There are certain trying times when I just sit down and say to myself, how in under God did I end up here?
I stare forlornly and shake my head ruefully and I attempt ukeireru, the Japanese concept of acceptance, but I can never really summon it.
And so, on Boxing Day, I sat down on wet grass and brambles, cold hands and wet backside, up on the bank of the M1 – between Loughgall and The Birches, wherever the hell that is – and looked around me.
Desolate farms and empty fields and barbed wire and a biting wind and I could find no shelter.
My car sat on the hard shoulder as the vehicles thundered by. That’s why I was up the bank. I was terrified sitting in the car, feeling the concrete thud of the lorries, like great armed missiles.
I remembered footage on those motorway cop shows about people getting out of their cars only to see it get smashed to bits.
I looked up whether it is safer to stay inside or get out and it was up in the air. Your choice. But make sure you always have a foil blanket if you have to leave the car.
Like I carry round a foil blanket. But I couldn’t stay there; I was like a crazed bird twitching at the mirrors, gasping with fear.
I got out and scrambled up the steep verge and stood looking down at the car, waiting for it to be obliterated by a truck that never came.
I had slipped on the way up and had thick clay all down one side. No matter how long I lived down the country, I still could never get the clothes right.
I always liked my street-smart Mod template, especially when I was going to the city – which is where I was going of course, until the car just quit working and rolled to a silent halt on the hard shoulder (broken water pump, I later found out).
The country ones have the right gear in the boot at all times: waterproofs, hi-viz, sun-visor, slippers, boots, umbrellas.
I was dressed for Victoria Square. I had nothing in the boot except a bag with Christmas cheese and biscuits for my sister, which I was to drop off before I went clothes shopping, my Boxing Day tradition.
But that was all so last year now. I hunkered down as the wind slapped about and wondered about time dilation.
No matter how fast the vehicle went past, almost everyone, going east or west, looked at my car and then saw me, up the bank.
I began to catch their stare. I saw their puzzled, quizzical expressions. Was that a Mod in the rushes?
I somehow saw and thought all this in half a second before the next face in a pick-up, or a lorry, or 20 faces on a bus.
Meantime, I was thinking about how good and bad things work hand-in-hand; they come in waves, sometimes at the same time, and they have it divvied up evenly.
I broke down on the M1, which is bad, but I had breakdown cover, which was good. I got it as a Christmas present that I had scoffed at, which is bad, but it worked which is good.
I wasn’t going to get to the sales which is bad, but I’d save money, which is good.
And then, as the dusk was setting in, I saw a jeep and a horse box pull in to a field on the other side of the motorway, and a man and a girl got this strong pony out and she rode it around the field.
The scene was all the more cartoon-like because she was so expert, and the motorway traffic created white noise and the piercing white and grey sky coloured the silhouetted dumb-show.
The happy horse, the serious rider – though I couldn’t see her expression – and the content, Lowry matchstick man standing at the horse box.
I huddled up and waited for help.