Carol’s Column

Life is just a tube of toothpaste

THEY call it survival. This whole living bit I mean.

Like sitting through a school concert on a hard chair, bottom frozen in shock, in front of the headmaster who snorts when you fall asleep.

It takes courage to marry a man whose mother says he has aristocratic feet and uses your razor to shave his beard.

To whom a spirit of adventure means hauling a great dirty sail boat through 10 metres of mud at Loch Vaal and whose idea of romance is hanging from a cliff watching Cape vultures mate.

I pondered on these multitudinous things last Tuesday morning as I brushed my teeth in time to Current Affairs then sluiced both effluents away.

Life is like a tube of toothpaste, I muttered to myself.

Short. You have to squeeze every inch from it.

I turned on the tap to hide the usual early-morning cacophony taking place in the bedroom when my husband discovered his black shoes on Barry's feet, his right-arm shirt sleeve buttonless and the cat sleeping on his pale-grey knife-creased trousers with the New York cut.

The bathroom door flew open and in burst my partner in life, a huge multi-coloured Joseph in drag.

He thrust a magazine under my nose.

"You need a new one," he said.

"True," I replied. "I've always thought monogamy an outdated, old-fashioned somewhat medieval custom designed by prehistoric man to safeguard his skins and other chattels."

"You're mad," he answered. "I mean a car."

I was horrified.

Cars are like men. They give you endless pleasure and a great feeling of security the older they get.

"But I like my car," I wailed. "He's my friend."

"Nonsense," he replied through the shaving foam. "How can you drive a car with an oil leak, constipation in the carburettor, a seat belt that fights back and an exhaust pipe that plays 'Tom Dooley' in time to the engine knock?"

"You sound as if you're talking about my father," I retorted.

"True," he said. "Anyway, it's unreliable."

"But that's not a reason to dispose of something," I gurgled through the gargle. Thinking of the cakes I hadn't baked, the times I'd been late, the things I hadn't done.

"Go and look at another car. Anything that goes. Something small and zippy."

Which is why I found myself in the Dettol-scented show room of a well-known purveyor of cars.

"Drive Right In" said the sign above the entrance. A salesman approached me as I manoeuvred my vehicle past rows of glittering sardine cans on wheel.

He shuddered. "Could you park around the block?" he said eyeing my car with distaste.

I stuck my head aggressively through the half-unwound-because-it-was-stuck window.

"I want to buy a car." Magic words. He leapt over the bonnet, prised open the jammed front door and tenderly helped me out.

"Park the Modom's car, Phineas," he shouted to an attendant lurking off sides.

Phineas put on his crash helmet and reversed out of my life.

The following days I spent every spare moment test-driving a variety of cars.

I'd no idea there were so many different nationalities on the road.

Before, when stopped at a traffic light, I'd always spent my time observing neighbours picking their noses until the lights changed.

Competition was fast and furious. Pamphlets, brochures and car salesmen with verbal diarrhoea rained down on my desk. The most original was a steaming dish of spaghetti that appeared with a cryptic note attached to the bolognaise offering a massive discount if I bought before 6 pm that day.

I tossed and turned in my sleep at night, unable to make up my mind.

It was a difficult decision to make. Like dogs, people take on the personality of the car that drives them.

Take the owners of the good old-fashioned Morris Minor. Most of them were short and fat with solid rears.

Yesterday — I made my decision.

"Surprise, surprise," I said to my husband as he opened his early-morning eyes. "I've decided."

Later, at the showroom, I led him past the rows of chrome and gaily-painted, thin-pressed steel.

We stopped at a low-slung, ruby-red two door job with dashing white stripes racing from bonnet to tail, bucket seats, a digital watch and shaggy-bear carpeting from wheel to wheel.

Like a jewel it shone.

"Small and zippy like you said," I whispered in his receptively quivering ear.

His eyes bulged from his head in a distressing way.

He pulled the salesman aside and they murmured together for a moment.

"Do you realise that's a R24 000 job?" he snarled at me through clenched teeth.

"I've changed my mind," I told the salesman. "No room for the dogs."

It was good to slide into the well-worn seat and get behind the wheel of my trusty chariot, then speed off to the sound of gears grating through the broken synchromesh, into the midday M1 crush.

On the Oxford Road off-ramp we broke down. It seemed the gearbox had parted company with the chassis.

"It's nothing," I heard my husband's muffled voice from underneath the car. "A mere R300 job — we'll have this car as good as new in a week or two."

Which just goes to show.

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