the bitch 2

Exiting the car park at the parish church in the dulcet medieval town of Athy, the old murder capital of South Kildare.
Athy is home to a particularly brutal IRA murder squad along with a coterie of attendant psychotic splinter groups, and a whole passel of notoriously vicious drug gangs.
The place has atmosphere at least.
My car radio is on.
A presenter called Matt Cooper is interviewing the British actress Joan Collins.
"How many dresses are you selling in the auction?"
"Seven."
I begin shouting at the radio.
"Cooper what are you doing? Joan Collins is witty. I may disapprove of her life's work but she is witty. All you've got to do is let her perform. Let her personality come out and it's going to be okay. Come on. Aw this is terrible. Just, just, just gently provoke her and stand well back. Mercy. This is abysmal. I'd do better myself. I'd say: Joan your most famous film is The Bitch. Now I've got to tell you I've known a few real bitches in my time. There was one at the Leinster Leader a newspaper where I worked called Joanie Walshe. She'd leave you in the ha'penny place. And then there was another in the same newspaper called Sylvia Pownall. Although to be fair if they made a film about her it would probably not be called The Bitch. It would be called The ******* ****."
My meditation on Great Bitches I Have Known (and Matt Cooper) was interrupted by the sound of rending metal.
With a feeling of recognition (not exactly shock) I realised I'd crashed the car again.
The metal was still rending.
What have I hit?
More correctly, what am I hitting?
The crash is still going on.
Thank heavens not a person.
A gate pier.
What do you do?
Do you drive clear?
Metal rending.
Will it be worse if I stop immediately?
Errryyyyyurghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Rending sound.
Do I yank the wheel to the right?
More rending.
I drove clear.
Another decision.
Should I stop?
I always find it hard to stop at the scene of an accident I've caused in a town straight out of The Hills Have Eyes.
It's one of my foibles.
Moral turpitude thy name is James.
Have I demolished the gate pier?
Did anyone see me?
I drove on.
Reached the road out of town and headed hard for home across the badlands of Kildare.
A few times I checked the rear view mirror, half expecting to see a trailer truck full of wide eyed yokels brandishing pitchforks bearing down on me.
(A black Audi A4 full of IRA drug thugs brandishing Kalashnikovs and Glock pistols surely? - Ed note)
Thankfully aside from a few disparate banjo notes from the theme tune to The Dukes Of Hazard, which I may have imagined, there was nothing.
Back home I examined the car.
Frankly it did not look good.
The left hand side panelling has been altered out of recognition.
Pulverised is the word, I believe.
The mot juste.
Pulverised again.
Like some malign fate constantly renewing itself.
Heelers pulverises another Nissan Almera.
Passenger door still opens though.
And the window can go a quarter of the way down.
All in all, it could have been worse.
But what is the Almighty telling me?
Is he telling me to not to let my attention wander when driving?
Is he telling me not to shout at the radio?
Oh mercy.
He couldn't be telling me not to harbour resentment in my heart against my fellow human beings (and Matt Cooper).
That would be the last straw.
The ghost of the techno musician who styles himself Moby appears beside me in the evening gloom,
Moby contemplates the scratched bodywork on my car.
Then he sings his most elegiac song.
It goes:

"Oooooh Lordy
Troubles with God
Ooooh Lordy
Troubles with God
Don't nobody know my troubles with God
Ain't nobody know my troubles with God."

He's an apposite fellow is Moby.