A Small Break from Rats

Original digital art from my Instagram page… which you’re definitely following… right?

It’s been raining here recently, and by recently I mean for the last 29 years in my personal experience, but also more recently than that too. A little while back I was driving in the dark trying to hunt down a nightwalker. She has a name but that suits her better. I pulled into a local centre, a cosy little hideout where low-key guitar festivals, craft events and satanically sacrificial nudist orgies (if the stories are to be believed) take place. The road on the way out has a river that runs across it, a little one — usually. Like I said, lots of rain.

There’s nothing like a mini car accident to shake you out of a slothful state. It felt like driving into a small wall. I half expected the car to sink downwards after stopping in the middle of the river. It didn’t. I drove out with what seemed like smoke coming out of and surrounding the car — it was steam from the water running over the engine — then heard what sounded like a brick of chalk screaming across a road-sized chalkboard. I assumed the front of my car had crumpled up. It was, in fact, my licence plate, dragging diagonally on the ground owing to a now lost, drown screw.

I sat there, in that moment, in the dark, assuming I was stuck in the middle of somewhere far enough for the effort of getting somewhere else to be as good as being nowhere, oddly content with my situation. It’s a strange state of mind — not knowing what you’re going to do to move forward but knowing that you inevitably will.

The river — despite not being on the best terms with it — let a peaceful sound ring out alongside the choir of non-lethal (since it’s the UK) insects. It was a small pause. A momentary departure.

Our tenuous vacation from death is crammed with pockets of bliss if we pause to dip our hands in. They catch you cold and off-guard, like being ill in bed flicking through the TV channels and stumbling across a movie that becomes a favourite (back in the days when people flicked through TV channels). Other times they're just pleasant day-to-day surprises, like bumping into someone you’ve only spoken to in text form on Microsoft Teams and finding out they’re really hot. In any case, when such a moment is upon you, pause for a bit, drink it in, and let the other rats race by.

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