Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 30 November 2017

In a driver survey, the Mitsubishi Carisma came 293rd for charisma – but it suits me just fine

My pal Charlie inherited a car and a ride-on mower from an old pal. He kept the mower and the next time he saw me in the pub he offered me the car. He’d driven down in it, he said, and it was out in the pub car park. ‘This car is bombproof,’ said Charlie handing over the key. ‘Even you couldn’t wreck this one.’

I asked how much. He wanted paying not in cash but in art, he said. He’d seen this painting for sale on a French restaurant wall and now that he was back in England he wished he’d bought it. I was returning to France in a fortnight. I knew the restaurant. There were about a dozen works hung on the wall, all of them efflorescences of the same confident genius. Charlie showed me a photo of the object of his desire on his phone. It was a painting of an outdoor flower stall under a parasol with a faceless woman browsing. The parasol was a sort of police-strobe electric blue. ‘But it’s crap, Charlie,’ I pointed out. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘It reminds me of the atmosphere of Provence.’

I’ve heard that Charlie made an offer to the restaurant patron of €700 for the lot. The patron said he’d inform the artist. On his return from the telephone, the patron said that the artist had gone stroboscopic at what he thought was a derisory offer. But if I could get the single painting for €200, say, that would be the price of the car. And any car that starts and drives is surely worth that. ‘What is the car, anyway, Charlie?’ I said, accepting the key. If the worst came to the worst, and the Blue Parasol cost much more than 200 quid, my absolute maximum, I planned to take up the brushes and knock him off a market scene myself.

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