The Service – Part Two

I had spent the week foolishly believing that each time I unlocked my car, the door would open, and each time I had to walk around and shuffle across the passenger seat. If the battery in the key worked then my parade around the silver machine would be retired. I was making my return visit to last week’s scene, the scene where I parted with a large amount of cash that probably exceeded the value of the silver machine. The door was to be fixed, the rear windscreen wiper to be perked up and the new rear brakes fitted. At least today I knew what awaited me, I knew that there was no more money to be paid. In a non driving music cliché, Born in the USA was my album of choice, couldn’t get more blue-collar than mechanics, although these ones wore black. As classic British weather goes, it was grey, uncertain whether it wanted to rain or just envelop the land in a giant bland blanket.

Pipe Dream

It is true, I was feeling down. An inescapable notion in my noggin that the year had been something of a disaster, albeit only at the half way stage. Every time I thought I was getting somewhere a huge wall was erected before me, I either turned back and started again or I sought to stand before it and waste my time hammering at its solid heart. Six months in and my horizon was nothing but a wall. I couldn’t see the promise of a golden future, everything that I wanted was beyond my reach. At times of hardship you look for the joy in the things that normally wouldn’t raise a second thought. Dreams on hold, a life in stasis. I strangely started the year with deciding that Dancing in the Dark was a suitable song for how I felt… It’s words only rang truer…

Trains in the Rain

 Drawing back the curtains had presented me with the sight I most feared and expected most, dark grey skies like buckets overflowing, sending down long strands of water attempting to drown us in the drought. Each passing car rolling along the road had the windscreen wipers on overdrive whilst trying to avoid the ponds in potholes. I had ignored the first alarm that had been so lovingly set the night before. I wanted to ignore that I had ever hit the snooze and sleep on through. Sadly I had to wake and drag myself out of comfort to embrace a hectic day on which the outcome was mildly more important than eradicating the bags hanging under my eyes. I had to get suited and booted and get my spindly self to Birmingham. Another city, another interview. A day at home enjoying the Zico and Pele show where the cat’s claws gave cause for the mutt to hide was the more appealing day. I half enjoyed the days dose of weetos and owing to my sleeping desire I left a present for a deserving pet.