This Is This

You want to pay attention to the chords that strike. They are almost certainly trying to tell you something you need to know. So when I stumbled across this by Henry David Thoreau, over the weekend, I knew heed needed to be taken:

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

I realise that a lot of the time I write about opinions and values and the like so I’ll resolve this week to talk about things that actually happen.

Thoreau wrote in Civil Disobedience:

“The government is best that governs least…That government is best which governs not at all. –and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward…..The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think is right.”

Last night this guy was driving behind me talking on his mobile. He was no more that 6 feet from my rear bumper, left hand on the wheel, right hand on his phone, as we sped along a windy country road. It was eight in the evening and I was going to do some work nearby and the roads were empty apart from us.

People who drive using their phone are morons. I’m a moron when I do it, because I can not concentrate on the road at the same time. I have found myself hanging up on a call on the motorway to discover that I am going 45 miles an hour in the middle lane with a column of angry drivers behind me. So I try not to do it. When I answer the phone, I normally put the caller on speaker and bellow into it: “Hello — I’m in the car! I’ll call you back!!!” -and that’s only when I really have to answer it.

But this guy was talking on the phone, on a sixty mile an hour road right up my arse.

So I slowed down to forty. There was no way he could pass because it was a windy road and he kept on jabbering and smiling as he spoke.

So I slowed down to thirty five. Which was funny, because he had to slow down and change gear, which involved him wedging the phone between his cheek and shoulder, grabbing the wheel and changing gear, then getting the phone back into his hand to carry on his conversation.

I had to change gear, too, but it was no problem because I wasn’t jabbering on the phone. My engine had been labouring in fifth gear, but was more comfortable in fourth, as his was.

I could see him looking at me and getting annoyed, but he couldn’t pay that much attention to me, because he was trying to drive and have his conversation.

So I slowed down to twenty five. This is on a sixty mile an hour road, right? I slowed down because I know that cars don’t like going along at twenty in fourth gear, so I changed down to third. And eventually, so did he, going the same facegrab ten-point manoeuvre he did before.

Then I sped up to thirty five, because cars don’t like going along at thirty five in third gear. I changed back into fourth and he did eventually. He was driving so close I could hear his engine revving under the effort before he did his convoluted gear change.

So I slowed down again and put him back into third gear and further into fits of rage. This carried on for about five minutes, which at thirty five miles and hour is …uhhh …. three miles? No, four. Some distance anyway.

I kept checking him in the rearview mirror and when he hung up the phone I put my foot down, went back up to sixty and pulled away from him, just to show him that, yes, I knew what the fucking speed limit was and yes, I was trying to piss you off.

Civil disobedience.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think is right.

There are worse rules than that to live by.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 at 6:39 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or leave a comment yourself.