Funeral Spring

The sky is an orgy of grey and blue and yellow, as I drive into a busy Saturday morning. The streets are bustling with cars of all makes, shapes and colours. Like little baby spiders they scattle out from under every stone, out of every hole, rushing frantically through the madness that is morning traffic, changing lanes like a crazy murderer on the run from an overzealous law enforcer.

I shut out the insanity around me and turn up the volume of the car stereo. Roky Erickson's "True Love Cast Out All Evil" provides the perfect soundtrack, as I leave the city behind and follow the straight, vulgar, invading grey line cut into the gentle beauty of the rural landscape, which is already showing signs of spring's zenith.

All the fields of rape have already turned from bright and even plains that blind the eye with colourful, yellow monotony into a checkered mess of darkish green and dying yellow. Adjourning fields, then brown, exposed and naked in the glaring sunlight, are now covered by a silky blanket of pallish, swaying green. Trees with branches groaning under the weight of clusters of white and pink now lounge in gentle green, while the remnants of their colourful dresses lie rotting in the sprouting grass.

Sunlight bounces off the windscreen and the sky changes colour yet again, as impressions of an ageing spring make way for the return of civilisation. In the distance, six broad and busy ribbons made of asphalt, each one speckled with tiny dots of colour rushing to and from its circular centre, meet to form a star, as I take the lane that gets me on the motorway.

Here, madness is swift and comes in shiny, polished disguises. As usual I try to occupy the middle lane, and while I leave the lorries behind me to the right, groaning, puffing and blowing as they carry their heavy load, the cavalry thunders past me to the left. Porsche, Audi, Mercedes, BMW. The fast lane - a catwalk of the vanities. Bored and lonely drivers revel in their voyeurism, as they are rushing past. I did not invite them, yet they nosily peer inside my car like they would peer inside my living room, windows open and curtains drawn back.

Again I turn up the volume and listen to Roky once more, while outside the race continues. On the motorway. In a race where there is no winner, no first, no second prize. Yet everyone still wants to finish first.