The Big Decision

Allow me to recap (now we’ve got all the fun in the sun out of the way)…

On the Bus:

- Yaya
- Mark G
- Mark F
- Stuie
- Paul
- Pat (hitching a ride)

Possibles:

- Libby
- Andy
- Simon

Available Spaces:

- One

Hmmm. Tricky.


Advantages of taking Libby:

- She could cook.

- She could sew.

- She was my sort-of on-off never-quite-sure-where-we-are girlfriend.


Disadvantages of taking Libby:

- She was my sort-of on-off never-quite-sure-where-we-are girlfriend.

- She spent a lot of time with Liney and would have wanted to bring her too. Available spaces: 1.

- We’d have had to eat a lot of brown rice (we did anyway, as it happens).

- Six male, one female. Sure. That’d have worked.

- She’d have hated all that sewing and cooking.


Advantages of taking Andy:

- Great bloke, bright conversation.

- Not a bad pianist, if ever we stumbled across a piano.

- Accomplished performer in alternative political theatre, if ever we stumbled across any alternative political theatre (actually more likely than it sounds).

- Must have had the necessary cash.

- He could drive. It seems hard to believe, but at this point Yaya was the only person who’d actually done this with Bertha.


Disadvantages of taking Andy:

- He could drive. And often did, extremely fast.


Advantages of taking Simon:

- We all loved him. Let’s face it, Simon’s that sort of person.


Disadvantages of taking Simon:

- Nothing obvious.

- Nothing you could put your finger on.

- No, really. Probably had the money and everything, what with all that motorway-building.

Nevertheless...

- Simon usually went everywhere with Martin. Who we liked too. But. Available spaces: 1

- Simon hadn’t actually done anything for Bertha. You know: tapes and foam and welding and paintwork and tapestry curtains and suchlike. Somehow that rankled.

And then…

- There was that business with Sally. We think. Maybe.

I mean it’s not like Yaya was actually going out with her at this point or anything. But he did, for a long while. And then there came this time when she couldn’t get back to Ponders End and had to stop over in Bishop’s Stortford and Simon offered her a space on the floor for the night. And one thing led to another.

And that was something that tended to happen around Simon.

Which brings us to another possible disadvantage of inviting Simon on the bus:

- Where women were concerned, the rest of us would not have got a look in.

We took Andy.

Not really such a difficult decision after all…

Postscript the first:

To this day, Simon claims the decision not to take him was a public school conspiracy against the oiks from Newport Grammar. He’s forgotten that Paul was also an oik, and Bishops Stortford College was a pretty crappy minor nonconformist public school in any case. It’s not like we all went to Eton.

It’s also amazing that this sort of thing ever mattered. But if we get into the undercurrents of English class division we’ll be going round in circles till Doomsday, and I’d much rather get Bertha the Earthtruck on the road to Istanbul at last.

Postscript the second:

At the time of writing, Simon is the proud owner of two large trucks, including a seven and a half tonner. The rest of us go round in bog-standard family saloons.