SCHLICKETY-BINK ….

There are, of course, both pros and cons to living in a rural community. The biggest ‘con’, unsurprisingly, is that everyone knows everything about you. If they don’t know it they try to find it out as soon as possible, and if they can’t find it out, they make it up. Gossip abhors a vacuum. If you meet a (male) friend for lunch in a remote watering hole ten miles away, it’s a major talking point in the local pub by evening. Furthermore, in the absence of any concrete information to the contrary, your lunch partner will be an old flame/your husband/your ex-husband/your best friend’s husband/your brother/your fancy man – depending on how lurid (or boring) the informant’s own internal life is. It’s the price you pay for fresh air and tranquillity – along with midges, rats and Victorian drainage systems. On the other hand, the biggest ‘pro’ is – well – that everyone knows everything about you. It’s virtually unheard of for people in small communities to lie dead in their house for weeks without anyone noticing. Most of the neighbours know your personal habits better than you do, and if you don’t turn up to collect your morning paper by midday, they’re sending the ghillies out. Nor do problems stay problems very long, because there’s always someone you can ask for help; and if they can’t help you themselves, they’ll always know someone who can (or possibly someone who knows someone – but it amounts to the same thing). Reliable local tradesmen are another bonus. True, punctuality and a pressing sense of urgency aren’t always well to the fore in their list of virtues, but when they do eventually turn up they do a decent job and they don’t rip you off. This isn’t necessarily because tradesmen in rural areas are inherently more honest or competent than those in urban areas, it’s because – as the local plumber said to me the other day while he was elbow-deep in my cistern – ‘Word soon gets around.’ The tradesman who overcharges and/or does a shoddy job in an area where the main means of communication are grapevines and smoke signals doesn’t stay in business very long. Which isn’t to say that you don’t often need industrial quantities of patience and a sense of humour: take my car for instance. It’s a solid, sensible and unremarkable vehicle that starts first time, trundles along gamely and isn’t a target for car thieves because no boy racer would want to be seen dead in it. I’ve had it for many years and every thud, rumble, click and squeak of its aging engine and chassis is an old friend to me. So when I started it up in the garage this morning and it began going ‘schlickety-bink, schlickety-bink, schlickety-bink‘, alarm bells rang. I know every single sound that car can make, and ‘schlickety-bink’ isn’t one of them. Very cautiously, I eased it out of the garage and into the road, expecting at any moment that something would fall off, explode or shoot through the bonnet. Then – when nothing unfortunate happened – I nursed it down the hill to the local garage.

Burdock’s Garage is housed in a large and dilapidated building which was built in the 1950s as a fire station, but never used as one. When construction was nearly completed, someone realized that the road at that point was so narrow the fire engine would have to do a five point turn just to get out, which – while immensely entertaining for the onlookers – would have been potentially devastating for the poor bloody householder whose bungalow was being incinerated. So the fire station stayed where it was, and the new building stood empty for several years until William Burdock Snr took it over on a temporary basis while his own premises were being refurbished after – you guessed it – a fire. When the refurbishment was complete, he decided that he didn’t want to move back, so he stayed put and rented his old premises to – you guessed it again – the Fire Service. So Burdock’s was at The Fire Station and the fire station was at Burdock’s and everyone was happy.

The fire station is long gone, but Burdock’s remains, patched up with an assortment of old doors and corrugated iron sheets and decorated with advertising signs which would probably valuable if they weren’t only held together by rust. William Burdock Jnr is one of life’s mysteries. He’s a cheery bloke who is forever wandering around with a mug of tea in his hand, talking to passers-by and never, apparently, doing any work. How does he stay in business? Well, he has a brother, known universally as ‘Big Gerald’, who is both a mechanic and part owner of the garage, but hardly ever seen during the hours of daylight. You work it out.

When I arrived at Burdock’s, William was, as always, outside with a mug in his hand. He beamed at me as I pulled up and wound down the window.

‘It’s make a funny noise William.’