Midnight. Midnight is gone. Deep into the heart of the night. Just speeding through the nighttime, past where the streetlights end. The road is quiet.
Got to get home.
Police cars burling past me down the dual carriageway. Lights flashing as I slow down a little.
Stop at the petrol station and fill up. The lady behind the screen is reading the paper, she looks tired but offers a smile. The air is cold and clean; the silence of the night is weighing down the world.
Smell of petrol.
Advertisement for a new radio station on the back of the paper.
I can’t go the radio these days, man. There are no gospel stations singing tired travellers home tonight. No local stations at all. It’s just a voice beamed in from the home of empire, reading out the latest catastrophes.
Or a 100-sound alike stations.
Same songs from Ayrshire to Aberdeen to London to Paris to Kansas fucking city. I can’t tell if that’s a real human voice anymore.
This is my resistance. While I’m still breathing. You can get yourself to fuck.
I can hear the ghosts of late-night Ayrshire.
I’ve got a coffee, got some kind of microwave food. Is it a burger? Is it a pie? It’s something in between. I can’t decide if it smells of death or heaven.
I’m back on the road. Sun coming up in the rearview mirror, calling my missus. I’m coming home.
They got me working late. Night shift, late shift, midnight ramble.
The world gives you nothing. It will strip away everything that matters if it can.
Make your own music.
Build your own story.
We’re still building.
(c) Paul Andrew Sneddon
Paul Andrew Sneddon 