Me, My Car and the Moon

 I didn't learn to drive until I was 30.
   This was totally because by then I'd spent scores of thousands of pounds on alcohol and could never save money; besides, a car would then be a consequence of getting a life. Since the age of 13 I'd never been sober that long anyway.
 When I did eventually manage to pass my test on the 4th go, I subsequently commenced the most serious and sustained period of self-destruct-by-drink I'd ever managed. This itself came about as my response to having asked a Jesus I'd never believed in, into my life to save me from dying one day. I found that this had ruined my drinking for good, as there was now within me, not an infinite darkness at all: deep in the light-years of void was now a tiny little pinprick of light.
   This impossibly tiny spark had not been there before the Jesus-day..indeed, I'd not been aware it would appear. The only evidence I had for it being there at all, not long after I turned 30, was the fact that no matter how much alcohol I soused it with to drown out and annihilate this new and uncomfortable thing, it would remain and would not be put out. It was there when I was in my cups, there when I was stoned, there when I awoke and at night, it was there as I walked upon the earth and went to and fro upon it.
   This "Damascus coversion" I'll tell you about some day.
 Anyway, when by a sheer miracle of impossibility, I managed around a whole two years of days at a time without drink, to buy my second car, a Vauhall Nova 1300SR.
   My first car, a time-honoured Toyota Corolla, had been written off 2 years previously after I slumped at the wheel and passed out whilst driving the wrong way up a one-way street in Chelmsford.
   By the time I moved to Stroud I'd been finally sober for 3 years or so and clean of all other substances for around 2 years; I still had my Nova, though typically of the type of car, it seemed as if all the metal and solid parts were a soft-wearing alloy of imitation metal and cream cheese. However, for me, this car was a metaphor for my new free will and ability to live, having slipped the bonds under no power of my own of that which had sought my death. I used to relish the fact that I could, if I wanted to, just get into the car and drive around country roads in the wee small hours...
  And so I often did, for a season, tootling around dark and woody lanes, not seeing a soul, aware of the fields and the tress and the blue moonlight.

   Around that time, I wrote the following poem in which I attemped to distill and refine that little season of newness with the Nova and my new and independent life in Stroud, that being the very first time in my life I had my own front door key to my accommodation..and, of course, to my life.
   Even now, I sometimes dream of  cars: not in the Jeremy Clarkson sense, but in the way that reflects either God or my subconscious reflecting where my life seems to be at. I can dream at night about, say, my car going off the road or my battery dying, or the car even disappearing...and at these times these dreams are a reflection or comment in metaphor of the control or power over my life.
    Anyway...here now is the poem. Again, this is the first time this poem has been seen in print by anyone other than myself, though it was written in 1994-ish.

Just Me, My Car And The Moon
 

It's only two hundred and fifty thousand miles to the moon,
So when I bought my little car with eight-six of them on its clock already
I thought I'd drive it there:
The first Vauxhall to the moon and me in it.

So there I went, floating off the bypass
To circle above the rooftops
Before sailing up through soft downs of silver clouds,
Chugging at a steady fifty
With the radio on, into the blue night and towards the winking stars...

Three years later and I'm cutting to neutral, coasting my hundred and forty thousandth mile; over halfway there already; between the worlds in the

Gleaming blue-black of space, my radio playing jazz piano far into the 

Night:
Less than halfway to go in my little car with just me, my radio and cigarettes. I always knew I'd get there and soon I will,
Chugging past the hanging yellow stars...
And then maybe I'll drift like a slow balloon above the moon people, silent and beaming; and I'll wave as they smile and I smile
And I'll touch my finger to my lips
And they'll nod, knowing;
And I'll flick an indicator, turning left at the next star
To sail, sail on into deep space where it's always two o' clock in the morning;
And no one from my world would ever, ever know.