Driving

It’s a funny thing, driving for a living. Allow me, if you will, to take you on a journey through my day spent on Her Majesty’s Highways.

Destination: Chatham, Kent
ETA: 09.30
Actual time of arrival: 11.00
Predominant emotion: Visceral Rage

I’d like to discuss ‘Road Rage’. Road Rage is an apparently inexplicable behavioural pattern exhibited by, most commonly, those engaged in earning a crust from driving, or spending their time driving to and from their place of work during periods of extreme congestion. Road rage, of the type that is aggressive and aimed at other road users, is intimidating and apparently unreasonable. Recipients of an outburst are, justifiably, upset by their being singled out by this irrational behaviour, and no doubt feel aggrieved that another motorist would over-react so offensively for such a minor infringement as ‘cutting them up’. Indefensible as such personal attacks are, it’s worth examining the cumulative irritations inherent to using roads on a regular basis. As this is taken from my own experience, it in no way represents the general feeling of other road users; some of them are unquestionably just wankers.

Roads are used in good faith. An experienced driver has an accurate picture in his mind of the route he will take, and a reasonable idea of the time he will arrive at his destination. If he is wise, he will have prepared before hand the little details that make the drive more pleasant. These may be an ample supply of cigarettes, a collection of CDs, something to eat and drink, headache pills and maybe some boiled sweets. Problems arise when events begin to encroach on the driver’s well-laid plans. For example, and again I refer to my own experience, this morning as I was driving, things immediately began to go awry. As a natural habit of long-term driving, one has a mental timetable in one’s mind of the checkpoints along the route and the time you would expect to pass them (e.g. I would expect to pass such-and-such town along the route at a given time). Congested roads and traffic jams have a cumulative effect. Individually, they are not disastrous. If you find yourself in one, you mentally reset your timetable by, say, fifteen minutes and then carry on as you were. A certain level of flexibility of plan, along with a generous estimated driving time, are enough, you feel, to compensate for stagnant periods. Where this goes wrong is the point where you feel you have lost control of events. Continued congestion, which is a rarity but occasionally occurs, has the effect of causing your timetable to slip further and further from your grasp. If one has an appointment to keep, which is almost always the case, your margin of error built into your driving time diminishes at an alarming rate. Your estimated arrival time rapidly approaches your appointment time, accompanied by a directly proportional rise in anxiety and stress. At a curiously well defined moment two points cross, and you know when you will be late. A certain resignation sets in. Events are, after all, out of your control. If, however, you are still a considerable distance from arrival, the rate at which anxiety and stress increase accelerates. Anxiety and stress mutate to anger, then from anger to rage. And rage, I kid you not, is an apt word. It surges up through your chest in an awesome wave; a small part of your brain registers with some shock the potency of the naked wroth you are experiencing. It manifests itself physically. Your hands tighten on the steering wheel, your teeth clench; your breathing becomes shallow. Eventually, a moment will come when it becomes too much. And there is a point, a crest, where it must come out. Your right foot becomes heavier and heavier, and sometimes, you begin literally screaming with rage. There is no hope now; it’s coming out. Attempts to control it are useless; a band aid on a bomb. You begin hitting the steering wheel and the dashboard, and roaring like a wild animal. If, then, someone were to cut you up, they unwittingly become the definitive target of a thundering, feral rage.

Now to colour the picture. Of more than one occasion, the victim of a physical attack from me has been the unfortunate car radio. It says much for its sturdy construction that it has not been irreparably damaged. I mentioned earlier the wisdom of preparing for a long drive with CDs. This is because of the lamentable quality of commercial radio. I think it’s fair to say that local commercial radio is the most atrocious, culturally vacuous, rage-inducing broadcast media in the entire world. Now it may seem that this would not be a problem with an ample supply of CDs; and maybe that’s true. But firstly, I resent the fact that I should have to use CDs. There is enough FM broadcasting space that one should have adequate choice. Television hasn’t been superseded by DVDs and videos; there is an important place for the television broadcast, and so it should be for radio. Secondly, you may have left the house, being human and subject to error, without any music. In my case, I cannot abide driving without some kind of music or radio program on, unless I get into a specific frame of mind, which I will discuss later. I refer to the case outlined above of the rising tide of road rage that I was powerless to halt. With no CDs to ease the journey, I am entirely dependant on the radio. If there is nothing on Radio Four (which I am coming to), this leaves the commercial stations. For the sake of argument, I will class Radios One and Two as commercial. Commercial radio apparently adheres to no concept of quality whatsoever. In my view, airtime is a precious thing. It’s a matter of continuing astonishment to me how the stations decide to fill this space. A typical hour goes thus:

• News bulletin
• Weather Report
• Traffic Report
• Adverts
• ‘Secret Sound’
• Presenter’s waffle
• Bad pop song
• Presenter’s waffle
• Adverts
• Presenter’s waffle
• Bad pop song
• Traffic Report
• Adverts etc.

Of the above list, the most rage inducing are ‘Secret Sound’ and Traffic reports. ‘Secret Sound’, or its close relation, ‘Guess The Song’, are competitions where a sound is played, or the clip of a song, and a caller must guess what it is. The sound, by the way, could be any one of literally a billion different things. The caller, usually worryingly gormless, then chirps up with a ridiculous answer, which is inevitably wrong, and the presenter, whose voice is itself a propagator of rage, sadly informs them of the mistake, and rolls the winnings over to the next day, thus perpetuating the game with promises of ever increasing amounts of cash prizes. The traffic reports, which are repeated in perpetuity, seem to me to be the worst thing you could possibly listen to in a car, especially when in a traffic jam. They are harbingers of misery; pumping the inside of the car with the pointless futility of it all when the evidence is there before your eyes. As I share the work van with other users, I sometimes find that the ‘TP’ setting is turned on. This criminal function of the receiver actually cuts automatically to a traffic report whenever one is on, which only seems to happen when you are listening to something good. As for the presenter of the program; he becomes a conduit of rage. At the moment of explosion, if I were face to face with the radio presenter, I should not like to be held responsible for my actions. Adverts are acceptable; I understand that a station must pay for itself, but they make airtime precious, and it is currently criminally wasted. Approximately six terrible pop songs an hour fill the rest of the time, the worst of which, oddly enough, is a song called ‘Rise’ by Gabrielle. If you have never heard this song, it is a staple of commercial radio, and during one of its frequent appearances, if I am in a rage, I become practically homicidal.

It is not unreasonable to ask why I still listen to the radio. The first answer is Radio 4, the second is Hope, the forlorn hope that you may stumble across a gem. As I have said, I cannot abide the silence of the car, except in rare moments of introspection. The result is an almost continuous changing of channel. I drive with my finger constantly on the search button, flicking incessantly from station to station searching for something, anything that can relieve the tension. Now and again, and from some surprising sources, comes blessed relief. And then it seems to be almost worth it. Today, I am rather embarrassed to say, I flicked onto a station to hear the opening bars of Whitney Houston singing ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’. Odd as it may seem, this was perfect for the moment. It was at that moment that I decided to write this all down; it struck me what an intensely emotional experience driving is. ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ is three and a bit minutes of shameless, innocent, pre-pubescent, eighties-indulgent joy. My spirits soared at its simple bittersweet girl-boy-innocent-love message, along with Whitney’s quite extraordinary voice, and the fact that it’s a cracking piece of pop.

As I have said, it is wise to take CDs with you on a car journey. I am fortunate in that most of my driving is done on my own. This allows me to indulge in a pleasure that I think lone driving is uniquely able to provide. Singing. There are not many times in life when you feel comfortable singing to your hearts content. If a song is on that I know inside out, I will sing it wild abandon; I will sing from the depths of my belly and reach the highest notes and the brightest harmonies. I feel I have been blessed with a fairly decent voice; my spirit soars when the perfect song is playing and I boom along in time. It’s such a joy, that I don’t want to stop mid-song. If I come to a set of traffic lights, it’s sadly embarrassing to be seen singing (what the fuck that is all about, I don’t know. It’s a matter of deep irritation to me that I feel ashamed of singing at the top of my voice in the car if others are watching). So to be able to continue singing, I’ll cover my mouth with my hand and keep going. It’s only just occurred to me, after writing this, how odd that is.

It’s difficult to overstate how much I love and depend on Radio 4. Lord knows it’s not perfect; at two o’clock every day, ‘The Archers’ followed by a play (which are never good), create an aural vacuum frantically filled with the hair trigger searching mentioned above. But generally, the quality of Radio 4 programmes is outstanding. But it’s more than that; it gives me endless comfort. It’s like I’m a part of an exclusive club of very English intellectuals, with their hankering for the truth, pragmatic applications of intelligence, and suspicion of a politician’s windy rhetoric. All the programmes seem, regardless of subject matter, to emanate from the same calming and supremely confident source. If, for example, the gentle parochial, horticultural dilemmas of ‘Gardner’s Question Time’ comes on, the soothing discussions of herbaceous borders and wintering vegetables fall upon my rage like soft snow.

Occasionally, I attempt to endure the silence. This is a matter of practice. The silence merely makes you more aware of how trapped you are, subject to the whims of erratic road conditions, and thus requires a certain amount of mental discipline to deal effectively with. The trick is to create ‘Mental Retreats’. This takes some practice, as impatience and rage can make it impossible to achieve. It is essentially an exercise of imagination, and so when successful, can be very rewarding. I have a number of these retreats, and as each one becomes more used, the details fill out, creating a tappable mental landscape of places and ideas. Some examples:

• Middle Earth. I love Tolkein. If I’m feeling down, I can pick up a copy of ‘The Lord Of The Rings’, turn to any chapter, and wrap Middle Earth around myself like a safety blanket. I’ve read it so many times that it is burned in my imagination; I can walk through the meadows and mountains and feel the weight of it’s ancient history, drink from it’s crystal streams and feel the constant conflict of competing powers. I can clothe my imagination in any number of characters in any number of situations; and so Middle Earth becomes a rich mental retreat.
• History. If I am reading a good history book, and I’ve read some crackers recently, it plants seeds of ideas that bear fruit when used as a mental retreat.
• Girls. I don’t think I need to elaborate.
• Happy Social Situations.
• A Happy Future.

There are more, but these I think make the point adequately. If I have staved off rage sufficiently, I can tap into these ideas and happily drive in silence.

So there it is – driving for a living. A pit of rage and frustration tempered by moments of joy that driving seems uniquely able to provide. But the worst thing, morally and in retrospect, is the myth of freedom. A car does not give you freedom; it takes it away. A car is a cage. It takes you from your home and delivers you to the place you have to be through arteries of rage, subject to forces that are beyond your control, meekly complying with strictly enforced rules. Aside from the well-documented damage the car is doing to the environment, and the regular fatalities on the roads, I can’t help but think that driving causes malignant individual harm to those regularly subjected to traffic. A perfectly reasonable person can shut out the world, unwittingly locking himself in a spiritual cage.