Going 60 now. Feels like 80 in this. Pleasant Jesus, are those poppies over there? Is that even real, or some fake carpet someone put down for a laugh to wind me up? There’s a rattle that’s bothering me. Hope this thing is going to make it the last ninety miles. Bought it from a granny in Enfield. 1989 vintage. One lady owner. Lady owner made me a cup of tea. Strong like I like it. Never seen a builder drink it stronger. Six digestive biscuits. Forced me to take the three I didn’t eat home with me. Think the shady old crone might have turned the clock back, popped in a 1980 Lada engine. If it doesn’t get me past Yeovil I’ll sell it for parts and hitch the rest of the way. Better than the Renault 4 I used to have. Got nicked. Thieves changed their mind and abandoned it after 200 yards. Feck, I need MUSIC, but I’ve got no cassettes – who has, now, apart from hipsters and the dead? – so I’ll carry on amusing myself by watching the place names zip by. Tintinhull? What sodding kind of name is that? I’m picturing North Sea poverty meets intrepid French reporting but sensing that’s not what I’d find. Maybe that’s it, that’s why I became a journalist: reading all those Tintin books when I was ten. Never got the dog, though, did I, and it’s all over now, isn’t it, probably. Too late. Sorry, Snowy. Try an owner with a longer temper. You don’t go decking Richard Peck in the most popular pub for north London journalists at 7 p.m. on a Friday and expect to walk out of it as an employable metropolitan freelancer. Don’t regret it, though. Twat lied then tried to screw me out of a month’s pay then when I sold his feature – my feature – to The Times he said he’d make sure I never got work from anyone he knew ever again. Too much silence about this shit, too much fear about what not being silent about it might cost you. Too many people in that world not from money being pushed around by people from money and not paid by people from money because the people from money don’t understand the importance of being paid and the terror of not being paid. Too many people not from money complying and not sending the people from money sprawling across a lager-stained parquet floor, scrabbling for their glasses which they probably only wear as an affectation.