Chapter 117: Fantastical Things

Peak District Part IV

Back in a petrol station by the Ibis Budget Derby. The McDonald’s Drive Thru lane was blocked by a sculptural pile of orange plastic, a wheelie bin, slumped barrier and various other flotsam. Not that I had a car to drive thru it anyway.

I checked the map. The roads of the midlands are tangled like the wires behind the TV, pulling this way and that, north to Derby, south to Burton, east to Nottingham or Leicester, west to Stoke or Stafford. I’d never been to either of those last two. Perhaps I’d go today, though hitchhiking into a city is a long process, worth it only if you’ve somewhere to be. Otherwise you’ll just have to get back out. My hunch was there wasn’t a great deal to keep me in Stoke. Maybe the Peak District was better. West and then north.

Through a gap in the trees and the bending Shell V-Power flags, you could see the heavy chimneys of the Willington Power Station. Abandoned now. Huge convex and beige, like giant lampshades smeared with dirt. 300 feet tall, an effective cooling area of 4 and a bit million square feet, nearly twice the floor space of the Empire State Building. Three people died making them, and their boilers consumed a million tonnes of coal a year, dug out of the seemingly bottomless pits of Nottingham and Derby. They closed the year after I was born and have been monuments ever since, tombstones to a different era.

I stood on the sliproad heading west and stopped a car, shouting hello to the driver. He didn’t respond, looking motionless out of the windscreen. I opened the back door. “Hey man!” Nothing. “Shall I put my bag here?” Silence. Then at last, “Ok…”

I joined him in the front. Silence as we set off, accelerating down the slip road.

“Where is the Peak District?” He asked at last, referring to my sign. I was surprised. The Peak District is pretty large and barely 15 miles away. I said it was over there on the right.

Albert, I learnt his name was, was on his way to Stoke, coming from Derby. “Do you live in Derby?” I asked. Albert still hadn’t warmed up yet. I had to work for every word.

“No,” he replied, “Business.”

“Good business today?”

“Hmmm,” his head wobbled side to side, “Saturday.”

Silence returned.

“I work every day,” he volunteered for the first time, “Always working, seven days a week.”

Albert had a car service, mechanics I thought he said or car recovery it wasn’t entirely clear. “Look that’s one of my clients,” he pointed to a car in a lay-by, a yellow recovery van behind it. I presumed his business was recovery, or else he wasn’t very good at it.

“Even when I am at home I’m doing something,” Albert continued, finding a rhythm now. “In fact, I won’t be at home. I’ll be in the yard.”

Albert told me he liked to build things. “Fantastical things that people like.” He was very skilled with his hands. His house was a cabinet of curiosities, an exhibition of all he’s made, objects of great intrigue. Albert told me people say, “Wow your house is like a museum.” He spoke with a frank expression, his Eastern European accent as yet unidentifiable.

Albert did carpentry and joinery, welding scrap metal, filing and carving wood, sculpting sculptures. All his furniture was handmade, everything in need was refurbished by himself. “This is good for the planet,” he concluded, “People don’t need all this….,” he pursed his lips and twisted his palm, “…all this stuff.

“People say, ‘Abert you are a millionaire!’ I say I am not. When I die, I will have nothing. Bury me with pliers, hammers, screwdriver. Put me in a cheap pinewood coffin I don’t mind.”

“Do you want to be buried with your tools?” I inquired.

“Not all my tools,” he clarified. “Just some. The others can be sold. They’re very expensive. Last year I spent £35,000 on tools. Professional tools, I use. Everything I touch I transform. Every object I touch I transform! Every person I transform because I tell them, ‘You don’t need to waste time on Facebook, in front of the tele, you can do things. Read a book, be smart!’”

Albert had read plenty of books. “Before I left, my grandmother said I must read every book in the house. She had six and a half meters of shelves, over a thousand books.”

“Did you do it?”

“Every single one. Except the communist ones, Leninist Marxist…” he curled his lip and wobbled his palm, “I didn’t bother with that.”

It wasn’t surprising he left those out. Albert was a businessman through and through. In Romania, where he grew up, he set up three businesses. Then he came here and set up several more. Perhaps he ran both the mechanics and recovery. That would be the best business of all...

His children are what kept him in Stoke, otherwise he’d move. Wherever he ended up he set up businesses. “Building always building. I will be working every day until I am 95,” he assured me, “I will have no pension.

“Sometimes I am lazy,” he admitted as if telling a secret, “Being lazy is doing nothing. Sometimes I do that, but usually I am always doing something. Everyone can do what I do. That’s what’s possible if you don’t waste time.”

We reached the turning for the Peaks. Albert swung into a layby and I leapt out. The A50 is a road of bypasses, turning from the Derby Southern Bypass to the Foston-Hatton-Hilton Bypass before gracefully avoiding Doverbridge.

The road also concluded a grim tale involving Swedish twins. In 2008, they got off a bus bound for London and randomly charged across the M6. One was knocked down. The police arrived and they ran back across, both knocked down this time. Ursula was seriously injured, Sabrina recovered. The police let her go since she had two kids, but she stabbed a man to death shortly after. Then she jumped off a bridge on the A50, presumably somewhere around here.

A grim thought, but I didn’t dwell on it. Albert’s advice on my mind, I mustn’t dally. Onwards to the Peak District.