¦ dialling in from a bench table outside Arnolfini Cafe ¦
10:11 GMT, Saturday 15th August 2009. It's sunny but almost gale force winds are
battering the ancient stone and modern steel and glass structures of the
harbour. It's pleasant, although I'm
having to keep a very tight grip on my paper notes... and the half-empty coffee
cup (waxed and recycled cardboard) that keeps threatening to topple over with
each power gust. I'm feeling hot under
the collar and finding it difficult to concentrate; an episode last night keeps
running through my head and making my blood boil.
Stand out from the crowd, you should expect to attract
attention, not all of it positive. It's
been an interesting experience, the past three weeks, owning and driving a
material object that has this extraordinary power to shape people's opinions of
you.
Last night I drove into town to go meet James Catholic
Funboy. I got caught in a big snarl of
stationary traffic, one lane of traffic that eventually split into two as you
got close to the traffic lights. Behind
me was a car that had been driving aggressively for the last half mile or so. A
silver thing with four home boys inside, black skinned, head-scarves wrapped
around foreheads, eyes narrowed and in some kind of bad mood. I guess they
didn't like being forced to sit in traffic. The driver honks his horn. Nobody moves.
Nobody can move. It's a jam. The driver revs his engine. Nobody moves. Then the driver decides to
force his way alongside my car, squeezing into a space between my passenger
side and a rusty metal railing beyond which was a slow moving brown river. My passenger window is down and through it
comes a fountain of verbal diarrhoea in a street-speak dialect, liberally dosed
with the word fuck. Apparently I'm a
wanker for not conjuring some more space between me and the cars in front to
let him through. Of course, he didn't
say it quite like that. His statement of
glory though was, "You've got a nice car mate, but I'm in a hire car and I
don't give a fuck, so move it!" At which point he revved his engine,
slammed the wheel round towards me and jumped his car forward a few
centimetres. I watched my wing mirror snap back in a tussle with his wing
mirror, but remain intact. It was clear
he had every intention of continuing if I didn't move, easily stoving in the
front end of my car. I looked at the
road ahead of me. There was nowhere for
me to go, except into the lane of oncoming traffic. He starts ranting at me again. More street speak with sort of high-pitch
intonations, accompanied by sneering titters and giggles from his adoring
audience, the three others in the car with him.
I’m speechless, not through fear; I was very calm; but more through an
awareness of how I was in a totally non-winnable position. I couldn’t be violent: there were four of
them. I couldn’t drive away. I couldn’t ram his car, because any damage to
mine would be extortionate and stressful.
I experience a moment of seeing myself as Clive Owen in a scene from a
film. At this point however, the traffic
ahead of me crawled forward... and twat face was able to rev up and screech
through the gap, forcing his way in front of me, then back into the now
available 2nd lane and then out through the changing lights.
The experience left me in an angry mood; not helped by the
fact that James Catholic Funboy was a no-show.
So the trip and associated unpleasant experience had been for nothing.
In the absence of James, I called on Chris Master of Tic Toc
and spent the night cruising around Bristol
with the roof down, stopping off at bars and having some damn fine
conversations. Chris recently finished
reading God Seed, and I'm deeply flattered by the praise he summoned for the
book.
EDIT: 12:58 GMT, Sunday 16th. Now sitting in Sky Bunker.
Working on Dog Eat Dog blog entries. Feeling a creative groove forming. Hopefully I can build on this but avoid
getting sucked into some monster vortex of self-determination, the usual thing
that happens when I write... I'm enjoying the social thread I've woven back
into my life: I'd like to manage a balance between the desire to finish the
book and the desire to see my friends.
I burned off yesterday's bad mood by driving down to Wells
with Jo. A thunderous roar of noise and
speed; fantastic road. I've had a lot of
strangers smile at me or pass comments of admiration about the car. I guess it counter-balances the three years I
spent driving my 18-year old Nissan Micra rusty biscuit tin... I used to get a
lot of looks with that too, usually comical.
Right time for a coffee from the Octagonal Steel coffee God
then a power snooze, Da Vinci style, then back to Dog Eat Dog.