Tea Time for the Traditionally Built Page 0,3

all sure that this change was entirely for the better.

I shall start walking a bit more, she resolved. It is not enough just to identify a problem; there were plenty of people who were very skilled at pointing out what was wrong with the world, but they were not always so adept at working out how these things could be righted. Mma Ramotswe did not wish to be one of these armchair critics; she would do something. She would start walking to work on … she almost decided on three days of each week, but then thought that two days would be quite enough. And she would start tomorrow.

On the way home that evening, the idea of walking came back to Mma Ramotswe. The idea returned, though, not because she remembered what Mma Makutsi had said about laziness, but because the tiny white van, which in the past few months had intermittently been making a strange noise, was now making that noise again, but louder than before. It happened as she made her way into Zebra Drive; turning a corner always put a strain on the tiny white van, which was something to do with the suspension and what Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni referred to politely as the “distribution of load.” Mma Ramotswe had pondered this expression and then asked, perhaps rather bluntly, “And the load, I take it, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, is me?”

He had looked away to cover his embarrassment. “You could say that, Mma Ramotswe. But then all of us are loads when it comes to vehicles. Even one of these very thin model ladies will be a load …” He trailed off. He was not making it any better, he thought, and Mma Ramotswe was looking at him in an expectant way.

When it became apparent that he had nothing further to add, Mma Ramotswe had continued, “Yes, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, there are such ladies. And unfortunately they are becoming more common. There are now many of them.” She paused. “But perhaps they will begin to disappear. They will get thinner and thinner, and more and more fashionable, and then … pouf … they will be blown away by the wind.”

This remark reduced the tension that had built, and they both laughed. “That will teach them,” he said. “They will be blown away while the other ladies will still be here because the wind will not be strong enough to lift …” He stopped once more; Mma Ramotswe was again looking at him expectantly.

The distribution of load, that evidently led to difficulties, but now, as the van started to make an alarming sound again, she realised that this had nothing to do with suspension and traditionally built drivers. This had to do with some fundamental sickness deep in the engine itself; the tiny white van was sick at heart.

She lifted her foot off the accelerator to see if that would help, but all that it did was to reduce the volume of the knocking sound. And when she put her foot down on the pedal again, the noise resumed. Only at a very slow speed, barely above walking pace, did the sound disappear altogether. It was as if the van was saying to her: I am old now; I can still move, but I must move at the pace of a very old van.

She continued her progress down Zebra Drive, steering the van carefully through her gateway with all the care of a nurse wheeling a very sick patient down the corridor of a hospital. Then she parked the van under its habitual tree at the side of the house and climbed out of the driving seat. As she went inside, she debated with herself what to do. She was married to a mechanic, a situation in which any woman would revel, especially when her car broke down. Mechanics made good husbands, as did carpenters and plumbers—that was well known—and any woman proposed to by such a man would do well to accept. But for every advantage that attended any particular man, it always seemed as if there was a compensating disadvantage lurking somewhere. The mechanic as husband could be counted on to get a car going again, but he could just as surely be counted upon to be eager to change the car. Mechanics were very rarely satisfied with what they had, in mechanical terms, that is, and often wanted their customers—or indeed their wives—to change one car for another. If Mma Ramotswe told Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni that