The RAZZ - chapter 12

© surmon 2008

 Scootin’ About

I had reached an uneasy state of equilibrium in what I considered was "my progress".  I had managed to keep my job at the carwash and it was keeping me in money. My frugal lifestyle had actually allowed me to save some of it. I had engineered a few more "meetings" with Veronica and we had reached the friendly conversation stage. It helped that we now had something to talk about ­- Damien and his car. I didn't make the thing a laughing matter because I wasn't sure how close her connection was to Damien, but we smiled politley about it, while I laughed my face off on the inside.

In conversation, Veronica said that she didn't care much for the crowd she hung about with; they were all vague family friends connected by their parents investment accounts and family trusts.    I found this a little heartening, figuring it bode well for a possisble future realtionship with her, but I was not totally sold.  I was pessimistic enough to  suspect that money might indeed make all the difference in the relationship and, in order to continue my romantic efforts, when it go to the clinches, I would have to compete fiscally with the other crowd — the "trust beneficiaries". A fool’s paradise of optimism suggested to me that it had nothing to do with money; it was about something deeper. However, it was hard to do more than scratch the surface with the plastic spoon that was jammed in my mouth when I was born.

This feeling of inadequacy made me keenly aware of my image - something that I could actually change that would make a visible difference - and riding a push bike didn't fit into it at all. I also had my musical equipment to cart about, something that was infinitely less than dignified on a deadly treadly. Truly, a person with my life's aspirations needed to have a dignified form of transport in order to go about their daily business with reasonable cool.  I needed a set of motorised wheels. So, with visions of my own shiny new Mercedes station wagon flitting across my fertile mind ( I was often told that it was full of fertilizer), I went car hunting.

Considering my financial resources, I came home with a bargain! Italian and open topped — a second hand Vespa motor scooter. I got it cheap because of the paint job — jungle camouflage (I wondered deeply about the Rambo who was responsible for that), and because the starter wasn't too good. The scooter had to be jump started but, it was really only a problem if you had to start it uphill. Don't laugh — I've had to do that a few times to my mates’ cars.

Because of the clever camouflage paint job, it took the car-yard owner nearly half an hour to find the scooter (it was parked next to a pot plant and, even though he insisted the scooter was in the yard, we couldn't see the thing), but when we did I fell in love with it —  straight after I fell over the blasted thing.

I did love that scooter. Even Ronnie said she liked it when she saw it and agreed to let me take her for a short spin on it. I considered it was then blessed and became a symbol of our impending togetherness.

I set about finding a way to carry my bass guitar on it. All I did was weld some extensions onto the upright rods of the carrier at the back, and weld a kind of rack across the upper ends. Then I clamped another two upright rods onto the handlebars and put a rack between their upper ends as well. It was a simple matter to tie my guitar case to the racks above me with octopus straps, and collect the Young Inventor’s award. Noted also on the ream of paper that I used to draw the plans was the fact that this arrangement would also keep the sun and rain off me.

As might be expected, it was raining on the day when I firmly strapped my bass guitar case onto the rack, switched on the ignition, pulled the chocks out and jump-started the scooter down the road. It's little cylinder roared into life and I sped down the black ribbon of bitumen that was Murchison street towards the intersection...  and my undoing!

Isn't it funny how even the most thorough of us can overlook a tiny flaw in a plan. In this instance I had not noticed the fact that the framework on the handlebars was now strapped firmly to the guitar case overhead and would not allow the handle bars to turn. I discovered this niggling problem about a hundred metres from the main road "T"  intersection and mere seconds away from a busy pedestrian crossing.

I  frantically squeezed and stomped on everything that was supposed to make the scooter stop but it was useless, in fact it seemed to make the thing go faster, skidding on the shiny wet  bitumen as though on a track of grease. I tooted the scooter's little horn madly as I approached the herd of unsuspecting pedesterians crossing at the lights. Most of the people on the crossing managed to get out of the way except for one bloke who was wearing a walkman with headphones. When he finally saw me it was too late for him to get out of the way.

He ended up straddling the scooter's front mudguard like a mascot in reverse.  I don't like messy people — and he was one them. I got five wet spots on my face where his eyeballs, tongue and snot bubbles bulged out of his head and splatted onto mine. The thought that I might catch the flu from his germs vaguely occupied my mind as we slipped quickly across the intersection. Cars and trucks on the main road did a fantastic job of avoiding us. We shot straight  across the road, unimpeded, and skidded up a lane way on the other side of the "T"  junction, coming to an untidy stop against a huge, wet pile of overflowing garbage bags.

I managed to pull the scooter out, turn it around and get out of there before my "mascot" could find his way out of the pile of garbage and try to hobble bowlegged after me. I also took the long way home just in case anybody else from the pedestrian crossing saw me, and stopped and dismounted at every corner so I could turn the scooter.

Once back at home, the steering problem was sorted out very easily by making the front rack swivel at the top. It seems simple and obvious now but remember that even Edison had to invent the electricity bill to make his light bulb work.

With my new device in working order I went to a Hitless Wonders band rehearsal and parked my scooter outside. I was worried about the thing getting stolen so, making clever use of its camouflage colour, I covered it with some branches that had been cut from the trees lining the street. Sometimes I'm so clever I make my own cheeks go red but this time...  I had made a terrible error.

We were busy thrashing away inside when suddenly, the noise we were making  was drowned out by an even worse noise from outside. I rushed out to see what had happened and couldn't believe what my eyes were looking at.

I had covered my scooter with tree cuttings hoping it would be safe from robbers but a crop of council men had arrived on the scene with a huge and vicious shredding machine to mulch up the branches.  So effective was the camouflage paint job that those fools fed my little scooter into the muncher along with the leaves and branches, and now my Vespa was scattered all over the street in a million tiny camoflaged pieces.

It was little consolation to me that the council mulcher was also wrecked beyond repair.  It took me hours to find all the pieces of my scooter in amongst the shredded twigs and leaves - I had to borrow a magnet to find most of them. But with big, fat tears welling up in my eyes, I gathered the sad remains of my scooter, put them in a garbage bag and pushed them slowly home in a wheelbarrow I borrowed from the Hitless Wonders' guitarist.

That night I slept with the sack at the foot of my bed, hoping that the good fairies would sneak in and put my scooter back together.  And do you know what...?

They didn't.