The Drive Home

I finish work at five past five, an optimum time to clock out of the office.

It sends a strong message to your boss. Namely that you will leave on time but you won’t leave in a hurry. You won’t pack up early and hurtle out just before five and you won’t wait eagerly by the clock like a child yearning for the end of class. You won’t will the second hand to push the minute and hour hand forwards, bringing about the crescendo of a ringing bell as you once did at school. You’re an adult now; you watch your work, not the clock. Right?

 “You finished that report?” My boss asks questions with such awkwardness and embarrassment that it fills the stale office air with tension.

He asks questions like the answer doesn’t matter to him. As if saying “no” to him would be of little consequence when I know the opposite to be true. It’s a modern thing I’m sure. Bosses no longer want to be your boss but your friend and your boss. That’s why my boss asks questions like we’re almost strangers.

 “Yeah, it’s all sorted.”

He smiles, that ugly grin splitting his pallid skin, skin so rough it looks as though time has been clawing at it for longer than it has. He could be fifty, but I know he only turned thirty last week. Is that what I will look like? After another five years of this job? I tell myself it’s a probability but that’s a lie. I will definitely end up like him.  I can see it now; my eyes haggard, my expression drifting, my face unkempt as I rule over some twenty-somethings, trying to ascertain whether they’ve followed my requests without being rude.

I stand, pack and slip into my coat before nervously fingering my keys and announcing my departure. I get a few half-hearted goodbyes from my colleagues in return.

Tearing myself away from the office I load up my Golf, climb in, start the car and pull away, heading for the M65 and home.

Now I’ve got away from work there’s something forlorn and longing that makes me want to turn back towards it, twisting creepers of doubt slinking in from all sides.

Did I do enough today? Did I earn my way? Did I put in enough work between lunch and chatting and loo breaks, between calls and meetings, between emails?

Does it matter? I’ll be back in tomorrow, back in to do the same thing again.

I look out of the window, rolling hills and sprawling farmland cutting past me. Ancient lands sliced up and split by ugly modern buildings, dense road and the gaudy plastic billboards advertising bathroom warehouses and car insurance.

Is this it? I mean is this really it?

Finish work, go home, go to bed, start again tomorrow? Anxiety crushing your chest, constricting you further as the day ages, scrabbling about trying to keep hold of your job even though you despise it. The only thing I like about that place is the money because the money allows me to live.

It’s a realisation that makes me feel old, ancient, some archaic body archaeologists find frozen in the Alps. I thought your twenties were supposed to be carefree. A job yes, prospects yes, responsibility yes, but not this grinding resentment, this fear, this panic, the overbearing weight of the world coming down. I’m already fifty, I’m already watching the years go past and fearing what will be said at my funeral.

This is an awful endless existence. I’m starting to believe that life comes down to earning enough from a job you hate so you can afford to sit in a flat that you need more than you want. It’s owning a car you also need more than you want, using it to travel to that job, which you still don’t want. It’s having two days a week to yourself, both of which are spent fixing, maintaining and cleaning your car and flat. Both of which you don’t really want.

I’ve passed Blackburn, that industrial eye beadily looking over my shoulder, Darwen Tower at its peak, the single pinnacle stabbing into the Lancashire skyline. It’s always a white skyline here, the sun rakes into cloud and blows up the horizon in this gaudy blank shade. A horrible pallid colour, like an ill person’s skin, “green about the gills” my mum would say.

I’m minutes from home now. Then it will be changing, unpacking, washing up, sorting dinner, exercise and calling mum. Then we will watch the latest TV series; the one endless social media adverts have told us to enjoy. Once we’ve unplugged ourselves from that we will then, irrefutably, go to bed. She will sleep. I will endure the six or seven hours of half-sleep afforded to me by the dregs of the day.

Then I will be up and rushing about to make myself look presentable for work. Shirt tie, jacket, trousers, smart shoes, I will look like the best version of myself tomorrow to go to the place I hate the most.

And why?

I loosen my tie, feeling the material beneath my fingers. This was expensive and I wanted to buy it. Not for a wedding, or to go to the horses or for a night out with my girlfriend, but for work. I actually bought this for work.

I climb junction ten towards Burnley town centre, stopping at the Cavalry Way roundabout.

I know I need to stop selling myself the same sob story. I could be without a job or a car or a flat, without income, without clothes or money. I could be a PTSD ravaged veteran living on the streets, dodging phantom bullets and bombs, waiting to hear the enemy’s barbarous cries. But I’m not. I could be a single mother in a dirty flat with a crying brat and boyfriend who beats and rapes me. But I’m not.

What am I? I’ll tell you; someone who is comfortable enough to be ok, but not comfortable enough to be happy.

I turn off at the second exit and take the winding road down to the next set of traffic lights, turning left onto Trafalgar Way, chugging past Victoria Mill. Of course, it’s not a mill anymore; it’s been morphed into one of the many tendrils of the university.

Victoria Mill and the university. One place churned out cotton, gave hundreds of people money, a job for life, a livelihood and stability. One churns out substandard degrees and gives people the belief that they will earn money and have a stable life when they won’t. And they say we’ve moved on, that society has improved beyond recognition, that the black smoke of industry has been replaced by a technological utopia. Perhaps the people who worked at the mill struggled more than I did, but better to struggle, to fight, to really feel each day, rather than live without feeling.

At the moment I’m just breathing, in and out without thought, without haste, without hurry, because there’s enough air, there’s plenty of oxygen to go round. I want to fight over that air, claw at it, take it off others, scramble to get a hold of it, appreciate it passing my lips, really struggle to live. Wouldn’t that be exciting?

I take the second exit, looking right to catch a glimpse of Manchester Road where Gran used to live and then I’m moving on towards the town centre, past the hulking figure of Tesco Express.

I could be one of those new-age yuppies. At times I wish I was. Hugo Boss suit, Audi A8, studio flat on the south Thames where the month’s rent is enough to buy a whole street up here. I could do flex time, work from home when I want, hop on some “calls” do some “emails” deal with clients by taking them on boozy lunches, hit the pub every Friday at five and be in some club snorting cocaine by one.

Does that world still exist or is that just an eighties dream I had? Something I saw on American Psycho? And, in any case, is it even what I want? Would that be more exciting? Or would it just earn me more money?

I’m sure I once convinced myself that money didn’t matter, that it wasn’t the be-all and end-all. That money wouldn’t be a condition of my potential happiness. But that was before I realised how much my company was willing to pay a young professional with a good degree from a red brick university.

I’m at the last roundabout; I turn right, slowing as I come under The Culvert, passing The Royal Dyche and The Turf Hotel.

I suppose if I wanted to be a coked-up yuppie I could get halfway there if I wanted to. Anyone can buy drugs. It just takes a certain swagger and class to pull them off.

It’s funny; the people at the top and the people at the bottom are so similar. They buy the drugs, sell the drugs, steal the money, extort the money and defraud the people. The only difference is how they’re revered and remembered.  Those at the top win, those at the bottom lose, and those in the middle are just forgotten.

I’m approaching the last set of traffic lights. The Turf is opposite and I can see that the next home game is Tottenham. I can see us winning that and consider getting a ticket.

I’m almost home. The traffic lights turn green and I go right past Leyland Drive.

Perhaps I won’t stop at home. Perhaps I’ll just go on? Keep driving?

Get back on the motorway, keep going until I’m out of petrol; until the motor has gone and the Golf dies, juddering and cutting out dramatically, leaving me on the hard shoulder.

Then I’ll get out, cars screaming past me. I’ll step over the chicane and just go.

Run up the embankment and into the thickets and quasi forests planted at the side of our roads, a thinly veiled attempt to replenish our green and pleasant land, to convince us that the commerce of travel hasn’t run rampant through it.

I’ll run. I’ll leave my phone behind. That evil temptress, the modern-day snake with its sinful and forbidden apple, social media, calls, work chats, emails and texts crawling from some devil’s mouth to coax me in. They will all be gone. I’ll throw my wallet, my driving license and work pass, the money I slave away to earn just so I can buy things I want but don’t need, and things I need but don’t really want. The debit card I have just so I can spend large sums of money without carrying cash and the National Insurance number I need to justify my ability to work.

I’ll hide out in an abandoned farmhouse. It will be a husk of a building with a fallen-in roof; graffiti drenched walls, half rubble strewn amongst the grass, moss and tendrils of ivy trying to reclaim the land for Mother Nature.

I will hide, stay quiet. Build a fire at night, get no sleep leaning against the hard walls, wake to the smouldering ashes, dressed in the same clothes, without water or deodorant or toothpaste or vitamin pills or hair gel or face wash or my morning workout routine. And I’ll be ok without those things.

I will walk to the next abandoned farmhouse, perhaps taking some food along the way, not much, not what I want but what I need. Enough. Enough to keep me going. Perhaps I’ll learn to catch wild animals, learn to steal expertly and cook on my open fires, learn to live in this new harsh world I have built.

I will be dirt-smeared and cut up, my feet bare, the soles hardened over time. My hands will be strong and rough, my eyes bright in the dark, my hair matted. I can grow a proper beard. I’ll hide out in the forests and the moors, hide from the bright headlamps and the loud voices and the traffic. Exit myself from the world, cash out, give up, hand in my notice.

No more worrying. Just surviving. Clawing for oxygen. Feeling something.

I’ll be the richest man ever and have no fear of losing my fortune. I won’t ever be comfortable. I won’t ever just live. I will survive.

I haven’t gone on. I’ve parked up, I’m home. I breathe out one long sigh.

I’ll go in, unpack, do the washing up, change, go for a run and then eat. Come back, watch TV and go to bed.

Ready to do it all over again tomorrow.