With a Little Bit of Podunk

The salt from either tears or sweat made my room smell permanently medicinal. Occasionally my mum would come in to plead or shout but often she’d perch quietly on the bed and reassuringly rub my back as I lay there catatonic.

There’s obviously the normal amount of self-pitying you have as an adult running back to your parents, beyond the infantilising shame of having to camp out in a single bed or your mum speaking to you through the bathroom door mid-poop. I’d failed on plenty of occasions before but this time hit differently. 

Off the back of my friend and now arch-enemy just not paying his rent for the last months we were evicted from a flat we’d lived in for three years. It coincided neatly with me finding myself, yet again, out of work. The flat was on a stretch once infamously nicknamed ‘Murder Mile’ but the area had changed dramatically, even in that space of time, from chicken shops to sourdough pizza restaurants, from greasy spoons to cafes. It was all very symbolic of a world I’d been complicit in. I desperately contorted myself to be palatable to artsy new media types who smoked roll-ups and dressed like extras from ‘Kids’ because we were on terrible salaries. The difference being lots of them would return home to gigantic parental houses at Christmas and I’d feel kind of cheated.

When the removal van arrived that day so did my fear of having to go back to — as my sister and I affectionately refer to it — ‘Podunk’. Back to casual xenophobia, getting heckled by 12-year-olds on Barratts estates and Linda at the jobcentre commenting on my ‘unusual’ clothes. How was I going to square my newfound, carefully cultivated snobbery with having absolutely nothing to fucking show for it? Who in their right mind in Podunk cares about a byline in The Guardian when you don’t have savings, a mortgage, or a marriage.

I can’t definitely say that I wanted to take my own life but I remember, when I did finally get out of bed, going through a prolonged period of throwing my things away. Not in a “does this spark joy?” way rather a strong, cold desire to get my affairs in order. I never mulled over logistics of suicide but I often nonsensically thought about stuff like “wow, wouldn't it be both embarrassing and inconvenient if I killed myself and someone had to take all my broken vibrators and credit card statements to the recycling centre”. Thankfully, before I burned reams of diaries in a daze something I found jolted me back to clarity: my provisional driving license.

The most incongruously Podunk thing about me is I have always loved the idea of driving a flash car. In my teens, my dad would take me to this supermarket car park in the dead of night to bomb around in our ancient maroon Volvo and practice getting the clutch right. I loved it but it also depressed me because I knew we’d never be able to afford lessons and I definitely wouldn’t be able to afford my own car. For a long time after that, the only thing on my potential boyfriend checklist was “having a car”. I relished ‘unofficial’ lessons and making wanking motions out the driver’s window to my friends like “hello, taste of freedom!” However, by the time I could’ve feasibly afforded to get a license myself I never got round to it because I was living in zone 2 and all my money went on shoes and speed. But this time felt right. I may have been living under my mum’s regime but what better way to claw autonomy back than to get on the road.

Right next to the Barnet test centre there’s a cafe that’s populated almost entirely by driving instructors. I’d sit there with a double shot coffee and try to psyche myself up, pretending I was making deep and anthropological observations. Really I was marvelling at how so many middle-aged men with Bluetooth headsets could congregate in one place. Some had a pair of wraparound sunglasses for extra flair. I tried to put my judgement aside but when I first met my instructor I was fascinated by how delicate a thread his body was hanging onto being alive. My lessons were punctuated by a constant stream of his fag breaks, service station sausage rolls and extra-large Red Bulls. He looked like his major organs hated him.

During our first lesson, I told him I was a journalist and his nickname for me quickly became ‘snowflake’ which I’d laugh weakly at, to begin with, because he had a point. After that, however, every lesson became a personal mission for him to bait me into some kind of Daily Mail sponsored debate. “Richard Branson? Great guy, self-made man, dyslexic y’know!” “Immigrants? I’m all for them if they contribute to our country like Alan Sugar.” “Benefit scroungers? In my day we happily crawled to work over broken glass.” As an escapee and not a visitor to Podunk I’d heard all this before so didn’t blink but my problem was this was taking place on my dime.

I firmly believe in the process of always learning something new to keep both your brain active and administer a shot of healthy humiliation. But when I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t making progress I felt utterly defeated. How come someone shouting “why don’t you understand roundabouts?” while grabbing the wheel was not translating into me understanding roundabouts? And then it clicked: because my instructor was a cunt. Now I know what you’re thinking. How comes it’s never you, Jo, and always the other person’s fault? The thing is I’d reached such a personal low and felt so browbeaten that the situation long passed the point where I would’ve normally told him to go suck my dick. An ability to stick up for myself was once one of my only redeeming qualities and now I couldn’t even do that without second-guessing if I was being histrionic.

But on what would be our last lesson it started with me driving him to Borehamwood McDonalds so he could pick up his breakfast. As I crept into the car park ignoring his voice and trying to figure out which way to go in for the drive-through his tummy growled and he barked “HERRO, CAN YOU NO READ OR SPEAKY ENGLISH?” It was the smoothest emergency stop I’d ever made. I wrenched up the handbrake, put it into neutral and ignored the cars building up behind us, then turned my body to look at him. Him realising what he’d said and how it could be construed, me on the precipice of bouncing his head off the dashboard. The lesson ended there.

I went onto pass my test with a lovely instructor who spoke to me like I was a nervous horse with a stick of raw ginger up its arse, which turned out to be exactly the approach I needed. I hugged him and the examiner tightly before skipping off to the petrol station to get a celebratory pack of Monster Munch thinking, “maybe these Bluetooth headset guys aren’t all bad!” But when I got home there was one loose end I needed to tie up.

Having decided against beating him up, I sent a five hundred word email to my first instructor’s company instead. And, readers, I went full snowflake because there is something else I’m good at besides sticking up for myself and that’s writing formal complaints. By the end of the day not only had I passed my test but I’d dragged him to filth and got my money back. The first win I’d had in years and it tasted delicious. 

Once I’d got back into the swing of suburbia it was like I’d never left. I realised, despite my initial protestations, that I actually love routine, I love retail parks and I love staying in on a Friday to shout at the TV. I was temping in secondary schools, started therapy and writing was becoming a hobby rather than an all-consuming career path. I began to appreciate the relief of work not being the sum of my self-esteem and bowing out of socialising meant also not being interrogated by strangers at house parties about what industry I work in. 

But the day I knew I was no longer dipping my toe into being a local bitch but had fallen headfirst was when I bought a second-hand car off a UK garage legend. 

I’d answered a classified ad and the next day, rather than arriving at a dealership, found myself scoping out a disused multi-story car park in West London. My Uber driver thought it was so offkey that he refused to leave until he was happy I wasn’t going to be bundled into the back of a transit van. But, fortunately, I was unphased. It wasn’t the first time I’ve hung around in a car park with a large amount of cash on me. Nonetheless, I wasn’t filled with confidence. 

Eventually, my knight in shining ‘Pure Garage’ armour arrived and took me to what would be my longest love affair. Her tyres were flat, she was muddy and the seats were stained with a mystery substance I don’t want to think about too deeply, but she was beautiful. An electric blue Renault Clio. I adored her. So much so that I ignored the fact a locksmith had been called to this same transaction to cut me the only key there was for her in existence. While he was busy breaking into my new car we got the sale finished.

I hit it off so well with This Guy that as I was politely ignoring the new MOT despite the car not having a key, he offered me a job and a life that could’ve been flashed before my eyes. Was being a used car saleswoman my real calling? I could rake in commissions ripping teenage boys off and finally afford a mortgage and an Audi. I could have all-inclusive holidays and a gym membership instead of surviving off Groupon offers like some freak constantly on the periphery of being an adult. I am not exaggerating when I say I entertained the idea to the point where we discussed a day rate. But, again, something jolted me back to reality. This was an anecdote not my calling. And, also, I didn’t know anything about cars.

Still, for eight hundred quid Clio got me through some rough patches. Sometimes I liked to take her for drives and just scream at the top of my lungs until it made me laugh hysterically. Or sit with my music on obnoxiously loud in a car park eating Haribo. This was my metal fortress and nobody could tell me what to do.

The last trip I took with her was at Christmas. It was frosty and the roads had that kind of slip to them that you could coast ever so slightly between gears. I always took great pleasure in the feeling of my hands warming up on the wheel after I put the heater on full blast, knowing it was blitz outside. Even in the mornings when I started my commute at the buttcrack of dawn I enjoyed that feeling. 

That night, the roads were quiet and fairy lights twinkling in the distance almost made the North Circular feel romantic. I drove to the top of Alexandra Palace at about midnight and parked up, took in that never-ending vista of the city lights, and smoked a stale Mayfair Light that had been hidden in the glove compartment. 

The next week I was on a flight to Costa Rica.