Worrying about made up things

Broken vans, overreactions, ruining a teenage date and the magic of a windy mountainside.

I was on the way to my parents’ in Northampton last Sunday evening when my van started making a very unhealthy sounding noise. It was a stopover before heading further south, one handy thing about them living in the Midlands. (A place which does actually exist despite the refusal of everyone in the north to accept that you’re not southern, and vice versa.)

The growling sound continued for a few seconds-that-felt-like-minutes before all the lights on my dashboard started flashing like Christmas decorations then it just… stopped. The good news is that I was only about 20 minutes from their house and I’d just pulled off the dual carriageway onto a quietish road. The bad news is that I was now blocking half of said road and it was about to get dark. I put my hazards on, grabbed some warm layers (the useful thing about going around in a van full of junk is that you’re always prepared for an emergency), got out to wait on the verge and called my dad and the AA (in that order, obviously). At …