Jamie Whittle's Blog
Zen and the art of being a space cadet
You may have heard the one about the man who went to dip his headlights, and drove his car into a pond. Well this morning was directly in point.
As my thoughts unfurled the steps between rising at 5.45am to meeting a friend at the beach for a surf this morning, not actually making it to the beach was not one of the variables in my mind. Leaving home in the rising light to the sound of the waves audible across the fields, breakfasted up and zoning in to a little Pink Floyd, the holy grail of the life/work balance seemed within reach. The California Dream, Highland-style. Living at high latitude and starting the weekend finding harmony in the ocean.
It’s been wet in Moray the past 48 hours. Very wet. You might have seen the astonishing photos in the newspapers of flood damage in Fochabers, and a man paddling a canoe between petrol pumps in Elgin.
A mile and a half from home, train of thought pondering why it is I find it so effortless to rise early when I am going surfing, skiing or canoeing, compared with a normal work day, and how if I could trick my senses on an office day that I was going into the outdoors I might rise earlier and have time for other things (when I worked in a law firm in Edinburgh some years ago, I used to apply Piz Buin sun cream after shaving as I associated its vanilla scent with skiing in the Alps and for a moment I was elsewhere…), I took a left coastwards down a single track lane.
It was a long puddle. But feeling confident of my lie-of-the-local-land knowledge, I estimated the puddle’s depth would not pose a problem. I slowed right down before entering the water, dropped the car into first remembering a tip from a friend that one should never change gear when driving through deep water and other than that you’ll be fine, and proceeded with the indomitability of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Then the car stalled.
I tried to re-start the engine, but nada. Just the rising light of the morning, and the rings of water rebounding around the car starting to settle.
When the breakdown serviceman arrived at 7.30am, we both commented on the irony of my being dressed in a wetsuit. After all, the car door did open into almost knee-deep water.
Thanks to the help of the serviceman and a neighbour, my car is drying out at a garage in Elgin for the weekend. I hope to goodness it isn’t too big a job, as car trouble has been expensive the past fortnight what with me filling my wife’s diesel motor with £38 of unleaded petrol (if you are going to have car trouble, then Blair Atholl is as good a place as any for it to happen as the auto recovery crew there are first class).
There could many morals to this tale. Stay in bed longer on a Saturday morning. Don’t drive through big puddles. As it happens, the surf buddy I was supposed to meet texted me to say that although the waves were big, the water quality was poor because of the River Lossie being in spate no doubt carrying down a whole wash of pollution from Elgin together with whisky barrels and trees. So maybe after all I just wasn’t meant to go in the salt water today.