Jeffrey & the tramp
A lefty media-type is recounting a tale over cocktails and salted cashews.
PAUL:
So I was living up north then and every weekend I'd drive back down to my parents in Cambridge for a little rest and recuperation from the job. Anyway I'd just got the MG, and of course summer driving with the top down. It was the real deal do you know what I mean? Now every now and then I'd get a little left wing pang of conscience about polluting the earth in this highly desirable bourgeois sports cars.
MARK:
But not often?
PAUL:
But not often. Anyway on this particular Saturday I'm driving along when I see this old guy thumbing for a lift beside the road. He doesn't look too smart, and I'm just thinking he looks like a tramp when this pang of conscience jabs me…
MARK:
Ah the liberal lefty pang.
PAUL:
Well exactly. So I roll to a stop and ask him where he's going. "Cambridge," he says, so I think oh well fair enough and tell him to hop in. Well of course he's hidden this enormous great sleeping bag and all of his belongings behind the nearest bush so as not to put a potential lift off. So now I have to help him secure this frankly rank package to the back of the MG. Anyway it's all done and we set off. Luckily it is an open top type of day because my passenger clearly hasn't seen the inside of a bathtub for a year or two. So for the next twenty or so miles there's very little conversation from me because I don't want to open my mouth and taste the stench.
MARK:
In a caring liberal lefty way.
PAUL:
Now as we start approaching Cambridge I ask him where exactly he's going to which he replies "Oh just take me where you're going." And I'm thinking oh no matey! This is where my charitable spirit peters out, I don't mind giving you a lift and having to have the car steam cleaned, but you're not coming to my parent's house'. So I politely but firmly suggest that maybe I should drop him in the middle of town. Well he's not happy about that.
MARK:
He clearly has standards.
PAUL:
Absolutely. Apparently he gets more in the way of handouts from smaller communities, but if I happened to know where there was a vicarage then to drop him there because vicarages were a good place to get food and a hand out. Well, like most people I suppose I don't know that many vicars. Then it occurred to me that while I didn't know many vicars there was a very expensive former vicarage nearby that might suit both his and my purposes. It just so happens that it belonged to two of my very favourite people Jeffrey and Mary Archer.
MARK
You didn't!
PAUL:
I did. I dropped my passenger off at the end of the drive, pointed him in the direction of the front door and skiddaddled before anyone could stop me. God I hope Jeffrey was the one who opened the door