{"id":7314,"date":"2014-09-09T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T08:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=7314"},"modified":"2014-08-23T10:48:57","modified_gmt":"2014-08-23T10:48:57","slug":"charlie-hill-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/charlie-hill-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Derek reads the Daily Mail<\/strong><\/p>\n

Derek woke, as he did every day, in an inexpensive guesthouse and to the promise of a long drive. Today \u2013 if there were no developments before he left – he was travelling from Morpeth to Plymouth Hoe, a journey of some 400 miles. In many respects this was the optimum distance, necessitating only the most minor of diversions. Sometimes his destination would be closer by and he\u2019d have to plan more significant detours, wasting half the day on roads he didn\u2019t need to travel. Once he\u2019d struggled terribly with a nightmare trip of barely 60 miles.<\/p>\n

That morning, as he did every morning, Derek plugged in his laptop, checked his email for overnight developments. There were none, and no new messages on his mobile either. So today was a done deal: Plymouth Hoe it was. He switched on This Morning, clipped his nose hair, took a shower.<\/p>\n

Derek got his information from a network of contacts he had nurtured over two decades of life on the road. For twenty years he had traversed the cities and shires of England, selling driving gloves, car coats, handbrake covers, thermos flasks and heated seat cushions. He was retired now and had nothing to sell but he had taken care to keep in touch with his former customers. Because although there were websites that supposedly offered the same intelligence, Derek was in no hurry to announce his intentions to The Surveillance State. And Derek had unfinished business.<\/p>\n

He had learned things on the road. About injustice and oppression and the evils of the world. About how people were abused and exploited on a daily basis by the faceless functionaries and unaccountable officialdom of a corrupt and wasteful bureaucracy. And how, of all of the millions of people under the jackboot of the state, it was the motorist that had it worst of all. Their treatment had awakened something in him, a defiant spirit, something of Olde Englande, something of Shakespeare and Nelson and Robin Hood. Because Derek was a motorist too and if there was one thing he would not tolerate, it was being taken for a fool by his so-called lords and masters.<\/p>\n

By the time he was out of the shower Derek had two messages. This was no surprise. His informants were conscientious and vigilant, their eyes on every forecourt in the land. He read the texts. The news was good. There were stirrings in the Midlands. After the Plymouth Hoe he had already pencilled in the Oadby \u2013 although it had let him down recently and he\u2019d had to sputter on to the fall-back stop-gap in Wigston Magna \u2013 but now there was also word of a promising \u2013 if anomalous \u2013 Harborne, a fortnight hence. Before that, Penrith at 1.26, an Orpington trialling 1.257, the maverick in Bude as low as 1.246…<\/p>\n

Derek breakfasted, as usual, on a Full English. He replenished his thermos, put on his car coat. He put on his driving gloves and went to his car. A call came in, then another. The next few days had filled up nicely. He would stop at the garage down the road, avail himself of what he knew to be the cheapest petrol in the whole country. He would take a full tank, of course, to make sure he got every last drop of his money\u2019s worth. Then he would set off for the Plymouth Hoe, driving so as to arrive with a empty\u00a0 tank but ready to do it all again, a proud Englishman standing up against the world, unbowed, unbeaten and always – always – one step ahead of the game…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Charlie Hill<\/strong>\u00a0 is a writer from Birmingham. He has published two well received satirical novels. His short stories are markedly less successful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Derek reads the Daily Mail Derek woke, as he did every day, in an inexpensive guesthouse and to the promise of a long drive. Today \u2013 if there were no developments before he left – he was travelling from Morpeth to Plymouth Hoe, a journey of some 400 miles. In many respects this was the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7314"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7340,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314\/revisions\/7340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}