Vehicles breakdown but being a non-driver, I’d never experienced this trauma… UNTIL RECENTLY! I finally have a breakdown story with my scooter guys… buckle up.
Going my merry little way along a path I take regularly, and I was greeted with some recently added grit. Now this grit wasn’t a thin layer (as initially thought before going over it), ooooooohhh no, it was like entering quicksand. As I went along it I was sinking further and further in whilst Simon (my scooter) was gradually slowing down until he eventually stopped. It didn’t just stop, IT STOPPED, knocking the power out. Turning the key back and forth in the hope the power would come back on, taking a look underneath to see if anything had got jammed – gradually panicking as I didn’t have a clue what I was looking at, I had entered one of those what.the.actual.f*ck.do.i.do moments. Just sat there, in the middle of a country park, nowhere near a road and next to no civilisation in sight (OK dramatic…but I left like the last women on earth), I obviously burst out crying having an emotional breakdown, I rang the friend that I had just left who knocked some rational thinking into me and advised me to push the scooter to the nearest roadside so someone could actually get to me (me and said friend had been having a few drinks in her garden so her driving to me would have been a DUI palaver that really didn’t need to be added to this situation). Not to worry though, I had a few lucky candidates lined up to rescue me but right now I need to get to a roadside, any, the M1 rescue lane will do at this point.
Looking like a complete damsel in distress, crying with smudged mascara and hobbling along pushing the scooter, I managed about a metre until a group of lads who were around 15/16 yrs. old asked if I needed some help (honestly don’t know what gave it away), and another emotional breakdown emerged at their kindness and offer of assistance. Definitely got further than a metre with their help; I say that, I didn’t do anything to help other than just shuffle alongside them wiping my tears away with a random tissue that I found in my bag, which I think my niece had wiped her snotty nose on at some point this year, but whatevs. Needless to say, these group of lads pushed my scooter for about 5 minutes until an access point for a car was reached, and I showered them with my gratitude. I do however wonder what they told their Mothers about this when they got home.
I rang my Dad who I had selected as the winner of this rescue operation and I had yet another emotional breakdown to him about the whole situation, I think I was at around breakdown number 4 at this point. 32 and a girl will always need her Dad. Even if he was in the middle of a bike ride at this point and went straight back home to get his car, bless him. Such a bayyyybe. This access point I was at was a public farm, so I sat there on my scooter contemplating my life and the many, many other ridiculous situations that I have found myself in, a self-reflection that I feel was needed. I had a bottle of gin in the basket on my scooter to top this whole situation off and it took all my strength not to whip it out and sit there guzzling it. **just to clarify that this is not a permanent staple in my basket, I was returning from a friends, remember. You can just imagine the scene, a tipsy, sunburnt teary mess with puffed eyes chilling on a farm with her bottle of gin.
After around 25 mins my Dad pulled up, which if it was dark would have been one of those headlight situations of hope appearing along the horizon, coming at you with a very apt soundtrack of Mariah Careys ‘Hero’. Prepared with his little car tool kit, which wasn’t needed to be fair, just a few pokes and prods of the scooter, pulling out some grit and a few twigs, and it started back up again. We had a good ole’ catch up whilst we were at it as lockdown had prevented this … I can’t think of a better location and situation for a post lockdown reunion, can you?
To conclude. I’m rather crap when faced with these kind of adult situations.
The end.
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