It’s a plain economy vehicle. Cheap, but relatively new. The one luxury that it does have, which the driver is very glad about, is a radio. Crackly, but functional. The driver is listening to music that would sound totally unfamiliar to me, fascinating and somehow unsettling in its strangeness, although you must have heard it before in your comings and goings. On either side of the road is a landscape as bleak and barren as the surface of the moon. Smothered by darkness, only its edges are visible to the man. The van’s headlights shine over reddish-brown soil and withered shrubs. They aren’t the only lights on this road. Spaced at regular intervals, the fixed lights at ground level on either side of this narrow strip of road each have a special significance. So too do the newish steel signs whose paint is swiftly becoming weathered by the sun. The man reaches his destination. He gets out of the van and does what he has to do. The early morning air is uncontaminated by the smoke, pollution and petrol fumes that are the curse of densely populated places.
