Nigel’s brother had the last laugh however, by leaving Nigel the Skoda in his will.
The Skoda SuperSport 110 was a magnificently ridiculous car. The doors didn’t shut properly. The ignition only started if the right hand indicator was on. It leaked in the rain and sounded like a kettle the very second it hit 51 mph. The most striking thing however, was not about the car. No, the most striking thing was this; before starting the car, Nigel would turn on the radio, detune it so there was nothing but static, and then turn it up to maximum volume. Only then would he start the car up.
There was no point attempting conversation once the radio was on. One day, I asked him before we got in:
LM: Nigel Mawson, why do you have the radio up so loud and why don’t you ever tune it? Why don’t you listen to something instead of that terrible static?
NM: It’s not that loud Lorimer Moseley.
LM: Oh but it is Nigel Mawson, it is.
NM: I suppose I did think the horn was busted the other day because I couldn’t hear it over the radio. I have the radio on to get rid of a strange knocking noise this car has. I hate knocking noises.
LM: (bemused and only vaguely interested look on face): Right
NM: Yeah, about a month after I got the little shitbox, a year or so ago I guess, I noticed a little tapping noise, somewhere at the front there (Nigel waved a disinterested hand toward the front of the car). It went away when I turned on the radio, so I didn’t think more about it. The radio has somethin’ wrong with it so that every time I get in here I have to turn it up again. Then the radio went completely jiggered and had basically no volume - I could hear the tapping noise something fierce in the gaps between sentences or songs. So I shifted the tuning a bit and that seemed to do the trick.
LM: So what was- what is, the noise?
NM: Fucked if I know. Fucked if I care.
LM: You are a very interesting man Nigel Mawson
NM: And you are a prying little prick Lorimer Moseley
I learnt fairly early on to not take such insults as if they are meant to mean what they say. With Nigel, and most of the people with whom I worked, such insults were rather complimentary. Nigel was right about the noise – as soon as he started the engine up, I couldn’t hear a thing. Although I could feel it. I could feel the whole car thumping from side to side. The Skoda felt like it would break apart any minute. I must have looked a little surprised because Nigel shouted over the radio fuzz:
NM: She’s a bit rough. Sit on your coat, stick your feet on that wine cask and wedge your arm in under that bar – that way you’ll hardly notice it.
So, I sat on my coat, put my feet on the wine cask and wedged my arm in under the bar. It all but concealed the violence of the bump and now it just felt like we were on a flat bottom raft in choppy seas. Nigel was certainly satisfied and we drove toward my house in silence. Except the radio.
My house was at the bottom of a dead-end street, the entrance to which had a little kerb. Typical middle class suburbia. Established gardens, kids on bicycles doing tricks over a make-shift jump made from an upturned wheel barrow and a couple of planks. Mrs Dobbinsk sitting behind a lace curtain taking notes on the comings and goings in the street. Mr Wallenstein with his German shepherd that would definitely have bitten the legs off any child who attempted to fetch the football they had just kicked over the fence. In fact, Mr Wallenstein’s German shepherd was almost as frightening as Mr Wallenstein’s hare lip. Then there was Niki Prowvik, who had lice. All the time. It was a typical Canberra middle class suburb.
Nigel took the entry curb a little quickly and as we bumped back down there was the most enormous BANG! The bang was followed by scraping, crunching, and ripping. In what seemed like an eternity but I imagine was really a matter of less than a second, the radio stopped and the Skoda’s engine came ripping through to join us in the front seats. There was the engine, poking its head into the cabin, still running! Sitting in between us, with the radio and dashboard all bent up around it, the engine spluttered much like an old man might on a sinewy bit of lamb. Then it conked out with a last hurrah, a fizz not unlike the noise my son Henry and I make when we release the air brake on a big pretend truck. Finally a long eerie wheeze.
Then silence.
NM: Now there is something you don’t see every day Lorimer Moseley. Closest I’ve ever been to a car engine. Filthy things aren’t they? Do you mind walking the last bit? I don’t like to draw attention to myself.
LM: Sure Nigel Mawson. Do you want me to call Road Service or anything?
NM: You best not. Car’s not registered and I don’t exist.
Nigel got his bag out of the trunk, turned around and walked up the street, leaving the Skoda SuperSport 110 smoking away at the top of my street.
LM: See you Nigel Mawson.
NM: See you Lorimer Moseley.
I joined the kids in investigating it and we all agreed to pretend it had been dumped. Mrs Dobbinsk would know better but we all knew she would have to die before anyone could read her notes. When the council fellow came to take the Skoda away he couldn’t believe what he saw. The bolts that held the engine to the frame of the car were missing. In fact, everything that held the engine to the frame was missing. The noise that Nigel was trying to avoid was in fact the engine slowly coming loose. It took a year, but eventually the whole engine just fell out and the Skoda SuperSport 110 died.
so, what does Nigel’s Skoda Supersport 110 have to do with pain?
The one sentence take home message: Pain is a critical protective device – ignore it at your own peril.
I like Nigel’s SuperSkoda 110 story because it shows how important it is to respect the warning signs. For Nigel, it was the noise of something going wrong under the bonnet (hood). Sure, he could do things to conceal the signs – to ‘anaesthetise’ the noise perhaps. But in the end this was not a very sensible thing to do and the cost was, well, the cost was the SuperSport 110. Not a major cost perhaps but the point is there.
Of course, ignoring pain doesn’t always lead to destruction of the painful part alone. Check out Crazy Kivin’s experience…
crazy kivin’s brush with death
Or: Pain is what tells us to protect our body.
One of the best ways to travel around Australia is to hitchhike. Granted, it is not for everyone, but it certainly was for me. A few mates and I set up an annual hitchhiking race, whereby we would all meet for breakfast and set up a staggered start.
The agreement was that when you reached the target town, you had to get your race card stamped by the barman at a pre-designated pub. It was, therefore, a time trial. Winner got all expenses reimbursed by the other racers and then gave half of it to a charity.
If the target town was far enough away, you would often run into each other along the way. Occasionally you would fly past another racer while they waited on the side of the road for a lift. We implemented a time-exchange program, whereby if you convinced your lift to stop for a competitor, the competitor was required to donate you 30 minutes in exchange for first dibs at the next point. Most trips were for a long weekend. The longest was from Sydney to a place called Kaniva, in country Victoria. 1165 km4.