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The Recovery Man

A day with Daren

Story by Paul Clarke Photography 07515 655932 January 19th, 2017

This is Daren. I can't begin to tell his story. It's beautiful, and complex; dark in places and brilliantly bright in others.

Most of us have had dreams of throwing everything in the air and starting again. Starting from the bottom.

Daren didn't just dream it. He pressed the reset button, big-time, found a mentor and a breakdown truck, and became The Recovery Man.

We spent today driving through south London, talking about the new industrial revolution, autonomous machines, social systems and scrap cars. And recovery.

And quite a bit about space and time.

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OK, this is Daren:

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We met up at the Chinese Garage in Beckenham. It's Grade II listed for its pagoda-style design. But I forgot to take any pictures of it, as Daren's art of recovery held me spellbound. The man's an expert on all the angles.

This is where we got into the space and time thing in a big way. Just as a photographer may feel the weight of space constraints when working, a recovery driver has to manage driving and manoeuvring with inches (and sometimes less) to play with.

And time: nobody lets you hang around with a nineteen foot truck while you get it right. In the motor trade it seems to be something of a spectator sport to watch and wait for you to get it wrong, too. Daren didn't get it wrong.

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Safely loaded, we went off to see Dean. Dean is Daren's motor trade mentor, with an equally amazing backstory.

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With Dean's infectious laugh ringing in our ears we were off to the first drop. Actually, through crafty planning, it was a drop-and-pick-up. Paid work right the way through. I learned a lot today about how paid work works at the sharper end of business. Where £20 here or there can make a major difference to how profitable a job is, or even if it happens at all.

But both cars were non-starters, which meant Daren - politely ignoring my hapless attempts at visuospatial reasoning - had to find a way to swap them over with minimal effort. As we were on a hill, minimal effort was still quite a lot of effort.

Starting at the bottom involves a lot of hard, authentic, good, old-fashioned graft.

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We met a really nice lady and her cat while we were there. Daren does this magic thing with people. I can't explain it. It's quite un-British and involves being massively interested, polite and cheerful to strangers.

All at the same time, like a warm sledgehammer.

It's the reason why everyone involved here, including accommodating neighbours, made the job so much easier.

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We stopped for tea, and Daren removed the battery, and to his delight, a stereo with an input port. These are the only sort with second-hand value, and both removals contributed significantly to the day's bottom line. Hence his expression of even more happiness than usual.

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On to the scrapyard - possibly the single most dangerous place I've ever been in. I left the cab briefly, but scuttled back in haste as there were grabs, crushers, grinders and sparks everywhere.

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The last job - to shift that massive van you see there. Yes, the one that through the power of perspective looks to be bigger than Daren's truck. Actually, I think it was bigger than Daren's truck. Anyway, despite many attempts and cunning tricks, it was seized. Not going anywhere. No pick-up. No pay. The brutal end of starting at the bottom.

And space again, or the lack of it. Given more room to manoeuvre, it might just have been shiftable, or towable. But Penge wasn't designed like that.

So we gave up and went to Nando's.

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The Recovery Man was still smiling anyway.

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The next day...

He was back. And he did it. That's Daren, really. Utterly resilient and reliable. Though the recovery adventures have been a great counterpoint to his success in the digital world, he's on his way back. With new ideas around the future of work, of how people (and not just your sort of people) fit together with technology, and much more.

You should talk to him. Find him at @DrugFAMDaren.

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