RUNNING OUT OF ROAD

I’ve always lived on an island, but then, from a certain point of view, I suppose we all do. It’s just a question of scale that’s all, but it doesn’t stop me from having just the tiniest squeak of illogical nervousness whenever I know that I’m going to be on one, for the simple, if utterly barking, notion that somehow I’m going to put down my clog and accidentally run out of road.

Daft, isn’t it…?

But yet somehow the slight fear of unexpectedly reaching the edge always lurks there at the back of the mind, and when I expand the thought I start to get a little bit twitchy about all of the roads upon which I drive, almost as if I believe that someone is suddenly going to lift them up, move them around, and leave the end flapping about and pointing over the edge of a cliff in such a way as to leave me leaving it far to late to brake and consequently finding myself careering off into the wide blue yonder.

In reality, of course, most roads to the coast are quite harmless and usually either end up in a car park or looping back on themselves or just running more-or-less parallel to the crinkly-winkly coastline for as many miles as seems necessary, and it’s only on very rare occasions that you will follow one of those little signs saying “coast” or “beach” and find that the road follows a slope or a ramp right down to the water’s edge.

Sometimes there will be a beach.

Occasionally, if you’re really lucky, (or unlucky depending upon the place itself) there might be a café.

After all, it’s always a bonus to weave and bob through the cats cradle of coastal roads and find there’s a little place that’s prepared to sell you a cup of coffee or tea or an ice cream after you’ve made all that effort to get there and you’ve run the risk of the road running out before you’ve managed to notice.

Also, it’s very rare that the island is so small that the roads are just too big for them.

But still the niggling doubt remains there at the back of the mind.

Perhaps it’s because they always seem to be so tiny when you look at the maps when in reality they are usually relatively and deceptively huge things in comparison to, say, that rock that sits just off the beach that only becomes visible at low tide, and they must be particularly hefty old places for people to have wanted to live on them and build houses there in the first place.

But nevertheless I can’t help it. If I know that I’m heading to an island or, for that matter for the coast at all, somehow that ludicrous thought will trigger in the back of my mind warning me not to accidentally overshoot the edge of the country and end up getting my feet wet.

As passing thoughts go, it probably makes no sense at all, and I suspect that I’m not really explaining myself very well, but it’s even been known to niggle at me when I’ve got myself onto a train heading south, almost as if on some level I believe that the train will somehow overshoot the buffers at Euston or wherever and the momentum will mean it carries on going all the way to Brighton and fall off the edge and into the sea.

It’s all to do with a sense of scale, I presume, which still occasionally convinces me on some level that the real world is far smaller than it actually is and that the maps in the car are far closer to life size than they would have you believe, “It’s a small world after all” and all that, and the disappointing reality that driving anywhere is going to take slightly more time than the “ten minutes, tops” that you think that it ought to is going to lead to looking at endless hours of tarmac which is never the most fun of prospects to be considering.

And this all means that what I really need to do is learn to keep a sense of proportion.