The first time I went to a football match as a kid my attention was diverted when a goal was scored. I realised that there was no 'real life' rewind button and the moment had passed.
Today I feel as if I have pressed the pause button. I have no reference points any more. There are no signals to tell me which day of the week it is. There are no newspapers, or bin collections, or favourite TV programmes to watch. Every day bleeds out of the last and into the next. I have become acutely aware of the rotation of the planet. The beginning of the day and the onset of night were once demarcated by other events. An alarm clock, breakfast radio, the start of the working day, the flood of people onto the street at lunchtime, rush hour, evening tea, putting the kids to bed...
All of these things served to remind me of the routine of life and the passing of day. Now time just sweeps along brushing memories with it.
And while my life is on pause and the past seems like a different lifetime I want to press fast-forward. I wonder at what will happen next. Surely there will be more to life than the tedium of day after day of nothingness.
I look at everything through a different lens now. In the evenings after work I used to listen to piano music. It helped to alleviate the stress of a busy day. I sat in my kitchen this evening with the lights off, slowly sipping on a tumbler of whisky and listening to the same music. At first, it was dull and flat and lifeless. Slowly, my anger started to build and I had to turn it off. I felt my chest tightening with rage as I stormed out of the house and got into my car. For a split second I considered the fact that I had too much whisky to drive and then I turned the key and pressed hard on the accelerator. The car bumped and bounced from the driveway onto the road.
I was drunk and speeding and angry.
Society has died. I was breaking the old rules with only my conscience to admonish me. So I went and broke more rules. I filled my car up with petrol and didn't pay. I drove for miles on the wrong side of the road. I constantly broke the speed limit. At times I thought I was driving too fast and could crash my car. I thought about dying. That didn't stop me. I thought about injuring myself and lying in a car wreck in sever pain with nobody to rescue me. That slowed me down. I drove to the coast again and turned the radio on. I tuned into the frequency where I had previously heard those faint desperate calls. I heard nothing.
I sat and watched the last light disappear from the sky. There was only the sound of the waves on the shore and the wind as it randomly rose and fell. On the horizon I could see lights - marker buoys and navigation aids. I wondered how long their power would last. It occurred to me that I never considered who was responsible for making sure that the lights on these stayed alight. It is moments like this that make you realise just how much goes into keeping society ticking along. There are the indefinable routines and jobs that nobody notices but which are vital for safety and for civilisation. You don't notice them till they're gone.
In the heat of the car and with whisky in my blood I started to feel sleepy. The waves crashed and the wind blew and my head started to nod.
A voice barked out of the radio. My heart exploded in my chest and I jumped against the seatbelt across my chest. For a second I didn't realise where the voice was coming from. Heavily accented the female voice asked, 'Can any person hear me?'
