Hi, my name's Tom and I was born and raised in Wensleydale, famous for its cheese and dry-stone walls; if you've not heard of either, then Google's your friend. Those dry-stone walls are my business, albeit that I and the blokes who work for me, tend to spend our time building decorative ones around smart houses and public buildings, rather than the farmer's field variety.
That was how I'd first met my girlfriend Ariana, when the lads and I were restoring a Ha Ha wall (you'll likely find those mentioned on Google too) for her father Jack, along the front of their family home, Thorne Hall. Not that we were doing much wall building today as the first big, autumn storm was blowing through; it'd been named Ariana, so I was looking forward to teasing her about that.
The storm had been forecast a week ago, but the meteorologists had expected it to only batter Scotland and nobody notices or cares much when it's just Scotland getting battered. Besides, the locals are well used to coping with them anyway; a sudden change in the jet-stream had pushed Storm Ariana further south and it was instead howling through Wales, the Midlands and northern England.
You can't build dry-stone walls in that sort of weather, or not of the quality we construct, so I'd sent out a WhatsApp message to all my lads around mid-morning, instructing them to pack up their tools and get over to Askrigg for a staff training and team-building event. Well, OK, it was a booze-up at the Crown Pub, but it would be going down as staff training on my tax return.
Whenever we got washed-out like this I would foot the bill for an afternoon in the pub and those were usually at the Crown; the Landlord there could be trusted to ensure that the guys all got home safely at the end of it. Sure, it cost me a few quid, but it helped to ensure that the best men wanted to work for me rather than the competition.
Normally I would've joined them, but this afternoon I headed home after an odd pint to clean out the newest of my twin-cab pick-up trucks. I'd been co-opted into collecting Ariana, along with her father Jack and brother Jamil, from the airport. Jamil's wife Priss (Priscilla) had be going to pick them up, but she was concerned about the weather, so I was going instead.
The three of them had been in Latvia all week at a trade show; their business is plastic mouldings. They have eight factories in the UK and as many again across Europe and beyond; rumour has it that they're the largest privately owned plastic moulding company in Europe? I wouldn't know, but Jack, indeed the whole family, are absolutely minted.
Jack started the business with his father in law, another Jamil -- Ariana's grandfather -- and when he died, the old man's shares were passed on to Ariana, her older brother and her mother Farah. It's very much a 'family business' and while Farah probably knows no more about plastic mouldings than I do myself, Ariana and Jamil are both actively working Directors.
As you've perhaps already guessed from those names, the maternal side of the family originates from the middle-east, specifically Iran, or as Farah invariably refers to it, Persia. Farah's elder brothers were killed in the revolution of 1978, but she and her mother were already out of the country and her father also managed to get himself out, just ahead of the Pahlavi regime's fall.
Ten, years later Jamil crossed paths Jack, who was both a Chemical and Mechanical Engineering whizz-kid; by then Jamil had the money to back him. When his daughter Farah subsequently met, fell in love with and married Jack, the two of them became full business partners and the rest as they say, is history.
I'd almost finished on the truck when I got a second phone call from Ariana: While the weather was okay in Latvia and their plane had arrived, it was forecast to be too windy for it to safely land back at Leeds-Bradford airport -- that place sits on top of a bloody great hill -- so their flight home wouldn't be leaving until the following morning.
I assured Ariana that I'd be there to collect them then; if Ariana phoned me when they were about to depart, I'd have ample time to drive down to Leeds. I also checked that Farah and Priss also knew about this delay and heaved a sigh of relief when I heard that they did; I didn't envy Jack that conversation with Farah, she would be absolutely livid:
She and Priscilla had originally been going to go to Latvia for the week too; a week of sightseeing and shopping in Riga, followed a family party weekend -- I'd been due to fly over for that too -- to celebrate Farah's forty-eighth birthday. When the trade-show's venue had been changed at the last minute, that plan had been changed with it:
Having Googled the place, Farah announced that she 'wasn't spending a week in some grubby town famous only for its shipping docks and lumber yards'. Instead, Farah instructed that Jack, Jamil and Ariana were to leave their staff to wrap-up at the show, while they flew back early for a party at Thorne Hall; that party was to have been tonight, Farah would not be a happy bunny.
By then it was too late for me to go back and join the lads in Askrigg; they would be well pissed already and I'd never manage to catch-up. Instead I finished cleaning the truck then went into my office to chase up on a few outstanding invoices and get my other paperwork up to date; I was still in there when Ariana phoned for a third time at about 6:30.
The connection wasn't good, Ariana was phoning from a bar or restaurant and the place sounded to be bouncing; it was only afterwards that I realised she would be two hours ahead of me in Latvia. Ariana assured me that all was OK, other than that Jack was being inundated with calls from Farah, who was apparently 'frightened by the stormy weather'.
My own thoughts were that Farah was likely just feeling sorry for herself at being alone on her birthday. Ariana didn't dispute that opinion, but asked if I could 'just slip over to Thorne Hall anyway and offer mum a bit of reassurance and company'.
'Slip over', For Fuck's Sake, Thorne Hall was fifteen miles away from me! Why couldn't Priss go and over hold Farah's hand? Jamil and Priscilla had restored, extended and upgraded an old Gamekeepers cottage and moved into that when they got married; it was within the grounds of Thorne Hall and not half a mile from the main house.
I calmed down when Ariana reminded me of the stream which ran between the two houses. Jamil had apparently phoned Priss already, but when she tried driving across to the hall, she'd found the ford was too deep for her car, with water even lapping over the adjacent footbridge. "Okay love, I'll get changed and drive across there now." Not best pleased, but what else could I say?
I also asked Ariana to call her mum and let her know I was on my way and had to laugh at the reply: "No, I can't do that, or mum will think that she's won; don't you phone her either, just turn up and tell her you've called in as you were passing." Thorne Hall was in the middle of nowhere, nobody, most especially me, would be 'just passing' on a night like this.
Half an hour and a quick shower later saw me climbing into the pick-up truck, dressed in albeit freshly laundered work clothes rather than anything vaguely smart. I'd loaded a chainsaw, shovel and a couple of tow ropes into the load-bed too, Christ knows what I was going to find out on the roads; the wind was howling and the rain sluicing sideways.
