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Why I have not written anything serious.

When I woke this morning I knew there was something important but annoying that I had to do. It was related to something that happened yesterday, but since I often have difficulty remembering what I did half an hour ago, yesterday can seem further away than 1986 – which, oddly, only seems like a couple of years ago.

I knew what I had to do, however, and that was to plug the battery charger into my wife’s car (ah, it’s becoming clearer). When she’d got in it to go to the village it didn’t budge: the battery was dead. This was annoying not just because the car wouldn’t start but because the battery is probably not even 18 months old. I was not happy with the idea of spending money and I hate cars; they’re dirty, dangerous and, most of all, expensive.

So I plugged in this miracle charger I’d bought for the occasion (see, it was already costing me) and left it for a couple of hours. In fact I‘d done that yesterday, then started the car and listened to the engine running fast and slow – the timer is on the blink (more pound signs clocking up in my mind). That’s what I did again: after I unplugged everything I started it up, checked that no lights or other electrical doodahs were switched on, left the engine running for 20 minutes, going up and down like a piece of contemporary dual tone classical music, before finally switching it off and shutting up shop.

At this point I should tell you that my wife’s car is a Fiat. Serves me right, I hear some of you say. And second hand, as well. What do you expect? I’m a poet, I’m not made of money.

But all that mechanical auto engineering on my behalf was just the start of the day. I had a bigger task ahead. We were to visit friends in the Lincolnshire Wolds to dig up some bluebells from their extensive gardens to replant in our less extensive property. Since my wife’s car was on the blink, I had at first thought we might travel in that in order to boost the battery – as recommended by the man from the rescue service who had turned up to sort out the original problem (I hadn’t mentioned that, had I?). After the lacklustre response of the motor, however, I decided against that; I didn’t want to end up breaking down mid-Lincolnshire and waiting for an hour without entertainment. My car it was, then.

On the way I was going to take half a dozen bags of garden waste to the town dump. Apart from the fact that some of the black bin bags holding the waste were so thin they tore as soon as I picked them up, some of the cuttings were so old they‘d started to liquefy. In other words they were turning into a type of silage, and silage, in case you didn’t know, stinks most rankly. I realise that many people don’t live in or near the country and that those with little exposure to it think it is replete only with pleasant odours – flowers and grass and stuff – but it has its share of pungent stinks. A trip through the arable areas in muck-spreading time would acquaint them with that.

I realise that many people don’t live in or near the country and that those with little exposure to it think it is replete only with pleasant odours – flowers and grass and stuff – but it has its share of pungent stinks.

TRANSPORTING THESE BAGS wasn’t too much of a problem till I got to the dump. Some of them split completely and my hands got covered in the rank slime, but worse than that, they had leaked in the boot. I mopped up as much of this vileness as I could, opened all the windows and set off. After about 50 yards I decided I need to clean the stench off my hands because I smelt like a farmer who’d slept in his barn for a year without changing his clothes or taking a bath, so I stopped in a supermarket round the corner. I washed my hands in the bathroom and bought a pack of sweet-smelling wet wipes. Despite this cleansing I could still detect the smell of silage on my fingers. I was becoming obsessive. It must have been true, because my wife said so.

At last we began our journey proper. Luckily it was sunny and warm, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to have the windows open. As it happened, it seemed to make no difference. The mephitic odour boiled out of the boot and circulated through the interior. We had to stop half way while I stuffed as much of the dampened objects from the boot into plastic bags as I could. That seemed to lessen the pong a little.

The rest of the outing passed without problem. We collected our bluebells, had a cup of tea and chatted with our host about matters of flora and fauna: rabbit population down, buzzard population up, that sort of thing.

Back home, though, I had to rid the car of its contamination, which required completely emptying the boot, chucking various things away and scrubbing down the carpet and leaving it out in the sun. I blasted it munificently with fresh air spray.

AS FOR MY wife’s car (returning in a neat structural move to the beginning of my tale), I gave it another charge followed by a session of idling, noting with slight satisfaction that the central locking worked when I shut it up. And tomorrow, I thought, I shall book it in for its service.

While I was busy with this and other things more tedious to mention, the Turks were rioting in Taksim Square, the media were aflame with rumours about love affairs in the government and people were reading the usual nonsense in the lefty papers about tax, feminism, the EU and how Islamic terrorism had nothing to do with Islam. All of which I could have been writing about if the environment-destroying, consumerist, patriarchal and hegemonic apparatus of our late capitalist system of oppression as manifested through the motor car and our selfish desire to have more bluebells had not prevented me. That’s my excuse.

Michael Blackburn.

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