There was only one vacant cubicle in the Gents. It was vacant because it had no lock on it. I took the risk of a rude interruption, deciding to whistle while I worked. It is a time honoured method of letting somebody know you're in the lavatory, and if it worked for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, then who was I to break (wind) with tradition.
I gathered some strips of tissue to put on the seat; couldn’t be too careful; the last person to sit there may have gone to Eton. I bent over to place the paper on the relevant areas of the seat, just as someone opened the door and smacked me in the rump with it. Thank God I was still fully attired. I spun around but the person had backed off muttering an apology. I should think so too. Closing the door over again I sat, and no, that wasn't a spelling mistake, I just sat. Wetting my lips for a whistled rendition of ‘Riverdance’ I puckered up; just as the door began to open again. I whacked it shut with my foot. Unfortunately the pull of my body toward the door cracked the seat away from its hinges. I narrowly avoided skidding onto the floor but did succeed in making the sort of noise that comes from a trapeze artist when he realises he has used baby oil instead of talc on his hands.
I cancelled the performance; stage fright had kicked in.
I departed, a bitter man.
By the time I got back to the car, I had managed to rustle up some business cards. There was a machine which dispensed them just inside the wide glass doors of the service station; I also bought a newspaper and a magazine called GQ, something I had seen but never read before.
At the counter, a gaggle of old ladies were asking why the sherbet dips were so expensive. I flicked through the magazine to the particular article that I had seen while it was on the shelf. The headline of the page I opened read something like
‘BIGGER AND BETTER MULTIPLE ORGASMS .' There was a picture of a lady in the throes of the said orgasm. At least I think it was an orgasm. She may have been about to sneeze; not that I don’t know what an orgasm looks like, it’s just that I usually have my hands full when it happens.
I snapped it shut and one of the old ladies looked at me as if I had just goosed her. I think she had been enjoying reading it over my shoulder. I slipped it under the newspaper. I didn't want to shock the other old ladies. They looked to be the age when you can’t remember what an orgasm was; lucky if you remembered your name, really. You start to think it was wind, or indigestion, or a genetically modified satsuma; eh... whatever that is; can't remember. You think ‘oh yes, I’ll have one of those with a Rich Tea biscuit when the vicar comes round.'
Speaking of which, the tea that is, Lesley handed me a cup as I settled back into my seat. I gave her the newspaper and kept the copy of GQ myself. Before I could read the article that had caught my attention, Lesley exclaimed, ‘I don’t believe what I just saw!’
I looked up from my article, and saw a car in front of us, a mini just like that bastard Damian. The driver had opened the car door and then surreptitiously tucked his Burger King bag, stuffed with the wreckage of his meal, under his car.
I returned to my article.
‘He’s got a uniform on,’ Lesley said.
I looked up again. So he had; with a blue shirt that had epaulettes on the shoulder. It was a uniform sure enough. He must have been some sort of ‘official’ litter lout. He drove off, leaving his litter for someone else to pick up. The oaf.
Under grey skies we rolled, wet motorway wheels and spray all around us. A police car on a bridge watched us drive up and under and away...
James Taylor sang to us.
We muttered. Hadn't the policeman anything better to do than ambushing motorists with his speed camera? You could hear the wet squeals behind us as drivers hit the brakes, suddenly slowing on the slippery motorway. Perhaps he was making a video? Motorway Pile-Ups: The greatest hits.
We were quite close to the sign indicating Edinburgh before we saw it flash past. There was mist obscuring every horizon. It gave the landscape a peculiar look; very static and dreamlike with the hypnotic motion of the windscreen wipers. I munched on Opal Fruits to help my concentration; well, Lesley's concentration actually. If she didn't pay attention she was in danger of losing a finger every time she popped one in my mouth. Actually, I think the action of my jaws pumping juice down my grateful gullet stimulates the brain. It certainly brought back some old memories for me.
I remembered being in Edinburgh.
It was a long time ago. The weather was bad then; much worse, in fact. It was snowing; a blizzard; a howling, relentless turmoil of snow sweeping across the road. I was a passenger in a mini bus. There were about twelve of us, all huddled together. Visibility was terrible, partly because I had my eyes closed for some of the trip, praying that the lunatic who was driving would slow down. He sat hunched forward, steering wheel clamped in his hands knuckle white. He was like a gun dog, fine Irish nose pointing forward into the maelstrom of snow and wind. His name was Mike and he was taking us to a demonstration in Edinburgh against the implementation of the Criminal Justice Bill. This was when I younger and more political and, obviously a lot more suicidal than I am now, because such a trip in such weather was madness.
We were in an old white van, in a blizzard, on a white motorway, big lorries heavily rumbling past at ridiculous speeds. It was as if the drivers were tired of living and needed the thought of a motorway pileup to kick start their nerveless spinal cords into life. People in the van were doing the usual things to while away the trip; crosswords, reading the paper, writing out their Wills and praying for forgiveness as well as saying ‘slow down you crazy Irish bastard’ from time to time.
Fair play to him; he did slow down.
When we reached Edinburgh the protest march had started without us; so much for the proletariat sticking together. A few hundred placard carrying people were wandering the cold streets of the city centre along the route laid out by the police. We would see them down a long road in the distance, and hear the sound of them chanting. So, we would pile back into the van and drive down to join them. At least that was the idea. By the time we got there, they were nowhere to be seen. Then somebody would spot them down the end of the long street we had just left. Off we would go again, and again they would be gone upon our arrival. And then somebody else would spot them, and again we’d be off and again they’d be gone. At that rate we would have been lucky to get there just in time to be beaten up by the police
In the end, we caught up just as the demonstration broke up and everybody was going home.
Down the motorway again
An icy streak with a mad Irish driver
If you had have been standing by the side of the road you would have heard all the other vehicles going ‘wooooooshh!’ as they drove past. Ours would have flown past with faces pressed up against the windows and the sound, ‘aaaaarrrgggghhhhhhhh!’ fading into the distance as the blizzard closed in around us. We all aged years on that particular journey. One poor lady passed through the menopause and out the other end by the time we reached the outskirts of Manchester. And the Criminal Justice Bill was passed into law anyway so it was all in vain...
This trip to Scotland was much better; Lesley, Elvis and I.
James Taylor was still singing soothing
hot chocolate and velvet lyrics for us as we entered Lanarkshire on the M74. The rain had stopped. The big cloud that had been above us must have been tired. It had rained on us all morning. At the very least it must have been bored. We rolled down the windows a bit. The air rushed in, drowning out the music. All you could hear was the syncopation of the song, a sound like sand on parchment as the drummer dragged his brush across the tight skin of a drum. And now the rain was no longer drumming on the roof of the car...
The sun was breaking through.
Glimmers of sunlight bounced off the glistening car chrome and suddenly we were in Scotland.
The sun had obviously seen it all before because it disappeared again twenty minutes later.
