ENDPAPERS
Another Part of the Forest
By STR1X THE other day I found myself, for about ten minutes, in a curious. mildly disagreeable, and thought-provoking situa- tion. I was, or rather I had .• • been, driving at eighty miles an hour along the latest section of the M4, which burgeons into three lanes as you approach London; I Was in the 'fast' lane—i.e., nearest to the narrow strip of grassed-down no-man's-land which divides the two streams of traffic on the motorway. Pace 'The Archers,'• to whom I was listening and among whom some far-fetched misunderstand- ing was being hauled, like a mediaeval siege- engine, into place, all was right with the world when my offside back tyre blew out.
The idea of a tyre bursting, whether their own or somebody else's, must vaguely haunt all who use the few fast roads in this country or the longer and more numerous ones else- where. My mishap put no one in jeopardy. I swerved smartly on to the virtually curb-less no-man's-land in the middle of the motorway, got out, and proceeded, in driving rain, to change the wheel; now that the flint-lock has, like the TSR 2, been taken off the drawing- board at the Ministry of Defence, the only side- benefit that one derives from owning many acres of land profusely studded with flints is a veneer of professionalism when it comes to changing a wheel.
Marooned I began, as I bent or squatted to my task, by reflecting on how lucky I had been. If a front tyre instead of a back tyre had burst at eighty miles an hour, things would certainly have been worse for me and quite possibly worse for others. Moreover, although it was raining hard, it could easily have been raining harder. But this fairly sensible perspective began, as I got warmer and wetter and dirtier, to be eroded by the continual WHOOSH—whoosh--whoosh —WHOOSH—whoosh—WHOOSH of three-lane traffic hurtling past within a few feet of me on either side. I needed no help. But supposing I had needed help? Supposing, even, I had wanted to cross the motorway in either direction in order to get to a telephone? Even if uninjured and reasonably spry, I would have had to wait for a long time to do that.
How, if one did need help in such a situation, would one summon it? I tried to put myself in the position of a driver in either of the fast lanes who suddenly, in poorish visibility, saw a gesticulating figure beside a stationary car on the central verge ahead of him. in order to play
the Good Samaritan he would have, first, to decide that this was the r8le for him: second,
to make sure by reference to his 'mirror that he could slow down abruptly without the risk of causing an accident: third, to realise that since he could not stop on the highway he would have to join the castaway on the central verge: and, fourth, to take the neiesiiry action in, at
a guess, something under a second. A driver in the middle lane, travelling at a lower speed, would have rather longer to size up the situation, but might think twice, even if the coast seemed clear, from pulling out across the fast lane. An exceptionally public-spirited citizen trundling along in the' outside lane might stop at the next telephone and report what he had 'seen; but a motorway is an impersonal sort of place, and with hundreds of cars flashing past in both directions I think it much more likely that he would assume (as I am afraid I would) that somebody else must be doing something about it.
An Interesting Experiment?
If on a fine afternoon one drove one's car on the central verge, got out of it and lay down feigning death, I wonder how long it would be before one heard a human voice? My guess is that it would be anythihg up to half an hour, and that even then the voice would be a policeman's.
Straws in the Wind of Change
An American publishing house, having de- cided for inscrutable reasons to reissue as a paperback a work of fiction which I wrote fifteen years ago, have sent me a list of suggested emendations' to the text, their purpose being to make the whole thing look slightly less passe. One of their suggestions is perhaps worthy of note; they Want 'a nigger in the woodpile' - changed 'to 'a fly in the ointment.'
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