The Journey - Final Part

 22nd January 2024

We continued on our way crawling along, bouncing from one pothole to the next when we hit something with a right bang, I'm sure I must have left my seat. I looked across at grandfather but he didn't even acknowledge anything, just stared into the darkness hunched over the steering wheel.

I settled back in to my scrunched up position trying to preserve the remaining little bit of heat I had left within me. I was soon back to being hypnotised by the windscreen wiper in front of me. Painfully creeping to the vertical, hanging around for a few seconds before crashing back down to the start and repeating it all over again, again and again never deviating from the routine it had made for itself. Until, this one time, the last time actually. I did the usual climb to vertical, had the usual rest and crash to the beginning. This time though it didn't stop. Much to my amazement it leapt on to the bonnet of the Land Rover and slithered off over the side into the blackness, not doubt shouting for joy that it had escaped the constant struggle. I looked across at grandfather who was looking back at me before he asked, "What was that?"

I replied, "The windscreen wiped," and nodded towards my windscreen.

I felt quite buoyed that I actually knew more than he for once. It was short lived though because next think I'm heading for the windscreen myself as the darn brakes were applied - AGAIN! What's the matter with them, they're either on or off. I wished everything else on the vehicle worked as good as the brakes.

Grandfather instructed in no uncertain terms, "STAY THERE!"

Before abandoning ship and heading out in to the teeth of the gale. I'm not sure why he thought I would want to go out there anyway. I wasn't even sure why he would want to go out there considering how the wiped wasn't actually doing anything useful anyway.

He returned after a short while with the wiper and threw it on to the pile of detritus piled up on the middle seat. It seemed to me that as bits fell off they were rounded up to be deposited on the seat in the middle. I reckon given time the whole Land Rover will end up piled up on the middle seat.

Before setting off he flicked a switch on the console and the lights came on. If like me you have been wondering why he didn't switch them on until now let me tell you, they didn't work very well. This seems to be a reoccurring theme to this journey. Apart from a faint yellowish glow just in front of the bonnet you wouldn't even know they were even on. In fact I'm sure the lights that lit up the dials on the dash were brighter than the head lights.

We now finally started what turned out to be the last part of the journey down Glen Grim. As with the braking system the accelerator was on top form and propelled us from zero to sixty in one second up to a speed not exceeding three miles per hour. It's no wonder I was getting a headache, it was all the Gs I'd been subjected too in the past couple of hours.

Suddenly, everything appeared suddenly in those head lights, we came upon a high stone wall in which there was an archway. We didn't pass through the archway but turned left and followed the wall for a short way until reaching another entrance, this one not so grand. Here we turned right and went up a drive before pulling up in a small yard in front of some doors of a building. One of the doors, the one to the left of me, turned out to be the back door to the property which I was now to call home.