Mind the Gap

"Mind the Gap"

It is four thirteen pm and I have just thrown a tube of Fruit Gums in,
to see what will come of it. The Fruit Gums were purchased from the
Esso service station, together with a bottle of Sprite (lukewarm and
overpriced). I refuse to pay the prices at the gruesomely twee shops
that cluster together in the Services.

This is Watford Gap and I am standing in a field, the grass brushing
midway up my calves. I can hear the cars noisily eat the road, just
forty yards away. Nobody comes here, nobody wanders away from the road
and the shops. Not this far.

Where I am, right now, is peering at The Gap. It is like a chasm, an
eight foot wide shock carved into the field, where reality ceases to
exist. This is the real Gap, the one nobody talks about and hardly
anyone has seen.

It is not a big hole in the ground, when you look in, you don't see
earth and chubby whitish-pink worms. It is black. Black as though the
sun was kicking out darkness instead of light - it is an intensity
which hurts your eyes.

The Gap is a little like the sky on a really good night, except there
are no stars at all. Not the sky, space. I often wonder whether space
is really black, when you get up there, or whether it is black like the
sky is blue - it just looks that way from a distance, but up close, it
is just transparent. I kept meaning to write to NASA about that - is
space black, or is it see-through. It seems to me an important thing -
because it looks so dark and foreboding, we must have it really badly
wrong if it is not like that at all up close. How can we get things
that wrong ?

If something can be noisy and silent at the same time, that is The Gap.
The silence that comes from it, when I get down on my knees and get
close, is a roaring silence, drowning out every noise, even the
miniscule clicks and creaks of my body working. I can't hear the blood
drum in my ears and I can't hear myself think. Literally. Ordinarily,
every thing I think about, I sort of hear in a tiny voice in the back
of my head, but I can't form any sort of thought while I'm listening at
The Gap.

I don't think about standing up, I just do it and realise just how
bloody quiet the thing was. Although it is daylight, I have brought a
Mag-Lite with me, knowing this was here and I shine the beam into The
Gap. The column of light is devoured within seconds. The Fruit Gums had
vanished from view the same way, earlier. I wish I'd kept them
now.

When I parked up at the Services, I didn't bother to put petrol in my
car. At the time, I thought I'd do it later, after I'd checked out The
Gap. But part of me must have known it would be an unnecessary Switch
transaction.

I am not going back to my Peugeot, I am climbing into The Gap, to see
exactly what will happen.

See you !