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Pirajoux The middle of a hot endless summer, driving on the A39 through an as always empty central France, which exudes as always a certain Seventies timelessness The anxiety of being in a Ballard novel, the feeling of a certain narrative disconnectedness, that anything could happen or not, at the stroke of a pen And that whether something happens or not is somehow equally as disastrous an outcome But not knowing who or what the subject of this disaster would be, if anyone or anything This is what shrinks call free floating anxiety, I guess Poulet De Bresse Passing unseen towns, picnic areas, petrol stations and auto-grills, crawling along at 100 miles an hour, the faster you go the slower it all gets, chastened by the knowledge that a slight jerk to the right or left would speed everything up again and end your life in a chaos of twisted steel, spilled petrol and screaming children The promise of  an almost sci-fi shift in motion, a quantum leap, an ion drive surge tugs at the edges of this mundane driving reality Wildly fraying threads spastically unspooling at the edges of perception The death defying habits of the open road Hands alternately sweating, slipping on the wheel, followed by air-con clamminess, never finding the right balance of temperature to stop this yawing between discomforts; eyes lingering too long on the climate controls, fiddling with them, changing the flow, exasperated turning the A/C off and cracking the window open Sweating feet in Birkenstocks; damn their eyes a more prosaic way to die I couldn’t think of than this continual loss on concentration on the road due to adjusting dials and vents More dialling through French radio stations, one French song one American song, the bipolarity of taste and rhythm leaving you in the purgatory of always changing stations:Melodie, Nostalgie, Virgin, Classique, Energie Cuiseaux Pulling in to a Croq’Malin forecourt concession for lunch, leaving the car behind, clicking to itself in the heat Feet squelching towards the services, as we swamp the self service restaurant, devouring the ersatz gastronomy from whatever