In between the inane moments which seem to dominate my life I retreat to a grey, featureless car park near to the place I call work, where I can hide between the white lines and other drivers who are equally seeking solitude, and possibly they wonder too where Godot might be.
It's a car park in which nothing happens, more than twice. I become a steel island and protect my territory ruthlessly from the brigands of the concrete sea with an impartiality that would turn Medusa to stone, if she dared meet my gaze. I open the car door and swing my feet out, looking down at an imaginary camp fire, where only now cigarette butts are casually discarded.
In an unprecedented moment a silver car pulled up next to me. It wasn't random - of all the empty spaces this intruder could have chosen, he chose the one next to mine. The tinted window wound down, slowly. The tanned, well groomed driver looked at me for a moment, and asked, in broken English, "Do you speak Italian?" I looked at him. I expected the caveat to follow - "I haf reeturned from ex-ee--bission and haf mucha stock left to sell" - but it didn't. Do I speak Italian? No, I'm an ignorant Englishman, sitting in an island on an island - barely able to acknowledge my own heritage, resigned to be an apologist for my forefather's imperialistic leanings and the de facto knowledge that a declaration of Englishness these days is an affront to multi-culturalism. Being British is ok; being English is merely an anachronistic term, which died about the same time George slayed the dragon and earned his place in history.
"No, I don't" was all I could muster. We continued to maintain eye contact, both cowboys astride our steeds, hands inching towards our holsters, thumb and finger nervously twitching, waiting for the other to make a fatal error of mistiming and to take a bullet in the upper thorax, or, if up aganst a particularly skilled gunslinger, between the eyes. The man with no name looked back at me, and made a sound in his throat which was either him dry gulping with an understandable fear and dread that he had ridden into the wrong town, or it might have been disgust. "You only speeeek Ing-er-lish?" he croaked. I looked back at him, unblinking, almost believing that flies were gathering around my squinting eyes, where the tiniest droplet of moisture was converging to travel down my face and join the concrete ocean. I waited, unsure at all whether this was only high noon or my last stand.
No name saw sense. Regaining his composure his window closed, cranking on its electric motor. With a kick of his heels he rode off into the sunset, with no shots being fired.
It's a car park in which nothing happens, more than twice. I become a steel island and protect my territory ruthlessly from the brigands of the concrete sea with an impartiality that would turn Medusa to stone, if she dared meet my gaze. I open the car door and swing my feet out, looking down at an imaginary camp fire, where only now cigarette butts are casually discarded.
In an unprecedented moment a silver car pulled up next to me. It wasn't random - of all the empty spaces this intruder could have chosen, he chose the one next to mine. The tinted window wound down, slowly. The tanned, well groomed driver looked at me for a moment, and asked, in broken English, "Do you speak Italian?" I looked at him. I expected the caveat to follow - "I haf reeturned from ex-ee--bission and haf mucha stock left to sell" - but it didn't. Do I speak Italian? No, I'm an ignorant Englishman, sitting in an island on an island - barely able to acknowledge my own heritage, resigned to be an apologist for my forefather's imperialistic leanings and the de facto knowledge that a declaration of Englishness these days is an affront to multi-culturalism. Being British is ok; being English is merely an anachronistic term, which died about the same time George slayed the dragon and earned his place in history.
"No, I don't" was all I could muster. We continued to maintain eye contact, both cowboys astride our steeds, hands inching towards our holsters, thumb and finger nervously twitching, waiting for the other to make a fatal error of mistiming and to take a bullet in the upper thorax, or, if up aganst a particularly skilled gunslinger, between the eyes. The man with no name looked back at me, and made a sound in his throat which was either him dry gulping with an understandable fear and dread that he had ridden into the wrong town, or it might have been disgust. "You only speeeek Ing-er-lish?" he croaked. I looked back at him, unblinking, almost believing that flies were gathering around my squinting eyes, where the tiniest droplet of moisture was converging to travel down my face and join the concrete ocean. I waited, unsure at all whether this was only high noon or my last stand.
No name saw sense. Regaining his composure his window closed, cranking on its electric motor. With a kick of his heels he rode off into the sunset, with no shots being fired.
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