Going from station to station on a long car journey

I’VE been doing a good bit of driving this past while, chiefly the Cork-Dublin-Cork-Dublin road. The bit of my elbow between the ‘elbone’ and the funny bone has taken on the shape of the sill of the driver’s door. The floor is covered in Double Decker wrappers.

I love the moment of escape from the tentacles of city traffic. AA Roadwatch ceases to become relevant. As long as at rush-hour as I’m nowhere near the blackspots: Ferrybank Dual Carriageway, loose horses on the M50, swans on the N25, ANYTHING to do with Lough Atalia or Exit 7 to Exit 9 on the M7 — where a mysterious malaise befalls the drivers so that they are becalmed like ships in the doldrums that causes tailbacks for no-reason (maybe they bulldozed a fairy fort, shur they could have no luck after that) — I know I’m free.

After the toll bridge, where theroad is a hundred yards wide, with no markings for 20 seconds I pretend I’m Knight Rider, “a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist”.