Sunday 24 April 2011

What is wrong with this picture? A road trip part 4.




Image source.

I hadn’t been this way for a long time.

As I said to friends this evening 20 or more years ago it was clear sailing. 7 hours nonstop. 10 years ago it was simple stuff.

However, now, instinctively I knew there would be a subtle attempt to wangle one onto the M6 toll road through confusing and unclear signage. Sure enough there it was; a sign telling me that the M6 toll road was clear. And I was alone. On the orange black top the mirrored highway snaked its Martian like way into and infinite to come and recently gone.

10,12 or 14 lanes with off ramps and A roads skirting. All empty and yet somewhere a high frequency trading bot needed my attention span. To inform me of nothing. Just like all of today’s intercourse. Void.

Left and 2 lanes to the M5, right and two lanes to the M6 toll, right down the centre the one lane to what I and every other motorist who ever poured benzene had paid for many times over.

My right of way.

As I glided on through the night I reflected the low pressure sodium glare and sought a point on the rainbow road where there might be some kind of touch point in the unreality sphere.

2000 years of waiting. A twinkle of the eye. 65,000 years of watching.

How long can the human memory cling to light?

If there ever was a time to decide then it is now. If there ever was a time of maximum beauty then that filtering of desired outcome was now. If ever there was a mile in the stretching of the sand then that will be our future.

So many routes to follow and yet only the one straight and true, we know the by ways where we idle our rampant minutes. We know the lay byes where sky flys by to night and never returns our call. Compassed to waste days and our greens. No profit.

How many of others years, how many of others tears and how many lives had it taken for me to slip my bonds and escape? Why now? If the colder iris is focussed on the ceremony in which I engage then surely only one conclusion can be reached. There is an end to the days of our lives which reaches out to a beginning.

Engel’s town soon pitched up and the night was as day. So much light for the most unEnglish shit hole in the world. Consider that burgers of Buckingham. Bomber halls and Turing’s test. Have you ever wondered what the world would look like without the living conditions of the Manchester poor ever being brought to our notice?

No.

Well if I set rats in a cage and then incinerated them, do you reckon my pamphlet on the squeeking conditions of the inflamed cagedville rodents would get a printing run without foundation bitchboy funny money? Or then lead to a massive killing spree of mousedom after teaming up with a beardy lazy fuckeD’witz and starting a load of bollox predictively programmed to be named Spotski/Oven/Zyklomoronmarks?

What an indolent dump.

I sped on, past the Plough at Bignall End where I had, in a previous life, stunned locals and kind host in polishing off the belt busting platter.

On past the calling cards to Seaside havens and up into the Lakes.

To the pit stop.