Can you picture the void?
The actual nature of true nothingness cannot be understood by the human mind. It is simply too vast and awesome for us to comprehend. ‘Nothing’ is beyond the realm of the human mind.
Put something on yr desk. Then take it away. What do you have? Nothing? No, you’ve got a desk. Take the desk away. Nothing? No, you’ve got the floor.
Etc.
Our lives are so filled with content that the absence of everything is a notion that will always squirm and squiggle its way out of comprehension. Which is probably just as well, as the notion of nothing is a pretty terrifying thought. I’d be pretty upset if I woke up and discovered that there was NOTHING at all in existence. In fact, it would totally put a cramp on my whole day.
But, dear reader, yr correspondent has stepped forward to the precipice and looked directly into the void. I do not do this for myself, but for you mere mortals who lack the moral compulsions that drive one such as I.
Gripping the rail, I hoisted my head over the big barrier, and stared into oblivion, the winds of creation howling around me. Dazzled, I pulled myself back and composed myself.
It looked a lot like Enniskillen.
I have discovered that the place pretty much shuts down after 6.00pm on a weekday. I found myself on this foreign soil on a wet Tuesday evening, to conduct an interview with a very pleasant young man. However, after the interview was over, I discovered – to my horror – that there are no buses back to Belfast after 6.25pm. The time was now 7.10pm.
This is the first time I truly wish I had learned to drive. I did attempt to do it once, but I discovered certain hurdles that persuaded me to give up. Most notably, I had a few difficulties with the hand-brake. On one memorable occasion, I was attempting to start a friend’s car, and had started the ignition, and found the ‘biting point’ (that’s a little technical term for all you drivers out there) but – alas! – forward momentum was not forthcoming. As I put pedal to the metal, there was still no progress. I couldn’t fathom it! I’d done everything right, but was still stationary. The owner of the car leaned in through the door, and discovered that I had not released the hand-brake yet. I struggled with it, but could not let it go. He leaned in through the door and released it for me, and the car hurtled into a hedge at about 80 mph.
After that, I wasn’t even allowed in the passenger seat.
But if I’d stuck at it, perhaps I wouldn’t have been sitting in a Wetherspoon’s pub (!) in Enniskillen town centre, spinning my phone round and round and round and round and round…
My boredom threshold is pretty low, so after reading the complimentary magazine a few thousand times, I began to get desperate. I left the bar and went in search of cigarettes, and found myself aimlessly walking for what seemed like an eternity in search of a shop. There were none to be found.
I don’t want to sound disparaging about Enniskillen, but where do all the people go? Even in the two lonely bars I found, there was scant evidence of human life. My only company was my own inner narrative, and the void.
The utter bleakness of my situation struck at me like a knife in my soul. My only other option of escape had been to get a bus to Dublin, and then get a bus to Belfast from there. But that moment had been and gone, and I was left trapped. There was no escape – this would be for the rest of my life, sitting in Wetherspoons, spinning a phone on a dirty table.
“But how are you writing this now, safe within the confines of your poorly lit, Belfast-based office? What miracle occurred for you to escape this purgatory?” I hear you ask.
I phoned my father, and he came and got me.
Which, although very kind of him to do so, crushed part of my spirit. I am a young man, forging my way through this cruel world! I am canny and cunning, and can out-think even the most perilous adversary! I shouldn’t be phoning home for help! Especially when the phonecall is as follows:
“Hey! You know how you always say I never call unless I’m after something? Well…I’m in a bit of a pickle.”
Either way, five hours after my brush with the void, I found myself back home, safe and relatively sound.
And what did I learn from my voyage?
Here’s the punch-line:
Nothing.
Not, however, cunning enough to have the foresight to check timetables in advance of entering a rural town. A rookie error; we only just upgraded from horse and cart and you expect buses into the evening? Those pigs won’t tuck themselves under our arms, mate.
Enniskillen. ‘Tis a scary land.
Welcome to west of the bann!! You needed to go to blakes!