Driving Miss Nauseous.
For my commute to work this week I have eschewed my usual nifty ipod mix of The Beach Boys, My Fair Lady OST and 80’s Movie Hits in favour of an audio book. It’s enjoyable for a change and I certainly feel far more intellectual. (For the record the audio book is “I Partridge: We need to talk about Alan”).
But listening to Alan’s nasal autobiography has brought up some memories of my own childhood. For this is not my first audio book, oh no, that title is held proudly by “The Little Mermaid”.
As a bad traveler who was driven for two hours every Sunday on 1980’s rural Ireland roads anything was used to distract me from projectile vomiting. Thus weekly trips to visit Granny in Roscommon started with “Once upon a time”, momentarily ended with “happily ever after”, followed by the sound of a tape rewinding back to start and the magical tale beginning again. Like I said, this was a two hour round trip. Perhaps you are wondering why we didn’t purchase more than one tape? Well, you are underestimating how amazing this story is and also, it was the 80’s.
I can still hear my brothers’ groans of dismay as we pulled out of the driveway. I can recall September 1985 and my sister’s futile attempt to open the car door and fling herself onto the roadside just past Ballymote. And over their sighs of complaints the narrator and accompanying violin music played on because nobody was allowed press the stop button. As for me I savoured each sentence and, interspersed with the frequent stopovers to puke, was transported away from our silver golf to a wonderful land.
