How Roy lost Edgar's parcel shelf and was forgiven.

You know when you unexpectedly put a lot of effort into what should have been a brief and mundane email, and emerge from the experience with pride for your tenacity and the work that sprung forth from it? Well that happened to me, when I was writing to the fine lady who helped me find a new parcel shelf:

"

Hi Natalé,

Well. Its a sad story. I was doing my friend, Gilly, a favour by donating my car, parcel shelf and driver and all, to the cause of the Student Theatre group at Glasgow (STaG). Gilly was producing STaG Nights, the group's annual festival of one-act plays, and desperately needed a bath. She didn't need to wash, she needed a physical, tangible, bathtub. And she found one, to her credit, as one tends to do living in the Woodlands area. Always some furniture on display in the street, for the general enjoyment of students. To the ire of most residents however.

Anyway, Edgar (my car) and I were employed to help move said bath from resting place on West End Park Street to the Gilmorehill Theatre. Not very far. Had I known the trauma that was to ensue I might have insisted that Gilly just carry the bath the few hundred yards up the road. I didn't though, so likewise I didn't. We got the bath alongside Edgar on the pavement, at which point Gilly took the opportunity for a wee rest while I opened up the boot.

I can remember vividly (and in the slow motion that often accompanies my memories of scoring the first and only goal that I will ever score, in a footy match on St. Thomas' CofE Primary School playing fields at the age of 7) carefully detaching the parcel shelf and placing it, oh so delicately, on the pavement, one end on the ground, the other leaning securely up against the railings of no.28 West End Park Street. That was my error, as no sooner had that occurred than the very memory of its occurrence was unexplainably erased from my, admittedly, shit memory. It took a fair while to wriggle the bathtub into what is, and only ever will be, a five door hatchback. All the time Edgar's amputated pacrel shelf watched on. Watched as we fought with the bathtub. Watched as I fought against Gilly's determination to get the bathtub in Edgar. Watched as I drove Edgar away, hot, angry and oblivious.

It was a wet weekend and the parcel shelf must have spent some time being rained upon before presumably being requisitioned by drunken students or the needy owner of a Mark 4 or 5 Fiesta with grey interior. Hopefully the latter. Probably the former.

A full 2 days passed before I had the need to use the car again (I'm a carbon emissions aware kinda fella) and it was only then that I realised my substantial and unforgivable error. Phone calls to friends who reside nearby to the incident as well as repeated monitoring of the site (presumably in the futile hope that the recipient of the parcel shelf might repent and compassionately replace the item, along with its snapped and redundant, yet loveable, fittings, where he or she had chanced across it) proved unsuccessful.

I thought all was lost. In desperation, monosyllabic with grief, I turned to my fellow man through the wonders of the interweb, and broadcast my plight. And you responded.

So thank you. Edgar now once again has a parcel shelf which, although entirely uncoordinated in colouring, works a whole lot better because the fittings actually fix onto the hatchback door. Cool.
Plus my flatmate, Gareth, with whom I share the car is talking to me again. He says thanks too.

"

Natalé replied to a request that I sent to the Glasgow Freecycle list, telling me to get one from the scrapper's on Scots Road in Paisley.

One explanation for my new found wordiness is I spent the whole afternoon with Mark refining his sitcom. Looking good.