I drove my car onto the forecourt carefully, following the directions of one of the mechanics. Was it silly for me to feel nervous about taking my car in for a check-up? As far as I could tell there wasn't anything wrong with it, but I didn't exactly know a lot about cars. My little old Ford KA was exactly that: little, and old. Little did not worry me one bit. Old did. Old meant things were more likely to have gone wrong, and things going wrong or wearing out meant paying for new things. And I didn't have a lot of money.
Once I had the car situated where it was needed, I grabbed my purse, book and cardigan from the passenger seat, and climbed out of the car.
"Good afternoon, young lady. You must be..." The mechanic, who's name would appear to be Dave if the embroidered writing on the chest of his overalls was to be trusted, paused to check something on his clipboard, "Miss Whitely?" He looked up at me.
"Uhm yes, Jessica. That's me" I replied a little awkwardly, trying not to focus on the grease smear which started just above his right eyebrow and ran across the top of his balding head.
"Just a check-over and tune-up, then?" He looked at me expectantly again, as if I had any idea of what he was talking about. All I knew was that my dad sent me a text during school that he had booked my car in at the garage at 4pm to have it checked over, as it was new to us and we didn't buy it through a dealer.
I nodded with a smile that I hoped didn't betray too much of my ignorance to the world of cars.
"Okay Jessica, if you can go to reception over there and label your keys with your name and registration, then you can sit in the waiting room just to the right there. It should only take about 30 minutes." Dave the mechanic pointed to an old, worn, wooden desk against the white wall of the workshop, a hand-painted sign above it stated 'Reception' in slightly sloping red letters.
I managed to get a 'thank you' out and did as I was told, attaching a white tag to my keys after writing my details on it and removing the car keys from my house keys. A plastic bowl sat at the back of the desk, below another handwritten sign which read, 'Please leave labelled keys here.'
There were no other sets of keys in the bowl, which I hoped meant I wouldn't be waiting here for too long. I dropped my keys into the bowl and head towards the waiting room to the right of the reception desk, taking in the small-business feel of the workshop with its hand-written signs and overflowing metal drawers and storage boxes lining the back wall.
In the waiting room, a number of mis-matched chairs lined the walls, some hard plastic chairs like the ones at school, some may have once been part of a dining set. There was a rug in the middle of the concrete floor and stood on top of it was a wooden table covered in wiggling, arching wires, with colourful trains of beads at the base, to entertain children. There were two windows on the wall opposite the door, vertical blinds hanging in front of them so that the light coming in made stripes across the floor. On the walls hung a number of photo frames holding what looked like family photos taken at places such as on the beach, in a forest, at a park. Each photo showed a variation of the same four faces at various ages, all of them smiling or laughing every time. I couldn't help but smile just looking at them. I guessed this was a family business as the photos showed Dave the mechanic at varying stages of hair loss, sometimes his arms round two beaming young boys, sometimes him working in the garage. Alongside the photos there were also newspaper cuttings of various events involving the garage, such as its launch article, old adverts, and some reviews.
But what caught my eye the most was the strange little wooden objects placed all around the room-on the windowsills, on the coffee tables which stood between some of the chairs, and on the mantelpiece above the stone fireplace set into the wall to my right, which now held only an overflowing rack full of old, out-dated magazines. Each piece of wood seemed to be a suggestion of something else. One looked like an owl in shape, but the eyes were different sizes and the detail on the wings looked rough. Another looked like it was trying to be a cat, but the ears were odd shapes and the nose a little too pointy to be truly feline. As I gazed around at the objects, focusing on each one, I tried to work out what they were meant to be. Some were better than others, and I could tell which shapes this person enjoyed the most by how often they occurred and therefore, the more recognisable ones.
