Deliverance

The site is a hive of activity. Office staff behind their glass redoubts prepare documents. Log books, MoTs, service histories, handbooks and condition reports, all sorted and prepared for a day of frantic transaction. In the huge covered parking shed it's our task to get the cars sorted into lot order; bumper to bumper and row after row of every make and model imaginable. It's 1970. I'm skint, it's the Easter holidays and I'm casual labour.

It's the monthly car auction, where hundreds of second hand vehicles will be transferred from one ownership to another in just two frantic hours. A masterclass of bemusing repartee by a man sitting behind a rostrum in a terraced arena, spewing lightning fast motor speak through a microphone to the trade's competing gladiators. Mileage, lineage, heritage, vintage, usage and plumage, all declared in one fluent package, as car after car enters, smiles, curtsies, is bid upon, and departs. Two dizzying minutes in the limelight before a slight nod of the head seals each deal. 

Exhaust fumes hang in the air, catching the back of the throat as cars are started and revved and shunted into position. We fumble for the hidden bonnet release catches of those stubborn non-starters, and we drag the wheeled battery pack across to administer the necessary first aid, sparking dead terminals back into life. We manoeuvre into line-up position before switching off, closing the door and moving on to the next, knowing full well that in an hour's time when the auction begins, we'll have to do exactly the same again.

And while we busy ourselves, dealers apply last minute titivation to their auction entries with wondrous elixirs created to disguise the passage of time. T-Cut, Touch-Up, Turtle Wax and Tyre-Black, all skilfully applied by the trade's seasoned make-up artists. As they work their magic, hopeful buyers squeeze their knees between almost-touching bumpers as they switch their attention from one polished exhibit to the next, overwhelmed by seemingly unlimited temptation. 

The seasoned trader is readily recognised amongst the amateurs. He will ignore the polished veneers and scrutinise the information sheet on the windscreen. He'll then slide into the driver's seat, scan the interior and breath in deeply through his nose. This ten second routine will tell him all he needs to know of the vehicle's previous life. If he climbs out, closes the door and checks his Glass's Guide for its current value, you know he's going to bid on it in the arena.
 
As this pre-sale fore play is taking place, bidders, sellers and spectators continue to arrive from all over the country. Traders with hefty cheque books. A father looking for his daughter's first little runabout. A tyre kicker passing an afternoon pretending. The guy looking for a cheap doer-upper to work on at week-ends. All part of the mix that will create a toxic, fume filled spectacle of irresistible theatre.

The cafeteria is smoke filled and humming with activity. Buyers and sellers are here, from the major dealerships to the small back street traders. Silky pros, opportunist wide-boys and innocent civilians, all sipping their coffee while recounting the half truths of their latest killings in the second hand motor trade. A minefield in which those without wit or wisdom can often lose both an arm and a leg. The atmosphere is heavy with tempered expectation and at exactly the appointed hour, the speaker system bursts into life, the cafeteria slowly empties and the circus begins.

One after the other, we filter vehicles through into the sales arena where we are immediately surrounded by bidders. The door is snatched open and, without acknowledging your presence, a nicotine marinated dealer leans across you to glare at dials and warning lights. Without eye contact or introduction or apology, he demands information about clutch bite or handbrake travel while lifting floor mats and pulling the bonnet release catch. And all the while, the auctioneer raps his monotone through a public address system so loud that his words agitate the fume laden atmosphere.  

And then the hammer falls and the spotlight shifts and we are finished with. The Maxi, the Marina and the exotic Morgan, left to recover their dignity in a distant corner of the great shed and soon to be delivered into new servitude in Todmorden or Driffield or Moreton-in-Marsh. The passion and intensity of the moment is over as motor after motor chugs, growls, splutters and putters back from the arena to sulk quietly in a distant corner. The revving stops, the pa system dies and a through breeze slowly ushers the toxic fumes out of the building. Focus now falls on delivery.

* * * 

The name Daventry must have appeared before me at some stage in my early life, but if it had, it certainly never registered. After all, what would a young Yorkshire lad do with such a word? But there it was, at number six on the list pinned to the noticeboard by the window and offering the princely sum of £12 in cash. I rang home from the public call box in the foyer and told my wife about the potential of an extra £12. She asked me where Daventry was and what time I'd be home. I didn't know the answer to either question.

After every auction came the opportunity for any casual staff to join the ranks of the delivery drivers. A team of regulars who mysteriously appeared from the ether to drive auctioned vehicles to destinations in the UK determined by the buyer. I was a young primary school teacher, with a wife and a new baby daughter and working here in the holidays to supplement a meagre teaching salary. The opportunity for extra cash was irresistible and I joined the queue by the despatch window to claim my prize. Daventry translated as £12 in cash, and that sum represented a week's teaching salary.

Within minutes I had a folder of documents, a small bunch of keys, front and rear trade plates and the £12 in cash, and I set off innocently in search of Lot 237, now at rest somewhere in the big shed. The rules were simple; getting the car to its destination and yourself back home again was entirely your problem, as were any costs incurred in the process. Any petrol your vehicle required was either already in the tank or your responsibility to put it there. Getting yourself back home would be an exercise in initiative, good fortune and sheer determination.

Lot 237 turned out to be a huge Mark10 Jaguar saloon, the sort driven by High Court Judges and Littlewoods Pools winners in 1970s Britain, and my heart sank. This may well be the only occasion I would ever get the pleasure of driving such an opulent barge, but at what cost. At best it would probably do fifteen miles to the gallon, petrol was 2s-6p a gallon and I still had no idea where Daventry was. I unlocked it, slid into the huge leather driver's armchair and  switched on the ignition with genuine trepidation. The fuel needle flicked up to half full and I beat the steering wheel with the heels of my hands out of pure relief. Daventry here we come.

The combination of a days pay, the extra £12 for this excursion and driving a top of the range luxury limo down the M1 was a heady mix. The old AA handbook I'd found in the walnut fronted glove compartment told me that my journey was just in excess of a hundred miles and should take me about two and a half hours. And indeed it did, cruising down the motorway like the king of the road, more than content with the relief this day's good fortune would bring to our family budget. I switched on the radio and sang along to the hit parade number one, Bridge over Troubled Waters, little realising how soon the sentiments of the song would apply to me.

The fuel needle hovered just above empty as I pulled up on the dealership  forecourt in Daventry and followed my instructions to lock the car and shove the document folder and ignition keys through the office letter box. Having done so, I slipped into my overcoat, tucked the trade plates under my arm, looked around me and wondered what the hell I was going to do now. It was surprisingly chilly for early April, it was just after seven o'clock, it was falling dark and home suddenly felt a very long way away. I stopped a passing couple and asked them where the railway station was. They smiled before informing me that it had closed in 1958. 

Undeterred by being twelve years late for the train, I set off on foot, confident that my student lift-thumbing experiences would stand me in good stead and that getting back across to the M1 and speeding homewards wouldn't be too much of a problem. Within thirty minutes or so I had been delivered within touching distance of the motorway by a van driver on his way to Northampton with a cargo of Cornish Pasties. I've often reflected on this short lived, rather bizarre experience over the ensuing years when the words Daventry, Cornish Pasties and Northampton roll around in my mind in desperate search of a home. I usually put the experience to bed with the words Churchill used to describe Russia in 1939 - a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Trudging around the Nottingham Ring Road at two o'clock in the morning is not to be recommended, but a lot of walking along the A5, a Robin Reliant into Tamworth town centre, the back seat of a Hillman Imp with two teenagers returning from a Kinks concert in Birmingham, and then the noisy cab of a brewery wagon from Burton-on-Trent, had put me there. It was now very cold, and with my coat collar up around my ears, my hands buried deep into my pockets and the trade plates tucked into my waist-band, I just kept moving, holding out my arm and hoping for a miracle. Having now retreated into a trance-like state of cold and despair, I was suddenly made aware of a car having pulled along side me and my spirits soared.

The Nottinghamshire Constabulary Panda car contained two very smug looking occupants, clearly at ease in their comfortable habitat. The passenger side bear wound down his window and I could feel the escaping warmth as it fled past me. In answer to their enquiries, I described my sorry plight to them and unbuttoned my coat to reveal the body-temperature trade plates. Looking suitably amused by my predicament and now convinced I wasn't a 'wrong 'un, up to no good at this time of a morning', they scoffed at my request for a lift and disappeared into the night.

I climbed cautiously down from the cab of the articulated tanker at 6.45a.m. outside the entrance to the Associated Dairies milk factory at Hunslet, Leeds, and waved a farewell-and-thank-you up to Ken as he steered his rig into the complex. We had just kept each other awake since the Nottingham Ring Road.

The sun had risen on a new day, and all I wanted to do now was retrieve my car from the auction site a couple of miles away and drive home. I set off walking, and as I walked I thought back through the previous twenty four hours and everything it had entailed. I had been so easily lured into what now had proved to be a thoughtless and even reckless venture for the sake of £12 in cash. I had set off totally unprepared and without any real thought for the logistics of the task, and there were times in the early hours of the morning when I was nearly overcome by my own stupidity. As a young teacher, I had just taught myself a lesson I would never forget in which extremely thoughtless delivery had thankfully ended in very fortunate deliverance.