Be careful where you park
April 20th 2007 05:17
My usual walk last week took me alongside the wharf area, which was great, as the seawater in the harbour is always a delight to walk beside. And the other day there were four boys fishing off the wharf, as boys have done for centuries.
Today I had to go and get a blood test, which meant I had less time to walk. So I parked the car closer than I have been, but in a different area. My office is in an industrial area, as I’ve mentioned before, and by the time I get to work it’s well and truly woken up, with machinery buzzing and clattering and trucks and couriers on the move.
I parked the car in what seemed like a quiet enough area, next to a piece of land that had old wood and metal on it, and, noted the name of the street, as it can be quite a confusing area to find your way round in. (It’s a great area on the weekends for teaching kids to drive, though, as the streets are all very wide and there’s barely anyone around. No one lives in the area – the only time I’ve known anyone to do so was when my daughter for a short time lived in what had been the tea and changing rooms of a trucking yard. It wasn’t quite adapted to domesticity.)
Anyway, after work tonight I headed towards the street where I’d parked the car, and eventually found it, after feeling as though I might be a bit lost. When I got there, however, a large truck with a crane on it was parked alongside – and my car was wedged in by a car on either end. The crane was lifting a very heavy piece of metal up and over the car, and there was no way I was going to be moving in a hurry.
So I stood there, eating an orange, and watching the fine motion of this monster machine as it delicately shifted metal from the yard to the back of the truck. There were two young men doing the work, and the one who was controlling it with some electronic gizmo slung around his waist was like a boy with an enormous pet: it bowed to him, and followed him, and lifted its head in response to him.
I remember some years ago watching a different kind of crane one morning on the way to work. It was in a car wrecker’s, and it resembled a dinosaur very distinctly. It would lift up the mangled chassis and wrench it around in its mouth, crushing it with a couple of bites, and then would clump it down on the pile as though it had just sucked the life out of it.
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