Ray Davies

Desert Island Discs is a perfect programme to drive to, and knowing that I had two days of driving to and from the university through lanes with poor radio signal, I set up my portable speaker with an SD card containing a number of podcasts of Desert Island Discs.  Unusually, the radio reception was pretty good, so I bowled along listening to radio 4 instead.  To my great surprise the one programme I had time to listen to during my journey was Desert Island Discs, with the psychologist Marjorie Wallace as the castaway.

Rain drifted from the side as I bowled through the countryside - the roads were coated in a soup of water, mud and  crushed leaves that threatened to disturb the stability of the car, but I happily splashed through, quite distracted.
Driving is so much easier when absorbed by an interesting programme, and I travelled unthinkingly while absorbed in someone else's life.  The traffic bissected the countryside and the rolling hills encroached on either side; the brown and gold of the leaves rich enough to be a verb rather than a noun.

However, I was halted in my easy flowing commute, because just as I was just thinking my way into the approach to the campus she introduced 'Days' by Ray Davies.

'Thank you for the days
those endless days you gave me'


The enormity and purity of the words matched the character of my recent journey and interlocked with my own thoughts and memories, creating an honest and clear reality that pulled tears from my eyes.
I sploshed into the nearest layby, wondering how someone could write a message so pure that it can find and draw out the emotion of loss in every person.

'I won't forget a single day, believe me'

Oh, the ache of the past!  That dull pulling, tugging.  Not forgetting means being dragged back and losing that carefree free-flow that characterised our years together. Backwards time standing still, photos next to each other but 10 years apart; like eating food you can't taste; pulling rawness out like a machete that only cuts when it isn't there.

The cars continued to shoot past me; the splashing wheels cutting through the matrix of leaves.  I was sat, still, timeless, static, just taking in the words.  But on the cars went, relentless; progressing despite the knowledge that most of them would repeat the journey tomorrow and the next day and the next.
I couldn't join the flow until I had finished the message, the message that Ray Davies was sharing with me - he was talking to someone else but I was picking up the message as if it was for me.

Drive on, sniff, draw the back of my hand across my eyes - will people see them red?  Spasmodic breathing calms to a gentle depth as I enter the campus - up the tediously long drive where I usually look for people I know but never see anyone, so by the time I am ready to get out of the car the retch of grief had passed.  Deep breath, shake myself out, meet and greet.