Lady in the Van

is less to do with the celestial insurance tlian with the fact that the van is parked the whole time in my garden. She concedes that when she was on the road the van did used to get the occasional knock.
    “Somebody came up behind me once and scratched the van. I wanted him to pay something, half-a-crown I think it was. He wouldn’t.”
October 1984
    Some new staircarpet fitted today. Spotting the old carpet being thrown out, Miss S. says it would be just the thing to put on the roof of the van to deaden the sound of rain. This exchange comes just as I am leaving for work, but I say that I do not want the van festooned with bits of old carpet – it looks bad enough as it is. When I come back in the evening I find half the carpet remnants slung over the roof. I ask Miss S. who has put them there as she can’t have done it herself.
    “A friend,” she says mysteriously. “A well-wisher.”
    Enraged I pull down a token piece but the majority of it stays put.
April 1985
    Miss S. has written to Mrs Thatcher applying for a post in ‘the Ministry of Transport advisory, to do with drink and driving and that’. She also shows me the text of a letter she is proposing to send to the Argentinian Embassy on behalf of General Galtieri.
    “What he doesn’t understand is that Mrs Thatcher isn’t the Iron Lady. It’s me.”
To Someone in Charge of Argentina. 19 April 1985
    Dear Sir,
    I am writing to help mercy towards the poor general who led your forces in the war actually as a person of true knowledge more than might be. I was concerned with Justice, Love and, in a manner of speaking, I was in the war, as it were, shaking hands with your then leader, welcoming him in spirit (it may have been to do with love of Catholic education for Malvinas for instance) greatly meaning kindly negotiators etc…but I fear that he may have thought it was Mrs Thatcher welcoming him in that way and it may hence have unduly influenced him.
    Therefore I beg you to have mercy on him indeed. Let him go, reinstate him, if feasible. You may read publicly this letter if you wish to explain mercy etc. I remain.
    Yours truly
    A Member of the Fidelis Party (Servants of Justice)
    P.S. Others may have contributed to undue influence also.
    P.P.S. Possibly without realising it.
    Translate into Argentinian if you shd wish.
    Sometime in 1980 Miss S. acquired a car, but before she’d managed to get more than a jaunt or two in it (“It’s a real goer!”) it was stolen and later found stripped and abandoned in the basement of the council flats in Maiden Lane. I went to collect what was left (“though the police may require it for evidence, possibly”) and found that even in the short time she’d had the Mini she’d managed to stuff it with the usual quota of plastic bags, kitchen rolls and old blankets, all plentifully doused in talcum powder. When she got a Reliant Robin in 1984 it was much the same, a second wardrobe as much as a second car. Miss Shepherd could afford to splash out on these vehicles because being parked in the garden meant that she had a permanent address, and so qualified for full social security and its various allowances. Since her only outgoings were on food, she was able to put by something and had an account in the Halifax and quite a few savings certificates. Indeed I heard people passing say, “You know she’s a millionaire,” the inference being no one in their right mind would let her live there if she weren’t.
    Her Reliant saw more action than the Mini and she would tootle off in it on a Sunday morning, park on Primrose Hill (“The air is better”) and even got as far as Hounslow. More often than not, though, she was happy (and I think she was happy then) just to sit in the Reliant and rev the engine. However, since she generally chose to do this first thing on Sunday morning, it didn’t endear her to the neighbours. Besides, what she described as ‘a lifetime with motors’ had failed to teach her that revving a car does not charge the battery, so that when it regularly ran down I had to take it out and recharge it, knowing full well this would just mean more revving. (“No,” she insisted, “I may be going to Cornwall next week, possibly.”) This recharging of the battery wasn’t really the issue: I was just ashamed to be seen delving under the bonnet of such a joke car.
March 1987
    The nuns up the road, or as Miss S. always refers to them ‘the sisters’, have taken to doing some of her shopping.
    One