Dad has been reincarnated as a Land Rover

My son phoned,

‘Dad has been reincarnated as a Land Rover.’

Another son phoned and said,’ Dad has been reincarnated.’ He has written a blog about his father which I think you should read in the link below.

Kingpin

https://unlikelystories.home.blog/portfolio/59/

The children were teenagers when my husband who was an engineer, obtained a job in Benin, West Africa to build a cement works. He had already departed when I sat with the children to look at a school atlas, to discover where Benin actually was! We noticed a red line that stretched from the north of Benin into Niger and Algeria across the Sahara finishing in Algiers where we could cross to Marseilles by ferry.

‘If you come to Benin, we will drive back to the UK along that red line,’ I said enticingly.

After all, they were teenagers and had other interests, yet they were drawn to this idea.

Benin was a positive experience and in the background was the adventure of returning home.

I had the idea, but had no idea how to achieve it.

My practical husband set himself to the task, a good year before we were due to leave, he commandeered a work’s Land Rover that was to be abandoned, and started to rebuild it. Hours were spent lying prone beneath its chassis, sorting out plugs, kingpins and other mysterious things.

Flan O’Brian, the Irish author in his book ‘The Third Policeman’ has a narrator who is wedded to his bicycle, to such an extent that he feels that most of his atoms have been transferred to his bicycle, so if he is accused of murder, it will not be him, but his bicycle!

My husband’s atoms have been transferred to a Land Rover; he still lives on.

We sold the Land Rover to my husband’s sister, and it was left mouldering in a garage for twenty years, when she decided to sell it, but she had kept all the records of us crossing the Sahara, which she handed on to the buyer. The buyer became fascinated. He noted that the Sahara sand had settled on the dashboard, but had segmented, so that the lower levels were the red laterite of west Africa and the upper levels became lighter and lighter as we traversed the Sahara.

The buyer is in the process of conserving the Land Rover in its original condition. He has replicated the roof rack, just as the Africans had made it. He has even replicated the company stickers that were on the Land Rover. The Danish company that my husband worked for.