Des

 

Des was 60, and he worked as a process controller at the carbon regeneration industrial site where Torill was quality control technician. He was a pretty standard sort of person short,  overweight and had lots of stories to tell about his life. He was generally quite pleased with himself, and thought of himself as quite an  impressive sort of person. But really he was ordinary. not in a bad way, a nice ordinary. But it was like he didn’t know that it was nice to be ordinary. It was Des that taught me about dental hygienists which I had never heard of before, but he had been for a tooth clean, not just been to the dentist . des had worked as a bus driver before and he told a story about a time he was driving his bus, and a young female passenger got up as her stop approached, and stood near the door, just behind the driver waiting to alight. Suddenly a cat lept out in front of the bus.  Des continued to drive on, striking the cat and killing it. ´You killed the cat!ˋ, the woman exclaimed. des explained that if he had braked, she would’ve gone through the windscreen. So he made the choice to run over the cat instead.

Torill was reminded of this, as she drove, with her child in the car, after a school holiday sortie to a well known fast food restaurant. As we drove home, there was a woman walking on the road coming towards me on my side of the road and there was a car driving along coming towards me on the other side of the road. If I had gone around, the woman I would have  crashed into a car travelling at speed, while travelling at spee myself. It would’ve been a forceful impact. hitting the woman would have injured the woman. But my child would’ve been better protected being inside the car.. and I was making that choice mentally, given the traffic coming the other way, meaning I had nowhere to go, how is the woman stepped out of the way onto the verge.

When the carbon regeneration factory closed, everyone was made redundant, including des. One of the stories des liked to tell what is that he enjoyed a drink and had often drove home very very drunk and couldn’t remember getting home when he came to in the morning. On the day of the plant closed, we all went out for dinner and drinks.. des got a lift from me so that he could drink. I was going straight onto a work recruitment agency. Which meant that given I was Des’s lift, he had to leave earlier than he wanted and drink less than he wanted. That was possibly the last time I saw des. He took a job as a bus driver again. And died soon after of kidney failure.