from crack addiction after Oliver Sterling entrusted him with his herd of Guernseys. That enough to make fun of me?’
‘Plenty.’
Rejoining the A422, moving on now, reality and fiction begin to merge because The Archers comes on the air.
‘Whoa!’ we both say together.
Never mind that it’s 10 a.m., the time The Archers omnibus has been broadcast since about 1821; we stare at each other in wonderment as if it’s somehow our presence here that’s sparked the show into life. Dinah cocks her ear and leans forward, as we half expect the plot to swerve into one about two guidebook writers driving around Ambridge with not enough money for a Barney mag. (The actual show cliffhanger an hour later about some Brookfield cheese with a lower than average fat content is, of course, only marginally more exciting.)
And as we leave the village and head towards Kidderminster, exhilarated by the sunshine, the views of the Welsh Black Mountains in the distance and the fact that we’ve already got two attractions under our belts by 10.30 a.m., we wind the windows down and shout Archerisms at passers-by through my open window.
‘THINKS HE CAN TELL ME HOW TO RUN MY FARM!’… ‘I ’EAR WILLOW FARM’S UP FOR SALE’… ‘WHEN YOU’VE GOT TB IN YOUR HERD YOU’RE VIRTUALLY POWERLESS.’
‘Thank you, that was great,’ says Dinah.
‘Because the kids didn’t get out of the car.’
‘It’s the secret of the family-friendly attraction.’
‘Keep the kids in the car.’
Mostly we’re welcomed at attractions – most want to be in our guidebook. But occasionally the message hasn’t got through to the entrance gate, or the person I arranged free entry with is at lunch or away, or in some cases the regional tourist board PR has forgotten to clear it with the attraction. When this happens we flip them our Frommer’s business cards. Although, to be honest, we might as well show off our Blockbuster memberships. Although Frommer’s is big in America and still growing fast everywhere, it’s still relatively new here and we’re writing one of their first UK guidebooks. It means this is usually how it goes:
‘Hi, we’re from Frommer’s.’
‘Frommer’s?’
‘The guidebook people. They’re the equivalent of TimeOut in America. I rang a few weeks ago.’
The person behind the desk usually then makes a phone call. ‘Duncan. We’ve got two journalists from… [looking at us suspiciously] Where was it again? Flounder’s?’
‘No, a flounder is a type of flat fish best grilled and served with lemon and sage. We’re from Frommer’s. FROMMER’S.’
At the entrance to the West Midlands Safari and Leisure Park in Kidderminster today it’s a slight variation. ‘Sorry, did you say Frodo’s?’
I look at Dinah.
‘No, Frodo was the hobbit of the shire, who inherited Sauron’s ring from Bilbo Baggins and undertook the quest to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom. We’re from Frommer’s. FROMMER’S.’
The woman blinks once slowly, as if absorbing what I’ve said through her eyelids.
‘If either of us were Frodo, we’d be much shorter, have pointed ears and probably be talking to you in an elfish language.’
The woman, still staring at me, reaches for her phone. Dinah looks admonishingly my way.
‘Ben!’
‘Weeell, I’m tired of it.’
When Frodo woman comes off the phone she asks us to back out and wait by a grass verge. The manager’s coming down to see us.
‘That temper of yours!’
‘It’ll be fine.’
I park up. Dinah laughs nervously. ‘They won’t call Frommer’s, will they?’
‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
The manager arrives in a jeep. He talks to Frodo woman at the kiosk and occasionally looks across at us.
We brace ourselves as he strides over. I wind the window down, but instead of being angry the manager has two glossy brochures, which he leans into the Astra to pass to me. I see him take in the unidentifiable smell as he does so. The unidentifiable smell has been around a few days. Is it the rotting banana in the driver’s side pouch? Maybe. Is it coming from the stain on the middle of the back seat that might or might not be Dairylea Dunkers related? Could be. Or perhaps it’s the Tupperware container of spaghetti sauce between the front seats that’s crusted like dried paint? Another good guess. I watch the manager take in the empty sweet wrappers, the empty crisp packets and the filthy back-seat footwells knee-deep in toys, books and hardened bread crusts as I pass the brochures back to the kids.
‘Guys, can you thank the man?’
‘Thank you,’ they chime but, immune to these after three weeks on the road, they’re dropped unceremoniously to the floor with the rest of the rubbish.
‘They’ll probably look at them later.’
The manager withdraws his head and drinks in some fresh air. Embarrassed now, to change the subject, Dinah indicates the ‘Animal food for sale’ sign on the kiosk window and asks the manager what the food is, maybe expecting a bloodied side of impala to be tossed into our boot for £3.
‘One second,’ says the manager.
He returns to the kiosk. We watch Frodo woman hand him a bag of pellets for the llamas and giraffes that you can hand-feed through your car window.
‘See,’ I tell Dinah. ‘There’s nothing wrong.’
Back at the car, the manager, who doesn’t put his head through the window this time, I notice, hands me the pellets and, as he begins the spiel about conservation and breeding programmes that all zoos and safari parks nowadays trot out to assuage the guilt of locking up wild animals, in between nodding occasionally, I pour half the pellets into a different Tupperware pot for Phoebe and give Charlie what’s left in the bag.
‘Sorry about this,’ I say to the manager, as I pass them back to the kids. ‘Now you’re not to,’ and before I can say ‘eat them, Charlie. They’re for the animals,’ he’s popped one in his mouth.
The manager carries on talking about the snow leopard.
‘Grass and vitamins, probably. It’s not going to kill him, is it?’
The manager starts to reply.
‘Can I have one?’ says Phoebe.
‘They’re not sweets, guys. They’re for the animals.’
‘Just one. Please, Dad.’
‘Just one then.’
‘Ben!’ says Dinah.
‘I think we’d better go in now,’ I tell the manager.
He waves at Frodo woman, who opens the barrier and he’s still staring after us as we drive in, Dinah now madly knocking pellets from the children’s mouths.
‘Why on earth did you do that?’
‘He saw the mess in here and thought we were terrible parents. It was a joke about his preconceptions.’
‘Which you just reinforced by letting the kids eat llama pellets, Ben.’
‘They didn’t swallow any.’
‘Well, that’s OK then.’
‘We got in, didn’t we?’
In my day, winding car windows down in a safari park meant moustachioed rangers in stripy Land Rovers all over you with tranquiliser guns. Here we watch a 7-foot llama put its head so casually into the driver’s window of a Ford Focus to nibble food pellets from their dashboard, it actually looks from behind like it might be giving the family directions to The Discovery Trail.
We find a spot in the Big Cat Enclosure to make up our lunch – made slightly more difficult because, although we have sliced bread and ham, we forgot to pack a knife so have to spread the butter with the sharpened end of a carrot. It’s the sort of mishap we’re accustomed to now. It’s such a rush getting on the road each morning things get overlooked. In various hotel rooms so far we’ve already left behind Dinah’s Lancôme makeup remover, her hairdryer, an iPod charger, a telephone charger and my swimming trunks. The only advantage is it’s making the car progressively easier to pack.
Inverting the conventional safari concept, the lions wander over to observe us eating and we’re enjoying assigning them Brummie accents (‘Somewhere ’otter would ’ave been noyse, but act-shull-eee it’s roit bostin ’ere’) when one lion pats the rear bumper of the safari jeep beside us. It’s probably feeding time, but as the rest of the pride lollops over, Dinah panics that it’s the smell of our ham rolls (every lion’s favourite snack) that’s excited them. She locks all the doors, keeps the car in gear and starts issuing erroneous voice-wavering advice to Phoebe along the lines of, ‘Now Phoebe, lions are very dangerous so if ever you see one, you must never go up to it.’ Maybe useful if you’re born into a sub-Saharan African tribe. Sort of irrelevant when you live in East Sussex.
Dinah once read an article about how many deaths in plane crashes are caused by people’s brains freezing so that they forget simple things like how to take off safety belts and open doors. The crucial thing is to have a plan and execute it in an emergency, so now, and throughout White Tiger Ridge, she goes through what-if drills. What if Charlie choked on a Walkers Square crisp in the back seat? Would we get out and administer the Heimlich manoeuvre or summon a ranger by blasting our horn? What if Phoebe jumped out of the car – who would run after her and would that person remember to shut their door after them to protect the remaining family members inside? Phoebe, who for over a year was scared of, among other things, the moon, flies and kettle steam, and is still frightened of anything alive over the size of a one-pence piece, starts to freak out.
‘Phoebe, you will not get eaten. Mummy didn’t mean that about the ham, did you, Mummy?’
‘I’m just trying to keep everyone safe, my love.’
‘But we don’t want to scare anyone, do we?’ I say.
‘I didn’t mean to scare anyone.’
‘Can we go now, Daddy? I don’t like it.’
‘Yes, I think we’ve seen enough animals. Dinah? Shall we do the steam train now?’
‘So long as you’re not blaming me, Ben.’
‘Not at all. You were just passing on safety tips.’
The Severn Valley Railway is so tangibly not as exciting as the West Midlands Safari and Leisure Park; its highlight is a fleeting glimpse through the steam train window of a camel from the safari park. On the journey Phoebe gets pins and needles sitting cross-legged colouring in pictures from her Barney mag (or ‘my newspaper’ as she calls it) and Charlie, in search of entertainment, bangs his head hoofing up the narrow passageway between the seats to find children of a similar age to scratch in the face. And Steam Days magazine, the only reading matter for sale on the platform, isn’t even ironically amusing.
Outside Bewdley the kids wave at old ladies eating gammon in the passing dining train but that only quells the boredom for so long. The Engine House in Highley, further up the line, is a brand new museum that tells the story of the Severn Valley Railway. Here the kids get to dress up on the mail train, and Dinah and I have fun competing to overhear the most boring railway question asked of a SVR volunteer (the winner: ‘So tell me about the vacuum brake system’).
Normally I’m at the wheel because when Dinah drives she presses her face up against the windscreen like Mr Magoo and cannot look round when you talk to her – or else she gets lost, swerves into somebody else’s lane or, most scary of all, pulls at her hair while nervously chanting, ‘Concentrate, Dinah. Concentrate.’ But this afternoon she’s driving because I’m in the passenger seat writing up my notes, meaning it’s she who has to merge from the M5 onto the M42. Dinah will not mind me saying this but merging panics her. Her merging also panics me. In fact, if we’d known there was a merge, I’d have driven. But now there’s nothing for it. I put down my computer and pump her up.
‘OK. Be brave.’
She breathes in.
‘Just go for it.’
She breathes out.
‘Go for it,’ copies Phoebe, laughing in the back.
‘Phoebe, Mummy’s merging so…’
And as I once, controversially, taught her, Phoebe crosses herself once and puts the palms of her hands together.
‘Please, don’t make fun of me, Ben,’ says Dinah.
‘Phoebe! Stop that!’
After several minutes stationary near the end of the slip road being hooted at by other drivers, who swerve around us staring into our vehicle to see who can be this incompetent, Dinah begins her mantra, ‘You can do it, Dinah. You can do it.’
I offer more encouragement. ‘Remember, traffic coming towards you doesn’t want to smash into you just as much as you don’t want to smash into it. Just be brave.’
Dinah revs repeatedly in readiness for her launch into the motorway, yanks off the handbrake and then edges forward but each time stops herself after a shoulder check because of some speck on the horizon coming towards us. I try to remain calm, but finally, when she begins to reverse, ‘because I need more of a runup’, I pull on the handbrake and get out of the car. I walk round to her side and wrest control of the vehicle. I shunt her back into the passenger seat and climb in. Dinah’s furious. It’s the fault of the M42 and ‘lorry drivers who don’t give a shit’. ‘They wouldn’t let me in, Ben. You saw them. Nobody would let me in.’ It’s also my fault for never letting her drive at home. It means she’s rusty and anyway this sort of thing only ever happens when she’s with me. I make her nervous. If she hadn’t been nervous, she’d have merged no problem.
It’s early evening when we finally arrive at the train station. The street lights are coming on as we enter Birmingham city centre.
‘I feel sad now,’ says Dinah.
It’s something we haven’t spoken about all day.
‘Me too. Shall I say something?’
‘Guys?’ says Dinah looking in the rear-view mirror.
‘I have something to tell you,’ I say.
‘Daddy,’ Phoebe says. ‘Can you carry on talking to Mummy? I do like talking to you, but we’re watching the film.’
Dinah pauses the movie.
‘Guys, Mummy’s dropping me off at the station in a few minutes, OK? I’m going to see Granddad for a couple of days.’
‘Now?’ says Phoebe. ‘This night?’
‘When we get to the station, yes.’
‘Awwww. You won’t be able to read us a story.’
‘Will you be back in the morning?’ asks Phoebe.
‘No, sweetheart.’
‘What about the other morning? The one after that.’
‘Not the next morning either. But the one after that I will.’
Phoebe stares at her hand and pulls up one finger then another. She holds them up. ‘So two nights.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is Mummy staying with us?’ asks Charlie.
‘Of course,’ says Dinah.
‘Good,’ he says.
‘Now guys, when I’m gone I want you to b
e good for Mummy, OK?’
‘OK,’ says Phoebe, sounding disappointed.
‘When she merges what aren’t you going to do?’
Phoebe puts her hands together in prayer and we all laugh.
‘And Charlie? No running off, OK?’
‘OK,’ Charlie says equally sadly.
‘And guys, if you’re really good guess what – I’ll bring you back a present.’
Dinah turns into New Street and drives up to the loading and unloading bay and parks.
‘Got everything?’ she asks.
‘Yeah. Now you know what you’re doing?’
‘Yes,’ says Dinah.
‘Don’t try to do too much. Anything you manage by yourself is a bonus. And remember to take the camera off the landscape setting if you take any pictures.’
‘Phoebe?’ Dinah says.
‘What? Oh yes,’ says Phoebe.
She scrambles for her Dora bag, opens various pockets.
‘Phoebe has something, Daddy. It’s to give to Granddad.’
‘What do you mean? Something for Granddad?’
‘Don’t tell him, Mummy,’ says Phoebe, stiffening with frustration, still rooting. ‘It’s a ’prise.’
A few seconds later she smiles shyly as she passes me a card.
‘What’s this, Phoebe?’
She bites her lip.
On the front of the envelope it says ‘Granddad’.
‘Is that a card for Granddad?’
She nods.
‘And did you write “Granddad” by yourself?’
‘Mummy helped me.’
‘Phoebe, that’s so kind.’
‘It’s a picture of a rabbit,’ says Phoebe. She looks at Dinah. ‘And it’s got all its legs, Daddy.’
‘All of them?’
‘Count them if you like.’
‘Thank you, Phoebe.’
‘And I drew on it,’ says Charlie.
Phoebe leans forward. ‘He actually scribbled,’ she says with one hand over her mouth in the semblance of a whisper. ‘But we’re calling it drawing.’
‘Thank you, Charlie. And thank you, Phoebe. That’s lovely. Granddad will be very pleased.’
‘We did it while you were in the shower.’