I had done my stint as a field engineer, always on the road and out in all weathers and was settling down and even contemplating marriage to the luscious Kate. Least ways the relationship was at the stage where we couldn't bear to be apart and couldn't keep our hands off each other.
You can guess that when the cold weather hit, several engineers where off the road due to illness and the rest were working 26 hour days, or so they claimed, I was not best pleased when one of our newest and potentially largest customers rang in with a problem.
OK, I am not a company man, I won’t bend over with my pants round my ankles just to keep in with the bosses, but I was aware of the financial climate and the mortgages of the guys out on the road.
I had a good idea of the cause of the problem and reckoned that if I set off straight away I could spend the night in a local hotel, fix the problem on Friday morning and be home and in the arms, and hopefully the bed of Kate by Friday evening.
We were spread so thinly that if anything else cropped up my able side kick Angie was just as capable, or if Iam honest, more capable than me at putting off customers until the following week so I had no real qualms about leaving the office for a day.
The Drive Down
The drive down was uneventful and I had little trouble finding a half decent pub who were happy to feed me near closing time and let me sit by the fire with a pint while a room was got ready for me.
With hindsight, perhaps they made me just a little too welcome, or maybe my willpower was washed away by the rather fine beer.
Needless to say, my plans to be waiting at my customers door when they opened up fell by the wayside and though they were fairly understanding I did not even begin the job until the time when I was expecting to be nearly finished.
It was late afternoon by the time that I was happy to leave the job as done and perhaps if Kate had not been waiting for me I would have enjoyed another evening in the cause of my Friday morning lateness. As it was I decided that though I would probably miss last orders I would head for home. Though Kate said that I should stay over and travel back on Saturday morning in the light I could tell that she was pleased that I was going to ignore her advice.
For some silly reason I decided that rather than follow the coast road I would head straight across the hills, though travel would be a bit slower the distance would be considerably reduced and as it was a bright clear night, it should be an enjoyable drive.
They say that hindsight is a wonderful thing! The occasional flurries of snow gave the hills a mystical and almost magic appeal and gave me no cause for concern until I had climbed several hundred feet and the flurries turned to a wall of white. When I was struggling to keep my speed in double figures I realised that to continue would be more than stupid and after a good therapeutic swear found a spot where I could turn round without risk of ending up in a ditch and setting my sat-nav to retrace my steps back to the pub cheered myself with the thought that at least if I didn't get home at least I was sure of a friendly reception, a good pint and a warm, if empty, bed.
Things could be worse.
I've heard tell of white-out but had no real concept of one until a sudden flurry of snow deposited me in a world with no reference points, my lights illuminated nothing but snow, my speedometer told me that I was moving but my eyes denied it! Careful not to do anything too hasty, I took my foot off the accelerator and held the wheel in what I hoped was a forward direction.
The jolt wasn't enough to trigger the air-bag or even bring me into contact with my seat-belt but it did stall the engine. As I watched the headlights fade and the heater motor slow and stop, I cursed my failure to replace the battery that had been sending out warning signs for days.
I opened the door to assess my situation but quickly closed it as the temperature in the car plummeted.
Taking stock of my situation I had the first glimmerings of fear, I had no warm clothing with me and was already shivering quite violently.
I gave a silent cry of relief when I remembered my phone and decided that this was one time when I could feel justified in dialling three nines. I could already see the police landrover rushing to my rescue, feel the survival blanket around my shoulders and the hot mug of something in my hands. It took me several attempts to key in 999 and several more to hit send. It took me a lifetime to read ‘no signal’.
Review my situation.
I am sitting in an immobile car in freezing temperatures, I have no warm clothing, no food or drink. I don’t know where I am, the nearest habitation could be 10 yards or 10 miles. It made no difference, I had no chance of finding it before the cold took me. I knew that even in high summer the number of vehicles using the road would add up to no more than a couple an hour during daylight and less at night. In these conditions I would be lucky to see a vehicle in the next twelve hours and it was more than likely that anybody turning up the next morning would find a corpse.
That realisation caused me no great distress, I was sad to think that Kate would be heart-broken, but it was almost like thinking of something read in a newspaper, touching but not threatening.
The realisation that I had stopped shivering, a sure sign in the absence of heat, that hypothermia had set in elicited no fear.
I was awoken by barking and laughed to see a beautiful Irish wolfhound barking at my window. The poor fellow must have been freezing out there so as I was quite warm I took my jacket off, spread it over his back and tied the sleeves round his neck.
Hey dude, you are the smartest wolfhound and doing that thing dogs do, lowering head and leaning back to bark a time or two he disappeared back into the night.
I was having quite a heavy talk with Kate, perhaps even our first real row, I thought she should go home, she thought she should stay, friends kept dropping in to add their opinions and generally so much was going on that the barking exhaust and the orange glow of Joseph Lucas, Prince of Darkness* didn't register straight-away.
When it finally registered I laughed to see a dog wearing a jacket that looked exactly like mine in the company of the archangel Gabriel dressed in salvation army cast off's and driving a tractor that the driver had obviously been paid to take from a scrap yard.
After that things started to get unreal, I tried to get out of the car but Gabriel pushed me back in as the dog joined me. I turned to tell Kate not to be scared because the dog was not real but she had obviously got bored and gone home without me.
So I am sitting there with the dog on my lap, you've seen a wolfhound, they are not lap dogs, and I can see Gabriel through the snow, he has a length of chain, one end on the tractor, the other somewhere on my car. Suddenly we are moving and I realise that I’d better try to follow or fun will happen.
I didn't hit the back of the tractor many times and didn't seem to do any harm when I did.
After thirty seconds or three hours we turned off the road and swept several hundred yards down a track to pull up outside a small slate farmhouse radiating warmth and welcome from every window.
I am not sure if I walked or was carried but soon I found my self in a kitchen almost glowing with heat. I was wrapped in warm blankets and fed hot soup. My Gabriel had divested himself of his great-coat and revealed himself to be a thirty something city escapee called Frank and his wife Jan. They told me how Damn, the dog, had gone out for a leak and come back wearing a jacket and kicking up a storm. Unused to such sartorial elegance on the part of the dog, Frank had decided to investigate, and the rest was known.
We sat and talked, or rather they talked while I shivered and listened, at least until I’d warmed up enough to suggest to Damn, the dog, that he no longer needed to sit on me.
Eventually they found me blankets and made me a bed up on the sofa in front of the fire and I drifted off to sleep content and happy to be alive.
I awoke the next morning, happy and content. I listened to the birdsong and inhaled the warm smell of wild flowers on a summers day.
I opened my eyes and looked at the heap of rags that made my bed, the bare stone walls, gaping windows and the sun beating through the space that last night, had been, the roof.
In the yard was a tractor, red with rust, broken only by the odd spot of blue. There is a chain attached to the back of the tractor and on the other end of the chain is my car. The tyres are perished and flat, the bodywork rusted into holes.
*Footnote
Joseph Lucas was a company manufacturing electrical components for cars.
For many years their headlights were known for, basically, not providing much in the way of light hence "Prince of darkness.
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