Au Suivant

So this is freedom? Sitting in a motorway service station, two days after Christmas, waiting for a hot sandwich that I had paid far too much for. I had fled the confines of the department store. Fled my home town and spent Christmas with family in a reasonably remote part of Scotland. It was my first Christmas without work for many years - since I was old enough to work if memory serves. My last day at the department store was the same grueling nonsense that I had put up with for nine weeks, and when the time came I slipped out unnoticed, like water through fingers. But I am free. Labeled a slacker by my family. But free. That is until another job comes to shackle me.

My sandwich was taking a long time, so I sat back, watching mist crawl over a huge lake outside a brown tinted window. Inside there was a boy, probably sixteen, cleaning the tables. He was wearing a uniform daubed with the logo of the service station, and a baseball cap was pulled down sharply over his head. He spun a spray bottle on his index finger, as if he was some kind of chemical cowboy. Without warning he would spray a table from a startling distance, pluck a cloth from his belt and speedily wipe the surface. I kept watching. He beamed, eyes sparkling, as he jumped over chairs, bouncing up to remove spent teapots and sugar packets. Then the spray, with an odd jerky, violent movement. All the time, he grinned at his travails like a lunatic. He skipped between tables as if he was timing his speed, each movement he made seemed to be a complex technique of a particularly difficult game. He was clearly winning, his gap teeth shining through spread lips. I was captivated. Maybe he was an idiot savant who had unlocked the secret of a happy life. He was the Holy Fool, content, nay even happy, with his position. I envied him. Here I was waiting for a sandwich that was promised in three minutes. It was now twenty-two minutes late. I looked at my watch and approached the counter.
"Excuse me," I said timidly. "Is my sandwich ready?"
"You have to wait," I was told in sturdy European tones. "It will come."
The curse of having worked in retail struck me. Suddenly I was the most unreasonable person in the world. I was The Man, persecuting the worker for no other reason than I was greedy and impatient. I skulked back to my seat and pretended to text on my phone, feeling utterly wretched. The sandwich arrived and I could barely stomach it, but it cost so much that I forced it down, washing the taste from my mouth with cold coffee.

I spend my life in these idiotic spaces, all neon lights and a transient population. Does every modern man have to deal with this curse, or am I just a pathetic cretin who cowers from real life in fake places? Just this morning I was in a Tesco Extra. Not a regular Tesco. A Tesco Extra. The word "Extra" denoting the additional portion of a human being's soul the atmosphere dissolves.
It is time, I have decided, to live hand to mouth. Do a job, get paid, and flee the scene as if my life depends on it. Why do we all have the fear to be without regular money? Why do we all have the fear to actually live? I'm riddled with it, I'm afraid, and the only resolution for 2008 is to get on with it. Life, that is. And not be scared to do anything. Anything at all...