I’m back from my all-too-quick visit to the UK last month. I re-visited Cornwall and Stratford-upon-Avon, doing a little research along the way! Here are the highlights:

 

Things look really good in pictures. I would LOVE to live my life there, in all those great moments. Look! Shakespeare’s schoolroom! Look! School boys walking there because it is STILL a school, and how cool is that? Look! Wildflowers! Timber-frame buildings! The ocean!

My trip wasn’t solid goodness, actually. I neglected to snap pictures of me, pulled off the motorway when the oil light on my rental car lit up 30 minutes after I hired it. No screen shots of my purchased phone minutes vanishing while I waited on hold for the car hire agency to take my call. And definitely no pictures of me sobbing when they said it might take two hours for help to arrive. (Happy spoiler: it took 20 minutes.)

Frank from Roadside Assistance met me with a huge grin and fixed everything. Having finished with my car, Frank could have zipped off to his next rescue. I mean, he did, but not before giving me a direct number to call if the car had more issues. And then he said, very kindly, “I want you to have confidence in your little Vauxhall Corsa. It’s a good car.”

It’s hard to explain what those words did for me. I mean, I can sort of explain. I’d been given a rental vehicle WITH NO OIL IN IT. While driving in not-my-own country. I’d lost 90 minutes on the side of the road. I’d burned through my phone minutes. There was no confidence. Confidence was not happening. Except Frank from Roadside Assistance said, “I want you to feel confident….”

I tucked those words in my pocket.

I repeated them as I drove down B roads where there wasn’t room for two vehicles to pass. And when I did a twenty-seven-point turn (maneuver?) into a teensy-weensy space at St Ives. And when I drove into S-u-A at rush hour and had to make repeated right-hand turns across oncoming traffic. The kindness of Frank made a ginormous difference. I had confidence in my little Corsa.

I write characters who are like Frank (looking at you, Harpreet and Sir Walter), but I don’t expect to meet them in real life when I’m in semi-crisis driving on the wrong side of the road. Erm, I mean the  “other” correct side of the road. Maybe I should have taken pictures of my car with its hood/bonnet wide open! (Would you??)

Anyway, I hope you’re having a wonderful July, with zero roadside drama. But if your car runs low on oil, then I wish you a Frank.