“Thank heavens for for highway patrol”
It’s like a long, tubular petri dish. One great travelling incubator of scum, filth and sorrow. The 5:45am rail service from Gosford to Sydney. The misery machine skulks its way through the Kuring-Gai national park along a similar line to the M1 freeway but I can’t wind the window down anymore, nor can I turn the music up. No, all control over the comfort of my commute is in the hands of the rail network employees now, and it’s a good thing they know how I like my air recycled, dusty and humid. By the time we’re arriving at Hornsby my back, recalcitrant at the best of times, is aflame in protest. The seat must surely be made of obsidian! Curious then how it’s able to translate with painful clarity each single kick from the fidgety prick sitting behind me. I can’t concentrate on my crossword for the wheezing, fat ham-beast sat next to me. She perspires just for sitting still, poking at her Kindle and breathing aloud. I dread to wonder what manner of horrid housewife erotica she might be reading as her scarlet tongue flicks over her scabbed top lip.
I give thought to changing seats, but fear that any movement may excite her, like some rabid, prehistoric carnivore, into a frenzy of gnashing teeth and claws so I slide down further into my spine-severing seat and focus all my energies on 4. Down, ‘porcine collective’. A shrill, metallic announcement comes from overhead. We are moments from arrival at Central. Damn, and I thought it was going to be Sarin gas. The Hutt beside me climbs to her feet and hastens cross-eyed for the vestibule, drawn, as if by a tractor beam, to the Hungry Jack’s for second breakfast. The doors open and a rush of warm, fetid air thick with brake dust slaps my face. Is it Monday, Tuesday or just another day in an eternity of pain and torture?
It’s 7:13am now, and yet my eyes to fall on the Railway Pub as I exit the turnstile. It’s closed now, and perhaps for the better too. I’d need no encouragement to empty that sad watering hole of all the scotch I could before having to face my next trial. Leaving the train station, I drag my leaden feet toward the bus stop. It’s another fifteen minutes on the bus to get from Central to Randwick. It’s raining, I have no umbrella and the line for the 891 to UNSW stands unsheltered to the elements.
Behind me someone is complaining to a disengaged colleague about how poor a decision it was not to build a rail-link. And I’m almost inclined to agree with him but he is confusing state MP’s with federal members, and extolling upon all in earshot his grand plan for the redistribution of wealth so I turn and utter a silent wish that he just drops dead. I shut my eyes tight, clench my fists and wish with all my might that he may buckle under a massive heart attack and die right there on Eddy Avenue. But it doesn’t happen. I open my eyes and there’s no wife widowed or children orphaned. Just the bus. On time oddly enough.
Oh, how they jostle for position! How they elbow to be first on board. It’s like they’ve all taken leave of the fact that it’s a bus. A bus, taking them to work. It’s fine, I stand aside and let them be. I want to be standing anyway so when the great iron sarcophagus comes loose on a bend and overturns, I’ll surely suffer a fatal head injury. Still, no such luck and I arrive at work altogether unscathed.Nearly four hours since getting out of bed I’m arriving at work.
But, as those brave men and women of the Highway Patrol would have you believe, I’m deserving of this punishment. I’m a vile criminal, a repeat offender no less, and my crime an utter revulsion amongst even the most hirsute of the constabulary. For you see, dear reader, I am a speeder. A hoon, a hooligan, a monster. I am a man who slows down in school zones, I am a man who drives at the speed limit in residential streets. But you see, I have been condemned that my mantra is to slide in behind the wheel for the sole purpose of causing as much reckless pain and harm as humanly possible. My car is a weapon, and thirsts for blood like Idi Amin’s war-wagon. It’s important, nay imperative, that I am removed from the road, lest I go speeding through suburbia at night in some blood-shot, tyre-shredding spree to steal away with every family’s first born son. Perish the thought of punctuality or comfort. Do not be fooled. Speeders are amongst the most debauched and depraved criminal scum out there.
Safe speeding, there’s no such thing. Not for six lane highways, all lanes travelling in the same direction without a stationery object in sight. A limit of 80km/h is already dangerous enough. Truer too, of a sound freeway, from linking Sydney to the Hunter. 110km/h will surely do. And not a single click faster sir, even if are just trying to get home to see your family. It’s a road safety message steeped in scientific credibility. In what sort of crazy, nonsensical world would we train drivers to understand cars at higher speeds and mandate safe road practices to accommodate the speeds which modern cars are more than capable of comfortably achieving? Preposterous!
I feel a sense of great warmth and safety that my government cares about me enough to set loose the goon squad amongst the hard working commuters like sharks in a seal tank. And grateful too that no man to carry a badge can be reasoned with in human terms. No, I think it’s best that the long arm of the law is a robotic and non-perfunctory one. How blessed we are!And what of the immodest financial penalty for my acts of savagery? Well, I’m given the chance to participate in the great democratic plugging of holes in leaky state government budgets. The patriotism of it all!
Yes, the world truly is a safer place with me off the road. The Richard Ramirez of the road is no longer free to make killing grounds of our roads and clog our mortuaries with his victims.Huzzah for the O’Farrel administration! Huzzah for the nanny state! May we all sleep in sound and sober safety for the enduring vigilance of our masters.
