Car Brakars

Car Brakars

I stare at the protruding wires of my brand new Honda Accord mirror lying smashed on the ground like the head of a Cobra. Nauseous, I phone the seller of the car, to be informed the mirror is unrepairable and a new one is £350 plus vat, and only authorised Honda dealerships could provide them. ‘You should go to a breakers yard and try there, there’s one in Upperlands, Quinn’s, you’d have passed them going to work this morning, it’s near the fancy guesthouse’ says nosy Stella the receptionist.

In those pre sat nav and Google Maps days I head off and on reaching the environs of Upperlands I am totally lost. I’m told by three people that there are no garages or breakers yards or Quinn’s in Upperlands and that you’d have to go to Cookstown on the Moneymore road, there’s Quinn’s there. It meant going back on myself so I drive back past my workplace to Cookstown. I ask several people and I’m informed by flat cap man walking a dog that ‘theres no car brackars in Cookstown or Moneymore but there’s definitely a Quinn’iss car brackars in Swatragh’. This meant I had to go back the way I came and pass Upperlands on to Swatragh.

In Swatragh I see a rotund man puffing on a Falcon pipe. I pull over and explain my predicament: ‘wing Mira, wing Mira, Quinn’is Quinn’is dares no Quinn’is ‘bout ‘ere, nor is dare car dalers, bar the mcGuigans and they don’t brak cars, you need to go to Makrafaalt’. I inform him that I have already been to Magherafelt, Cookstown, Moneymore and Upperlands. ‘ah brackars yard’, he closes one eye and crunches up his face like he was chewing a lemon or someone had kicked him in the groin, then he bends down and points an outstretched arm and a finger like a referee awarding a last minute penalty: ‘turn back, turn back, head to Upperlands again but take the left fork at the derelict thatched cottage, there’s definitely Quinn’is about there that braks cars’.

I drive off happy as Cher leaving a plastic surgeon and I spot a farmer chasing a Friesian heifer into a field. He has eyes like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, the farmer, not the Friesian, and he says, Quinn’is Quinn’is car brackars, aye up there to the left at the red gate, dares Quinn’is dare. I thank him as I wind up the window, he scurries after me waving his hands like James Last. I stop the car: ‘he’ll be no good till ye’ ‘why’s that? ‘ ‘he’s did, ‘tuk a art attack a year ago, dropped stone did in front ada wife and the family moved till Fermanagh. You’ll not get anything up there as the yard is tossed, ya need to go to Makrafalt’. Now he transforms into John Hurt from the movie The Field, beaming with pride at The Bull Mc Cabe, the diastema in his teeth the keys on an aged piano. My head drops like he told me I had a terminal illness and I turn the car back to head to Magherafelt and now the heifer is laughing at me.

On my return journey to work there is a PSNI checkpoint as there had been a small car accident and I am pulled over. The young officer states the obvious that I am missing a wing mirror and that I shouldn’t be driving the car. I point to the damaged mirror on my passenger seat and explain I’m trying to get to Belfast to Chapman’s dealership to replace it. He goes over to an older man, a sergeant who says ‘ah Jaysus don’t be going to Chapman’s they’ll rob you, you need to go to Upperlands, to Quinn’is the car brakers, they’ll sort you out’. He lets me go on without charge and I turn on the radio and what comes on only “How to be Dead” by Snow Patrol, and you know, at that very moment, I wished that I was.