1 JUNE 1991, Page 34

The Body's Vest

Often I wish a thief would steal it, or a tutting mechanic thumbs-down it, or the police clamp it, or the Lord, lowering a crane from the sky, up-reel it.

Each morning it waits to claim me, demands oil and water, somewhere to go, and a hand to steer it. I confess I fear its love of journeys; its Homeric glows shame me.

Others go by who put their lives on every morning and sit inside them and seem at home and know the way perhaps I've the wrong shape and size on?

Often I think I'd like to leave it, an abandoned creature on the verge, and 'casting the body's vest aside' slip off on a slip-road and never retrieve it.

Diana Hendry