V-Tech Daniels

Invoice 13, one callout hour

The escalator on the old bus depot concourse can be made to work with an arrangement anybody can understand after the first full hour somebody spends showing them. Val Daniels learned this from a depot technician who called up a diagram and asked if it had been drawn for somebody lying flat on the steps. Val did actually get low beside the handrail to sketch it. The technician had meant the question as an insult. The two argued until Val asked where somebody was supposed to stand without the step at service height. They opened the service manual again while standing there. Val redrew three arrows before going home.

At home Nessa, Val's best friend and legal witness to two flat leases, asks for a spare drawing whenever Val tells a story with both hands. Several drawings have become labels she sticks on the inside of drawers. It alarms Val to find the picture for a folded towel on the back of a spool of cotton for an argument long since forgotten.

One reused pad

In the DGM garage there is a notebook for the Honda 2016 Civic Type R, thicker than anything Val ever handed over for a manual. Many diagrams look right because they made sense at the very moment Val drew them. At a practice session a new driver asked why her axle was shifting as the wheel turned. Val found a picture that could help and spun the notebook around. It was drawn from below, which made it harder to look at from a natural standing position. The driver turned the book twice before setting it down and twisting the wheel by hand herself. Val added a side view and sketched the finger where she actually put it.

Len Mercer used another version of the drawing to show somebody which small fitting the group had just retrieved. Val's first response was to feel possessive about the clean copy. Ten minutes later it had a smudged area on the useful bit and two initials beside a new arrow Val hadn't considered adding.

One repeated approach

During a test at DGM, Val likes to keep the run into a turn the same and work on one part farther on. That means if the entrance changes, the rest of the record can become harder to use. After watching a clip with Jerry Manifolds, Val wrote down what Jerry said he'd done with his outside hand and what could be seen from the spectator's side. It took longer to find words for Val's own practice moment, where an outward push seemed considerable inside the car. At the bench it looked like a small movement after a crest. The book has separate spaces for those things now. Val is still learning to keep handwriting in both as legible as the drawings.

One unused sheet

Val has asked for a line through a set of corners that will let the Civic try a second setup without changing the approach. Nessa is coming to see what goes into the notebook. She says she'll only need to borrow it if she gets lost. Val has drawn the view of the paddock entrance as it looks from her bus stop and left the opposite page blank. She knows the colours of the shelter and has started describing the underside of the bench in case they'll be important.