Sunday 14 October 2007

A-Z



Everywhere we go I buy an A-Z of that city. So the car can have 'the knowledge' of where we are like a London taxi driver. Derby. Leicester. Birmingham. Nottingham. Manchester. London. Liverpool. The Liverpool A-Z is waiting. The Derby A-Z opens up like a Ordnance Survey map. Spread across the bonnet. The London A-Z is from the 1950s. Streets have disappeared. The Nottingham A-Z is missing a cover because it's been used so much to find places, to move houses, to point relatives in the right direction. The Leicester A-Z has not touched since I left. The Manchester A-Z is brand new. I mark pages where the car has been parked. From the ICA to the Ikon Gallery. The River Trent to the River Mersey. Albert Square to Albert Docks.

Where are we?



We arrived half an hour early but we weren't sure where we were. Sat Nav wasn't sure either. Chris - the Auto-Recovery driver - pulled over to check so I could phone my Art Car contact. When we knew where to go we pulled out and a lady in a jeep drove straight into the side of us. She was tired. She was frantic. She didn't see us pulling out in front of her. She damaged her jeep. There was no trace of a crash on the Auto-Recovery vehicle. Scuffed tyres. Brushed off. She was heading home from work. She stood in the middle of the road next to her dented jeep parked at an angle. Frozen mid-crash. Shouting. Smoking. Arms folded. I thought she was going to cry or shout. Or sue. The police arrived. They pushed her jeep out of the middle of the road. They made her hand over her insurance details which she'd refused to do before they came. I'd stopped filming the moment we made contact. We should have taken pictures of the jeep to prove there was no more damage than there was. Chris says it's surprising how much damage is sometimes done after the accident. Chris says she is still making a claim.

Cartists



Rush hour traffic