A Hare's Breath 1 - The Van

A Hare’s Breath 1 - The Van

My daddy has a van. He says it’s a grand wee van of the Morris 1000 class and it was made in Dublin not so long since. It’s white with Glover Site Investigation painted on the sides and the back doors in blue joined-up writing. I asked him what the writing means and he said it’s the name of the man that he works for and he said the man said he was to use the van for going to his work but if he keeps it clean he can use it also when he’s not going to his work. Some of the blue writing is a telephone number for if there’s anyone standing in the street in Ballymoney where we live when my daddy drives by who thinks they might want my daddy and his friends to do a bit of work for them. My daddy said you never know.

When I told my friend Bobby about the white Morris 1000 van he said that Mr Investigation is an altogether strange name for a man and he might be a detective but he must be a nice man to go giving the loan of a lovely white Morris 1000 van to the likes of my daddy. Bobby asked me if my daddy keeps it clean like Mr Investigation told him to and then I was worried because to tell the truth he doesn’t.

My daddy said that Mr Investigation said that the loan of the van was one of the perks of my daddy’s job but my mammy said she didn’t see it that way at all. She said she didn’t like the van and that when we go out in it it’s like having Mr Whippy driving us about the lovely County Antrim countryside in his ice cream van. My mammy said that she was missing the nice car that was one of the perks of the last job my daddy had before we moved to Ballymoney. It was a Vauxhall Viva with a 1966 registration number and everybody said it was very stylish and biscuit-coloured but I couldn’t see what sort of biscuit they were talking about. It looked nothing like a ginger nut or a custard cream. They must have meant one of those biscuits that they have in Stewart’s supermarket in the Main Street that my mammy said we can’t have because we’re not made of money.

In the front of the van there’s two seats. One of them is for my daddy who is always the driver and the other one’s for my mammy who is usually the passenger but sometimes I’m the passenger when my mammy hates the van so much that she won’t go out in it. The front seats are made of leather. The Vauxhall Viva we used to have had seats made of plastic that would hurt a bit when the backs of my legs stuck to them on the hot days when it smelled like the dry cleaning shop so we could hardly breathe in it.

When we got the van there were no seats at all in the back so my daddy made some out of strips of steel that are like grownups’ Meccano fixed together with nuts and bolts. We’ve some of the grownups’ Meccano in the shed too that he made into shelves for keeping the things that my mammy said we’ll never ever use so he might as well have just thrown the things away and saved himself the trouble. The steel seats in the back of the van have wooden bits to sit on instead of leather or plastic. The wood hurts the backs of my legs more than the hot plastic in the Vauxhall Viva did because it has splinters in it. The steel bits don’t usually hurt except when I cut my hands on the rough edges and my fingers bleed. I try not to touch the steel because if I wipe the blood on my trousers my mammy shouts at me and says she only washed them two days ago. It’s funny how of all the clothes she’s ever washed she always says she only washed them two days ago. She said she didn’t think it was very funny at all.  

Sometimes when we’re going about the lovely County Antrim countryside in the white Morris 1000 van me and my sister fall off the seats in the back when my daddy has to make it stop suddenly because of some eejit arsing about in the road or we go round a big bend that wasn’t there the last time we went that way because if it had been he’d have known about it. But we’re grand because there’s usually some big bits of machinery in there with us that we can cling on to so we don’t slide about all over the place on the floor. I asked my daddy what the machinery is for. He said it’s surveyor’s drilling equipment for boring rock samples out of the ground. I wanted to know how he knew which rock samples were boring and which ones were interesting but he had already told me I was asking too many questions.  My mammy said that another perk of my daddy’s job was that we never went short of rock samples.

We’ve got a big old dog and when it comes out with us in the white Morris 1000 van it lies on an old curtain on the floor in the back where me and my sister are sitting. I think the curtain looks more comfortable than our seats made from wood and grownups’ Meccano but my mammy said we can’t sit on the old curtain because it’s covered with dog hairs and aren’t we filthy enough already from the machinery that we have to cling onto when the car has to stop suddenly or go round a big bend in the road. The dog never has to worry about falling off its seat and it never has to worry about explaining cuts in its hands and splinters in the backs of its legs to the other weans in our street and round about or to Mrs Morrison the teacher at the school.

My daddy said the van’s good enough because it’s better than going about the place on the bus or on a bicycle. My mammy said the van’s a death trap and a filthy one at that. My sister and the dog don’t pass remarks at all so I don’t know what they think about it. But I love it. I told my mammy that I love the white Morris 1000 van and that she should love it too because we have an adventure every time we go out in it. She said she agreed with me because we go within a hair’s breadth of a hospital bed every time we’re in the damned thing but she’s wrong because we only drive past the Robinson Hospital on the Newall Road when we’re going to Ballycastle or thereabouts.

Sometimes I look out of the windows that are in the back doors of the white Morris 1000 van and wave at the drivers of the cars on the road behind us. Sometimes I see another Morris 1000 van and I wonder if its driver’s weans have cuts on their hands and splinters in the backs of their legs like me and my sister. I also wonder what it must be like to be going about the lovely County Antrim countryside in a black Morris 1000 van or a green one.

Other times the windows at the back are too filthy for me to see out of so I just sit and look at my sister and the dog and the cuts on my hands and the boring machinery. Some of the pieces look like the machine called the Mole that they have in Thunderbirds on the television for making tunnels to get to people who are trapped in a major disaster under the ground.

I imagine that Glover Site Investigation is the same as the International Rescue organisation that Scott and Virgil and all the other people in the Tracy family in Thunderbirds work for. What a rare old perk of the job that must be to go riding about the place in one of those big Thunderbirds aeroplane rocket things. I read in the TV Century 21 comic that when Thunderbird 2 is flying off to a major disaster it rattles along at two thousand miles an hour and it’s never filthy. I wonder if Scott and Virgil have a big old dog that goes with them for a wee run out to the major disasters.

The back of my daddy’s white Morris 1000 van looks a bit like the things called pods that Thunderbird 2 has for carrying machines like the Mole about in when it’s on its way to a major disaster. Every time my daddy starts the engine of the white Morris 1000 van he asks us all if we’re alright and I say F.A.B. Virgil and he’s supposed to say Thunderbirds are go! but he never does, probably because he’s just lit up a cigarette. Perhaps he’s wanting to say Glover Site Investigation are go! but he’s a wee bit shy about it.

I like looking out of windows. The things on the outside of a window are always more interesting than the things on the inside. When I told my mammy this she said that the grass is always greener on the other side and she’s right because there’s no grass at all inside our house but outside at the front there’s a big field that all the weans in our street and round about play football on and everyone calls it the Green because of the colour that’s in it. Sometimes I look out of my bedroom window in the night and when the Moon’s shining on the Green I see two big hares running about together and playing like it was the middle of the day. I love our dog and our budgie, and I loved our two goldfish for the three days that they were alive after we bought them from a shop in Belfast, but wouldn’t it be grand to have a couple of gorgeous big hares as friends to play with? My daddy said the goldfish died because they were missing Belfast and we shouldn’t have taken them away from their natural habitat.

My friend Bobby said he likes my daddy’s white Morris 1000 van because he sometimes comes with us for a wee run out in it to the beach at Magilligan Point of a Sunday and he likes Thunderbirds. But the other weans in our street and round about laugh and make jokes when they see it. They shout there goes the poor wee boy who goes about in his daddy’s white Morris 1000 van that looks like a Mr Whippy van and I’ll have the chopped nuts and a wee drop of monkey’s blood for an extra ha’penny on my ice if it’s not a bother to you when they see me. I don’t know why they laugh because many of their daddies don’t have any class of a car or a van at all, but some of them have a tractor.

Image: My own photograph of my own pre-decimalisation Irish threepenny piece with a hare on it that’s been faffed about with for ages using post-decimalisation photo-editing software on my own computer.

The next part:

A Hare's Breath 2 - The Bicycle