I pulled up into the car park (in a smooth manoevre that I have to admit I was pretty proud of) nearby the local Blockbusters, pulling up the handbrake at first a little weakly. I was more selfconscious of my driving than usual due to the fact that I will soon be doing a test to enable me to drive minibuses and my boss had passed on a few tips from reading over the test results of the few who had gone before us – the instructor and examiner has a big thing about coasting, about removing totally the left foot from the clutch, about mirrors, of course, and pulling up the handbrake at lights and such.
In any case, I instantly rectified the handbrake and this set me off.
I imagined how somebody may have left the brake weak on one of the college’s cars, the 4×4 I sometimes drive and which I found does slip backwards on the handbrake if not pulled very strongly. [Another reverie defending myself against jokes about my driving when the damn brake cable broke while I was using it, once again set in a meeting]. And soon enough, after a couple of initial takes which I don’t remember too well, I had myself running after the car, which had been locked, down the road the car park leads to (though not in such a way that the car could roll down it), and which itself leads to a busy road.
At first I broke the window with my hand. I then broke it with my feet, by grabbing onto the car and swinging my legs into the front window. I got in and slammed on the brakes just before the sturdy 4×4 would have rolled out into the road at a point at which the oncoming traffic would scarcely have seen it before hitting it. Briefly, I imagined being congratulated at work.
All this took place in the space of three to five metres.
I think this observation was triggered by thinking of the old house around from college which I used to see whenever I walked or rode into or from college. I was thinking at the time (because I was watching Grand Designs, an interesting programme I have watched now a couple of times, which follows people who are self-building, often along ecological principals) how it was a shame how the building had been knocked down, despite the fact that it had extensive fire damage and was thus as in need of repair as some of the buildings shown in the programme as possible projects for off-grid living.
Quite aside from the time I photographed it for Collateral Damage, long before I wrote the first draft I haven’t yet progressed beyond, the house had been the focus of numerous reveries in which I took over the college from its hippy founders and ran it on more sensible lines. It was at times a project itself which the students were to help with, turning it into the café/tea house I had once dreamed up as the Wardoville Cajovna [link to be written]. This was especially so perhaps when Dad was doing up this place.
I mention this not only because I was already thinking of it (I was hoping to sneakily draw a map of such places while wasting time watching a film with M____), but because in writing the above reverie I remembered another.
A Stolen car is being driven very quickly, chased by the police. The driver or his accomplice is armed, and shooting at the police behind. This at the junction onto the busy road which, because there is a fairly blind corner from the right, often takes a while to pull out of. I rev the engine hard, and then blast out across the first lane, smacking the pursued car over the pavement and tight against the wall opposite. I am then pictured in the newspaper having persuaded the insurance company that they would get priceless publicity if they opted to replace the car and be pictured.
When I think about it like that my life seems a little more interesting and perhaps there is no need to be so depressed about all the places I haven’t been as I was earlier in the day.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.