Two hours from location and my van’s temperature gage suddenly goes from cold to DANGER. Then without ceremony, up pops the engine light and an alarm goes off This is all in about a second. And then the power leaves the engine like running out of fuel, and my steering goes all 1970 and I’m at 50mph on a dual carriageway with no hard shoulder a 3 tonne dead bit of metal on wheels, hauling thousands of pounds worth of lights. Steam starts pumping up the side of my window. I instinctively have floored the clutch so now I’m coasting. And just in front of me is a little Shell garage with a shop outside. And my momentum takes me up the hill, out of the way of all the traffic and I come to a juddering halt perfectly parked and jump out onto grass through a cloud of stinking steam. My guardian angel is once more covered in bruises. I don’t know how she does it.
Still, fuck. I pop the bonnet. An RAC van drives up into the forecourt and asks me if I’m someone I’m not. No, but could you have a look when you’re done? He might. Lucky.
The coolant tank is totally empty. There’s liquid all over the engine. Hmm. I ring Dan first as I know he’s close behind me. Don’t want him to pass. I’ve been crawling. He’s been spanking it. I tell him the circumstances and then go and see what’s available in the Londis.
They sell coolant. Also oil etc etc. I go back to the van and it is clear nobody has ever unscrewed the top up hatch for coolant. There’s ancient pine cones. Bits of dead pigeon. Some of that will get in the engine. I clean it a bit and Dan rings me. “Is it a Shell garage? Hang on, I think I see you.”
Suddenly there’s two of us. He was very close behind me. Things are better already. I buy coolant. We pour it in and it vanishes. The RAC guy comes over and sounds the death knell. “Right. It’s cool now. Turn the engine on and see if it runs.” I do. It does. “Yeah these Citroens are known for it. The cooling system goes. Was it only blowing cold air?” “YES!” “Did you just put in coolant? Look it’s all on the floor now. Went straight through. You can drive it a little bit. But you stopped just in time. You’ll fuck the engine if you try and drive it properly. Thermostat is gone. Likely it went first. Did you get any alarms? Likely not. If the thermo goes first, the bang is all you know of it.”
Dan and I get on the phone simultaneously. Everyone is in airplanes right now but for Hannah and us. I ring her. Dan starts ringing recovery companies. I tell Hannah the situation. Dan finds a huge respected recovery firm an hour’s drive away. He asks me for my company card. I give it to him because my job is to get that van and the contents to the site. AA, RAC etc, all very well but they won’t tow it 2 hours to an obscure country house. Home or an approved garage like Mister Crook ahem Clutch. It’ll be almost 500 quid to tow but it’s Friday afternoon in North Scotland and the fact they can tow a 3 tonne lowloader 2 hours for us is a fucking miracle. “Don’t book him, wait there must be another solution! Wait!” says the phone and I don’t wait because we have to do this now and we can’t balance options because time is not on our side here just before the weekend.
It’s cool again. We put the key in. We park it in the Shell forecourt. Surrounded by CCTV it is safer than it would have been at any of those shit hotels I couldn’t sleep in last night. I lock and check. I give the key to the lady behind the counter to keep in the till. We already have a relationship cos her brother lives locally and has a tow truck, but it is too small. We’ve thought about it.
Tomorrow there have to be lights at the shoot. That is the entirety of my job today. Then the lights must be moved. These things are set in stone.
Aberdeen Enterprise closes at 5. It’s half two and it’s about a two hour drive. We know there’s a Luton there. The gaffer’s guys have booked it for us. We go.
“Someone needs to stay with the car,” we get. Dan has a full tech van. He can’t leave it in Aberdeen to drive a Luton. Everyone is flapping but the two us. No, scratch that, everyone is flapping but Dan.
I notice my impostor syndrome for the first time cos I love this work so surely I don’t deserve to do it, aye? I flush that out and it is replaced with a deep conviction that we have made the right calls here. Delay would have brought disaster. £500 to be able to shoot? The fucked van is safe. We need the unfucked van for tomorrow. Boom.
The gaffer tracks his van as it is full of GPS. Dan and I get to Aberdeen and rent the new van. We part ways. I beat the gaffer and the fucked van to site. The gaff comes next. Then the van, and a guy from the AA.
He’s gonna look at it. I feel a moment of churn. “The thermostat is gone, I think.” I say. He goes digging. If he says “You chose reverse instead of sixth” I’ll never live it down. “Fuck there’s a great big hole. A the thermostat is gone,” he says, and I walk away tall. It is exactly as I told them. I hand the van over to the gaff. Should’ve driven it to Aberdeen himself anyway. And just like that, he was unpacking the tech van.
I got the kit to the shoot. Tomorrow is sorted too. And it all happened pretty much on schedule. Half an hour later booking the tow and that driver might think of the Friday night home time and prefer to sack it off to watch the football, to say goodnight to the kids, get some rest.
Having backup with Dan was impossibly helpful as I might have been too nice and waited and got us all fucked if he hadn’t reminded me to hold my ground when I know I’m right. I’ve known him for decades. When he said he found a tow that can carry us, I gave him the Pleo card without even thinking. That was the division of labour. “One call the office, one call vehicle recovery” I’m not even sure which one I would have prioritised if I had been alone.
Then noise about masks and batteries and lists and things. Then bed in the most incredible huge vast bed. They’ve booked me a wonderful room here.
First, a hot bath. Which is where I have been all this time, and from whence all these paragraphs have sprung like little salmon, flapping into your pupils. Splot. There. Want some more?
Tomorrow is gonna be hard.
Washy sleepy zzzz
AlBarclay 