As we drive through the minor roads looking for the way to Minehead, the radio plays "What's that coming over the hill? Is it a monster?" You turn the volume up, and everybody starts to shout the words. The driver jerks the wheel to make the car zig-zag in the road. You raise you arms and move your body round, dancing in the passenger seat.
To our left the grey sea glitters in the morning light, then disappears behind a sudden bulge of Southern land as we reach a crossroads and the speed we're going forces an unexpected turn.
4 comments:
Wow, man. Sounds like you're on quite an adventure.
Actually, after the scene described in "06" the four people in the car were never the same again. That night, or in the early hours of the next morning, two of the women in the car had a violent argument and the third woman, the static dancer in the passenger seat, had to step between them to stop a physical fight breaking out: words were spoken that could never be taken back and five months later the two combatants, who had previously been friends for half a decade, still don't speak to each other. The static dancer has moved jobs and locations and her friendship with one of the combatants has collapsed because she was too sympathetic at the time to the other woman involved in the argument. I remain friends with her and the combatant she does not speak to anymore, but not the other, who was the driver zig-zagging the car across the road. Why am I not friends with her? In all truth I never really was. But every time I hear that song I remember that day, and that moment, and wonder how it all collapsed so fast, and so irreparably. We were so unselfconsciously, unguardedly happy and together as the car sped through the back roads with the sun beating down on the Somerset fields. That day feels like it was the last day of summer. The heat continued for several weeks afterwards but in the heads and the hearts of everybody who had been in the car winter had already set in.
With me - it was a van. It was my girlfriend and my best friend. (Who now have two (?) kids together.)
Fittingly - the van burned up.
Now that's a bad scene, Bobby. By the way, the bracketed question mark is beautifully expressive, if it means what I think it means.)
Post a Comment