August 5, 2018
My mother used to drive a boxy Peugeot 404. It had a stick shift on the steering column with indicators on the French side of the column. I learned to drive in that wonderful car and to this day, I still flick the wipers on when wanting to make a turn.
I was with Mum one day when she visited the local agricultural supply store. The store was called the FAC. It had a regular shop front for farm equipment and clothing but for agricultural supplies such as fertiliser and animal feed, you had to drive to a loading area at the back. We were picking up animal feed so Mum had backed the 404 up to the mouth of the warehouse to allow the heavy sacks to be directly loaded into the boot.
In the middle of this operation, a large delivery truck arrived. The driver honked his horn and without getting out of the elevated seat of his cab, bellowed at my mother to get out of the way, he had a delivery to make.
Mum had every right to be where she was. She was a customer picking up her purchases.
He honked again.
In slow motion, my mother wound down her window and shouted, ‘Shut your bloody cakehole!’
Once again in slow motion, she wound up the window and sat there smiling at him until long after the loading had finished. A tiny defiant woman in the face of a rude, angry man in a big truck.