We are Sitting in the Blue Passat Estate
but we will not buy it.
It stinks of dogs for one thing (Labradors,
at a guess) and the spec is really poor.
Sure it’s got windows, sunroof
and a boot the size of Alaska
but the miles are the wrong side of 65
and for a K that’s bargepole territory. Colour
isn’t great, but never as bad as
that silver diesel saloon on Marsh Barton
with the hole in the carpet, one careful
chain-smoking rep, an L at only 795.
Peter’s moustache spies what we don’t
though, that he’s got us already: despite
our practised jargon
we can’t tell brake fluid from water.
By letting us drive this crapheap
the three miles to Broadclyst
he knows we’ll want something better,
that other one, terrific value, twelve hundred more
and burgundy which he’ll persuade us
is ‘indian red’, and rare.
By the time I write him my cheque
I don’t care about full history or even
that BT owned it first: it’ll get us to the Borders,
and maybe next year Lausanne
where it will stick out in the car park
to my aunt’s flat as German with a Britannia Ferries
GB sticker next to its Top Marks
number plates spelt with a ‘que’ for a joke.
Page(s) 47
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