This story could have been oh so true.
It was inspired by a silly Saturday morning, a new motorbike and a girl in a red sports car.
There was a lorry, I was overtaking the sports car and yes, there was a lane - if there hadn’t been, I wouldn’t be writing this now.
And, as for the barman - well, there is this strange pub that I know…..
The Waiting Room
Joe sat alone in the bar and waited. Far off, in the distance, he could hear a car approaching; its unmuffled pipes singing a song of hell. There was still time left though; time left but nothing left to do.
He had been riding since dawn. With neither destination nor schedule he was happy to be alone on the road, free at last.
The last few months had been hell, a drunken hell, filled with misery and pain. But it was over. He had survived and he was grateful that those days were behind him and all in the past.
His fall had come when Susan had left him. He had always been a heavy drinker but, with his enforced solitude, he had seemed to lose control. Going over and over in his mind, all the things that he had said or hadn’t said, he drank more and more until the days seemed to pass in a drunken blur.
Finally, he lost his job, which was maybe what he had wanted all along. Now he was free to drink even more. He awoke in the mornings with a craving that was only satisfied by the evening’s oblivion. Days turned into weeks, weeks passed into months and he drank the time away.
To find out what happened next you’ll need to buy a copy of Different Roads – available from Lulu.com from 1st August 2011.
